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Author Topic: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized  (Read 6886 times)

Axel Slingerland

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #15 on: February 16, 2022, 11:14:07 AM »
Yeah... Those deliberate trouble makers caused my old boss at the Pit to have to replace a couple of PCs. Some of the "advice" they gave people was quite destructive at times. To add to that, some of the people in the US Congress at the time might fit that description as well. The two owners of PC Pitstop testified before Congress about Spyware, in an attempt to get them to do something about it, but the stupid Cons refused to back any legislation, so nothing came of it. What a waste...

Anyway, getting back to WACUP... I just made a discovery on my PC that solved a 7 year old problem. When I set this PC up one thing I was a little dissapointed in was that the left channels of the of speaker system was weak, and I had to compensate for that by moving the balance to about 20%-25% left / 75%-80% right. That was the only way I could get the sound to be about even on all channels. After 7 years, I was pretty much used to it.

Tonight, I was looking for the setting to control the bass output, and noticed that instead of the 5.1 surround sound speaker configuration, it was set to plain old 2 channel stereo. I was listening to Pink Floyd's 2019 remix of the Delicate Sound Of Thunder DVD at the time, and when I changed it to 5.1 it was like my speaker system suddenly came to life, as if I went from sitting in front of my PC to front row center at the concert. Wow... What a difference! And to think that I opened that program to turn up the bass, and I ended turning it down.
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #16 on: February 18, 2022, 03:56:32 AM »
...

Tonight, I was looking for the setting to control the bass output, and noticed that instead of the 5.1 surround sound speaker configuration, it was set to plain old 2 channel stereo. I was listening to Pink Floyd's 2019 remix of the Delicate Sound Of Thunder DVD at the time, and when I changed it to 5.1 it was like my speaker system suddenly came to life, as if I went from sitting in front of my PC to front row center at the concert. Wow... What a difference! And to think that I opened that program to turn up the bass, and I ended turning it down.

I don't think you would have failed to notice the lack of sound from some of your speakers. So I'm thinking your speaker system sounding different (better), when (WACUP/Windows/speaker system ?) switched from stereo to 5.1 mode, is either because your Pink Floyd file is encoded with 5.1 sound or your speaker system is able to run in a pseudo 5.1 mode.

I use an output plug-in that upmixes the output of all my stereo files to pseudo 5.1 outputs, so that 6 customizable output channels are sent to my speaker system instead of the files' native stereo channels. I'm looking for a plug-in that would upmix to 8 customizable output channels, then I can upgrade to a 7.1 speaker system.   ;D

As for bass controls, they are too in-discriminant imo. This is why I use a DSP plug-in instead of the default equalizer or the bass and treble controls (in skins that have them). As you know, bass and treble controls allow the output level increase or decrease of all frequencies below or above a certain mid-range frequency. The default equalizer allows for control of 10 groups (bands) of frequencies spread across the entire frequency range. DSPs allow for much more fine tuning of the frequencies needed to be enhanced or reduced.


« Last Edit: February 18, 2022, 04:06:16 AM by Aminifu »
Windows 11 Home 64-bit v23H2
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Axel Slingerland

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #17 on: February 19, 2022, 09:42:35 PM »
I don't think you would have failed to notice the lack of sound from some of your speakers. So I'm thinking your speaker system sounding different (better), when (WACUP/Windows/speaker system ?) switched from stereo to 5.1 mode, is either because your Pink Floyd file is encoded with 5.1 sound or your speaker system is able to run in a pseudo 5.1 mode.
I think you're right. The Delicate Sound Of Thunder DVD is 5.1, and my MP3's are not, yet they too sound better now. Not quite 5.1, but fuller than stereo. I like it.
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #18 on: February 19, 2022, 11:21:20 PM »
I'm not an audiophile, looking for bit perfect reproduction of my digital music files. I like to play at sound engineering in this digital age. Trying to get the playback of my recorded music to sound as good (to me) as I can has been a decades long habit, from back in the analog days.

While nothing can be added to a digital file (during playback) that is not already in it, there are several ways to bring out what is there for the best sound possible.

As a musician, you most likely have an approach to making music sound good that differs from mine. As an engineer, I take a technical approach. This is why I loved Winamp and now WACUP because of all the plug-ins available that let me tinker to my heart's content. Of course what sounds good is very subjective and a major point of Winamp/WACUP is letting each person get their music to sound good to them.

« Last Edit: February 19, 2022, 11:50:48 PM by Aminifu »
Windows 11 Home 64-bit v23H2
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Axel Slingerland

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #19 on: February 20, 2022, 09:29:54 PM »
While nothing can be added to a digital file (during playback) that is not already in it, there are several ways to bring out what is there for the best sound possible.
But you can add something to a file that was not already in it before you play it. There are some great recording and mixing programs, many of them free, that can do that.

For basic stereo, I use a program called Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer. I call it a poor man's Mixing Board. You can record your own albums with it. Even though it has "mp3" in the name, you can use .wav files too. It used to be $25, but it's free now. It has seemingly unlimited channels, but I would recommend not over doing it based on how much memory your system has. Mine only has 8Gb and I've done 20 before, and it didn't even flinch. Sadly, it is not capable of doing a 5.1 or 7.1 mix. For that you would need something with a little more cojones, and even some of those programs are free. Audacity for example, can do a 5.1 mix. Unfortunately there are no audio samples included with free software, but you can find plenty of things to sample on the Internet. A friend of mine challenged me to make a studio recording sound like a live album, and that was easy. I used crowd noise from a Grateful Dead concert to sample the crowd, and added it as a backing track to a studio album.

Here's a Manual for Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer if you want to give it a try. You'll probably only look at this file once, maybe twice. After that you won't need it anymore. Audacity, on the other hand is a lot more complicated.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2022, 09:35:58 PM by Axel Slingerland »
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #20 on: February 20, 2022, 10:36:05 PM »
Sorry to have taken your thread so far off topic. It appeared that your main issue was resolved, as much as possible. So back in reply #8, I was mainly wanting to welcome you to the forum.  :)

We can continue these discussions in a new thread or via PM, if you want.

I have ripped a lot of my mp3s from CDs (and a few from LPs) and I have also downloaded quite a few. I've also gotten some from an online service that extracts audio from YouTube videos. I would like to pick your brain about your experience with the recording, mixing and other sound related apps you're familiar with.

I'm familiar with Audacity. It is complicated. I have been using mp3DirectCut for awhile to remove excessive silence at the start and/or end of some of my downloaded mp3s. It also lets me fade out the ending of some of them that ended without a fade out or instrumental tracks that ended abruptly. It does all this without having to re-encode the files.

I have also been using mp3Gain to level the output of my mp3s so that some would not sound much louder than others, forcing me to reach for my volume control. It changes a value in the file header that affects the output level, so that the file doesn't need to be re-encoded. I don't like using the Replay Gain feature in Winamp/WACUP.

Now that drive storage space is so plentiful and cheap, I'll been trying encoding wav rips in different loss-less file formats (mostly flac and wavpack). I can't hear a difference between flac and wavpack. Flac is much more widely supported, but wavpack uses the same tagging scheme as mp3s.


« Last Edit: February 20, 2022, 11:28:16 PM by Aminifu »
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Axel Slingerland

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #21 on: February 21, 2022, 01:55:45 AM »
Sorry to have taken your thread so far off topic. It appeared that your main issue was resolved, as much as possible. So back in reply #8, I was mainly wanting to welcome you to the forum.  :)
I'm not too worried about that. It was resolved. The moment I opened WACUP. :)

Besides, the description of this particular section of the forum is "Feel free to talk about anything and everything in this board." I thus felt free to yak. Of all the things I have done in my 66 years of life, that is one thing I am an expert at doing.

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We can continue these discussions in a new thread or via PM, if you want.
We can do PM's if you like, but like I said before, the description says "Feel free" so I do.

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I have ripped a lot of my mp3s from CDs (and a few from LPs) and I have also downloaded quite a few. I've also gotten some from an online service that extracts audio from YouTube videos.

I still use CDex 1.51 for CD rips (I've had it for many years), and for YouTube videos, I usually download the video first, using youtube-dl-gui, then extract the mp3 using Pazera MP4 Audio Extractor. Both freeware.

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I would like to pick your brain about your experience with the recording, mixing and other sound related apps you're familiar with.
Pick away, my friend.

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I'm familiar with Audacity. It is complicated.

Yeah, too complicated for my taste. I like simple...

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I have been using mp3DirectCut...
I never heard of that one, so I looked it up. I have to admit what I found made me snicker. Whackypedia says "mp3DirectCut is a lossless editor for MP3 (and to a degree, MP2 and AAC) audio files...", and I thought to myself "Hmmm, a lossless program to edit a lossy audio format." But I'll have to check it out anyway. Because while I know there are lossless formats that work great, MP3's are everywhere. My car came with an MP3 player built into the dashboard. If all I had was .FLAC or .OGG files, I would be stuck listening to the radio. And radio sucks around here...

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I have also been using mp3Gain to level the output of my mp3s so that some would not sound much louder than others, forcing me to reach for my volume control.
An invaluable tool. I actually have used that program more than most of the ones I have for MP3s. Because no matter how I record or process an MP3 file, that program matches the volume with all the others. I think FFMpeg will do it too, but I'm not sure. But I've been using mp3Gain for long enough that I always use it for that purpose now.

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I can't hear a difference between flac and wavpack.
That's where I sit right now, but with my hearing I can't hear a difference between flac and and mp3. So I'm not going to re-do my CD library again... It takes far too long.


Edit: By the way, I was curious about those Logitech speakers you have so I looked them up too. Even as the long time fan of Logitech products that I am, I was impressed. Wow... Those out do my 60w Altec Lansing 251s by a long shot!
« Last Edit: February 21, 2022, 02:05:05 AM by Axel Slingerland »
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #22 on: February 21, 2022, 03:24:53 AM »
Ok, I have no problem continuing our discussions here. Those looking for the thread topic will soon see that that discussion ended rather quickly. I will be 71 the end of next month. I'm beginning to understand that with all I have learned and think I know, there is more for me to learn.

I have been using 'Exact Audio Copy' for at least the last 10 years for ripping my CDs. It is not as fast as other apps but has never failed to provide me with excellent wav rips. It supports various encoder add-ons and can convert the wav to the desired format seamlessly.

I will try your method of getting audio from YouTube videos. It is probably just as fast as what I'm doing, but may provide some control over the mp3 bitrate, frequency and mode.

Sometimes the mp3s I download have structural errors. I use various utilities to fix them when possible; 'MP3 Diags' most often. It has a stable and unstable version, neither one has been updated in some time. I use the unstable version and it has yet to destroy a file.

As you know sounds are just vibrations at different frequencies and music is felt as well as heard. Accordingly I have never been completely happy with lossy formats. The idea of stripping out the frequencies that most people can't hear also removes some of the nuances. However the trade off of removing the artifacts introduced by the analog playback devices and media back in the day versus the pitfalls we have now is acceptable to me.

I mostly listen to digital recordings of music now anyway. I stopped going to most live concerts many years ago when crowds started to panic for whatever reason and trample people (causing serious injury and sometimes death). It's crazy, no way people can't tell when they are stepping on other people. I went to Woodstock when I was 18 and people went out of their way to help each other back then.

It has taken me years to acquire, fix or replace, and tag the over 6600 mp3s in my small collection. Like you, I'm not going to try to replace them all with a lossless format.

I'm also a long time Logitech fan. My speaker system is very nice, but the previous model, also THX Sound certified, was better (bigger sub and more wattage in each speaker). When something failed in that system, I was bummed that I couldn't replace it because it was discontinued. However this system is a lot more affordable than the other one was.





« Last Edit: February 21, 2022, 03:45:46 AM by Aminifu »
Windows 11 Home 64-bit v23H2
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #23 on: February 21, 2022, 06:31:14 AM »
I forgot to respond to your car radio comment.

My car sound system only supports AM/FM radio with a single CD player in the dash and a 6 CD player in the trunk. I bought a very affordable receiver-transmitter gadget that gets audio from the digital music player on my smart phone via Bluetooth and transmits it through selectable FM frequencies. All you have to do is plug it into a cigarette lighter port, find a FM channel that is not being used in your area and tune the receiver-transmitter to it. Voila, you have your own commercial free radio station.

There are several of these receiver-transmitter gadgets available. The one I got provides very good sound quality and buttons that let me control the playback of the player on my phone. It also has a small display that shows the selected FM channel and the song title and artist name, if the song file contains these tags.

This thing also has a USB port so I can keep my phone charged.


« Last Edit: February 21, 2022, 06:36:11 AM by Aminifu »
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Axel Slingerland

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #24 on: February 21, 2022, 11:02:37 AM »
As you know sounds are just vibrations at different frequencies and music is felt as well as heard. Accordingly I have never been completely happy with lossy formats.
For me, I make a comparison like the guy I learned about computers from. When I asked him what I should buy when I was going to get my first one, he said something to the effect of "If you go to a computer store you will see that they have aisle after aisle of IBM PC clones and parts (sound boards, video boards, etc.) and you can either buy a lesser quality factory made PC that you can do just about anything with, and then they have one or two racks of Macintosh computers and Macintosh stuff, that you basically can do a limited array of things with, they're great machines, but essentially they are work computers. PCs have tons of many types of software (even in 1988, when he told me all this) and Macs only have a few productivity software titles. So what you want depends on what you want to do with your computer. If you want to do more than work with it (such as after work, him and I occasionally played a game called 'Tank', an early version of 'Scorched Earth' for a few hours) then you want a PC." So I bought a PC. When Napster came along and I first heard of mp3s, I started downloading them and I downloaded Winamp to play them on. I later learned of lossless formats, but like I said earlier, MP3's are everywhere where as the others are not. If my car and portable mp3 players could play flac files, and their drives were larger, I would consider re-ripping my 1,400 CDs.

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I mostly listen to digital recordings of music now anyway.

I've been doing that since CD's first came out. A good example of why would be an album called At Fillmore East by the Allman Brothers Band. Because my Father took me to one of the many shows at the Fillmore East Auditorium in New York City in 1971, I have always loved that album, because it was one of my first blues rock concerts. When all I could get were vinyl records, I would wear them out and have to buy another copy every year or so. I must have bought at least a dozen copies of it. But I still have the CD of that album that I bought in the early 1990s and have never had to buy another one after that, except for The Fillmore Concerts box set that came out years later, which had 5 shows from 3 different days over 6 CDs. The At Fillmore East album has the best tracks from all of them, mostly unedited. I would have liked it better if they had not edited them at all. But you know how record companies are, specially back in the early 1970s...

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It's crazy, no way people can't tell when they are stepping on other people.

Actually, there are several ways. They're drunk, stoned or on some seriously whacky drugs. Also, you have to remember, people who are trampled to death at concerts are not trampled by one or two people who are intoxicated in some way or another but by hundreds to thousands of intoxicated people.

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I went to Woodstock when I was 18 and people went out of their way to help each other back then.
I was only 13 in 1969 and my parents refused to let me leave our corn field home in Illinoizz. But four years later when I was 17 I went to Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, New York with the Allman Brothers Band, The Grateful Dead and The Band. The music was great, specially the nearly concert length sound check by all three bands the day before the show was supposed to be on, but the lack of food, water, medical facilities and restrooms for a show that had 600,000 people instead of 150,000 it was planned to have. That show was 66666% larger than my little wide spot in the road home town of 900 in Illinoizz. And I have never been to a large concert since.

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It has taken me years to acquire, fix or replace, and tag the over 6600 mp3s in my small collection.
I don't know how many individual mp3 songs I have, because I rip CDs and or record my music by the album, and I have almost the full catalog of albums for all of the bands I listen to. As it stands now, Windows says I have 2,827 in my mp3/bands folder on my hard drive, and I have about 1,500 CDs. Because of the old Winamp limitation on time displayed on the Playlist window, I always limited my mp3 files to 99 minutes, thus a lot of my longer albums were split up similar to CD contents. (Thank You, DrO for fixing that in WACUP!) A lot of my mp3 albums came from my DVD collection (copied with Tipard DVD to MP3 Converter), such as I made mp3s for all of my concert films, and I also recorded or downloaded some of them from Tidal, Spotify and or bootleg websites. I only keep high quality bootlegs that are soundboard recordings. Like you said, I am not an audiophile, but I know bad recordings when I hear them.

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I'm also a long time Logitech fan.
I could probably be called a "Super Fan"...

I have a Logitech wireless K520 Keyboard / M705 Mouse combo that I wore the mouse out and replaced it with an M720 Mouse, a J-UJ18 Wired Attack 3 11 Button Programmable Joystick, a G-UF13A Wired Dual Action 10 Button Programmable Game Pad, a G13 25 Button Programmable Game Board and a 16 Button Programmable G27 Racing Wheel. My laptop has a M720 Mouse, 4 port USB 3.0 hub, and a F710 wireless Gamepad. My girlfriend's computer has a lot of the same stuff as mine, as does her son. (No steering wheel, as I'm the only one who plays Euro Truck Simulator 2.) Between those 4 computers we have about 20 different Logitech products. In fact, the only "other" peripheral component of my computer is my Altec Lansing speakers. But you know how it is. My kids bought them, and they didn't know any better...
 
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When something failed in that system, I was bummed that I couldn't replace it because it was discontinued. However this system is a lot more affordable than the other one was.
I hope you didn't toss those speakers... I have an old Stereo system that has two Pioneer speakers that have 12" woofers and a 2" horn, and they sound fabulous. (For stereo, anyway.) I bought them at a yard sale for $20

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There are several of these receiver-transmitter gadgets available.
I used to have one of those. Every time I drove under a power line, it would cut out. Damn thing made me so mad one day I threw it out the window. Then of course, Mr Green started yelling in my head to go back and pick it up, so I did. It had been ran over a couple of times, so I recycled it.

If I wanted to get my mp3 player to connect to the car (before this one, which has an input jack for that purpose) I would use one of those cassette adapters that lets you connect to a headphone output.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2022, 11:12:42 AM by Axel Slingerland »
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #25 on: February 22, 2022, 05:57:08 AM »
Actually, there are several ways. They're drunk, stoned or on some seriously whacky drugs. Also, you have to remember, people who are trampled to death at concerts are not trampled by one or two people ...

That is my point, it takes more than a few to trample someone to the point of serious injury or death. Being intoxicated is part of the live concert experience. Being intoxicated contributes but doesn't excuse this mob behavior in my mind. Have you ever witnessed this (maybe not, this wasn't happening in 1971)? I have seen this more than once. After the first person steps on someone, those following behind continue stepping on whoever went down as if they don't care. I've seen people glance down to see what they stepped on and then just keep going. I've almost fought people (probably because I was intoxicated) to keep them from stepping on someone. Anyway, different people see things differently. I will never be able to see this behavior as anything but crazy.


I don't know how many individual mp3 songs I have, because I rip CDs and or record my music by the album ...

I almost never like all the songs on an album. Before drives got bigger and cheaper, I also figured why waste storage space on songs I don't really like just to have all the songs on an album. Beyond that, my collection includes songs (ripped from analog sources; remember 45s) from as far back as the 1930's, several of these songs never were released on an album.


I hope you didn't toss those speakers...

The good thing about a high power system is it can produce good, clear sound at low volume and when I cranked that system up, it would literally rattle the windows in the house with no distortion. It started randomly switching between 5.1 and 4.1 output. The sub and center channel always worked, but the left or right, front or rear channel would drop out. A friend said he didn't mind the glitch, so I gave it to him.
 

I used to have one of those. Every time I drove under a power line, it would cut out. ...

I've always lived in or near large cities. There has always been several acceptable radio stations to listen to. In the past when I wanted to listen to my own music choices, mainly to avoid commercials, I put my portable player of the moment and portable speakers in the back seat. The downside of that was having to keep extra batteries on hand, carry a lot of media around, and switching cassettes or CDs when stopped at a traffic light.

I moved to Glendale, AZ (literally next door to Phoenix) 4 years ago, most of the power lines run underground. I got my first smart phone then to help me navigate until I learned my way around. It's a Tracfone (old Samsung model that cost less than $100) and the service plan I have is about $15 a month. When I saw the phone had a digital music player app, I removed it and installed a better one. Then I added extra storage memory and loaded several hundred mp3s. At first I paired the phone with portable rechargeable Bluetooth speakers (old habits die hard). A little over a year ago, I decided to try pairing the phone to my car's sound system and got the receiver-transmitter gadget. So far I like it. I do get short periods of static from time to time.



« Last Edit: February 22, 2022, 06:34:10 AM by Aminifu »
Windows 11 Home 64-bit v23H2
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Axel Slingerland

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #26 on: February 22, 2022, 11:46:53 AM »
Being intoxicated contributes but doesn't excuse this mob behavior in my mind. Have you ever witnessed this (maybe not, this wasn't happening in 1971)?
After playing in bars and casinos for 25 years and hotel lobbies and lounges before that as half of a classical guitar / grand piano duo, I absolutely hate drunks. Being drunk is not an excuse, but it is a valid reason for why people do what they do. In my opinion, "Intoxicated" is just another word for "Incapacitated", and I wish the people who make laws in this country (and the world for that matter) would take that into account when they write new laws, specially those that pertain to when someone who is drunk, stoned or worse kills someone because of their careless life choices.

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I almost never like all the songs on an album. Before drives got bigger and cheaper, I also figured why waste storage space on songs I don't really like just to have all the songs on an album.
If I don't want to hear songs, I cut them out of my recordings. Or if I don't like all of a song, such as the Allman Brothers Band have always had long boring drum solos in the middle of some of their more lengthy jams, so I just shorten them a bit. In my usual manner of trying very hard to make it nearly impossible to tell that I did it.

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A friend said he didn't mind the glitch, so I gave it to him.
Oh yeah... I like that. I'm a firm believer in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Freecycle.
 
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I moved to Glendale, AZ (literally next door to Phoenix) 4 years ago...
That's very close to my old stompin' grounds. I lived in Flagstaff for a few years, back in the 1990s. I've always loved Arizona. (Except for the political games they play, but I don't care much for that anywhere.)

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When I saw the phone had a digital music player app, I removed it and installed a better one. Then I added extra storage memory and loaded several hundred mp3s.
Several years ago I bought a Sandisk MP3 Player and I loved that little thing. I bought a 32gig flash drive and loaded it up with my MP3s and every day I would listen to it while riding my bicycle. After about 3 years or so, almost to the day after the extended warranty expired, you know how that goes I'm sure, it started acting up. I would choose an album to listen to, put the player in a buttbag and strap it on, put all my outdoor gear on, put my helmet on and head off. I would get about two miles down the road and it would randomly switch to another album. 10 minutes or so later it would do it again. I never got past the first 15 minutes of any album with it again. So I reverted back to this cheap one called Lyric that I had bought at FYE for $2 out of the clearance bin. After I tried it and it worked well, I thought since they had a bunch of them I would go back and buy a few for backups. By the time I got back to the store they had five left, so I bought them all. It's been 15 years since I bought them, and the original one still works. I gave one to each of my three kids and the other two are still in the original packages. They only have 1Gb drives in them, but they run for days on one AAA battery. In mine I use a pair of rechargeables and run one until it dies, and change it to the other one, and throw the dead one in the charger after my ride and it's always ready to use again in about an hour.



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A little over a year ago, I decided to try pairing the phone to my car's sound system...
I did that too. But my car's system only allows hands free calling, and it actually doesn't even do that all that well. To make a call, you have to activate the phone system (and the phone must be ready), then you say "Call ____" and it will say "Mobile, is that correct?" (as if there's a landline option or something, which of course there isn't in a car), you have to say yes, and it makes the call. And the stupid thing doesn't seem to be able to tell that two listings with the same phone number are duplicates. My girlfriend put our home phone number in twice by mistake, and when we want to call home, it will say "Say 1 for Home, or 2 for Home." And it only does that about half the time. What a poorly written program...

It won't play mp3s through that cable though. So I got a two headed headphone cable and plug it into the stereo's input and it plays from the Lyric mp3 player or my phone, and that works like a charm. (In 2.1 stereo.) In fact, that stereo system is one of the few things about this car we bought new that I actually like. It has a DVD player with two screens too. We can play it on the back seats and entertain the kids while traveling cross country. That would have been so good when they were little many moons ago....
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #27 on: February 23, 2022, 03:31:21 AM »
...
After about 3 years or so, almost to the day after the extended warranty expired, you know how that goes I'm sure, it started acting up. ...

As the US economy moved from a manufacturing base to a consumer base, more and more products were deliberately designed to fail in 1 to 3 years. I'm not proud to admit I took part in this in the beginning.

Remember the arcade game era. Williams (one of the big game machine companies at the time) asked the company I was working for to design a joystick that would wear out and break faster than it needed to. It was a tricky task because the joystick had to appear to wear out gradually and not snap too soon. Williams made more on maintenance calls than on the sale of machines. Williams' customers never caught on, thinking their patrons (mostly kids and teens) were just being too rough with the machines.

My company was contracted to do many similar jobs. Now a days very little is designed to last as long as it otherwise could. Also, too many products are designed to be replaced instead of repaired.


...
So I got a two headed headphone cable and plug it into the stereo's input and it plays from the Lyric mp3 player or my phone, and that works like a charm. ...

Nothing beats a good headset, imo. I'm afraid to use them while driving. I want to be able to hear the ambient sounds around me, such as approaching emergency vehicles before they get close and etc.



« Last Edit: February 23, 2022, 03:39:42 AM by Aminifu »
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Axel Slingerland

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #28 on: February 23, 2022, 07:31:39 AM »
I'm not proud to admit I took part in this in the beginning.
Why? It's kind of expected that you do the job you were hired to do.

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Remember the arcade game era.
Sure... Specially since it isn't quite over yet. At least not here, anyway. There is an arcade at the mall, about 15 miles from where I live. And every time I went to that mall prior to the pandemic it was always very busy. I would assume it's either shut down now or has a lot fewer patrons since the pandemic came along. A lot of the stores in the mall are history now.

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Williams made more on maintenance calls than on the sale of machines.

Typical business model for the 21st Century.

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Williams' customers never caught on, thinking their patrons (mostly kids and teens) were just being too rough with the machines.
Now a days very little is designed to last as long as it otherwise could. Also, too many products are designed to be replaced instead of repaired.
Even if they did catch on, and I would bet more than a few would have, what could they do about it? That's they way it's been for the last 4 or 5 decades. That's why I like old stuff, made back in the days when things were built to last. My 2016 Dodge Grand Caravan that I spent $37,000 plus interest on is a piece of junk. I wish we had bought the Kia we looked at. It was only $3,000 more than the Dodge and it was a much better van.

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Nothing beats a good headset, imo. I'm afraid to use them while driving.
I wouldn't even consider doing that here. California has some mighty expensive tickets for stuff like that. Not to mention, some crazy ideas... Did you know that California considers bicycles to be motor vehicles, even though they usually have no motors? I found this out by accident late one night when I was out on my daily ride. Since 2006, almost every day until about 5 years ago or so I would go on a two hour ride. I preferred mornings, but if something prevented me from doing that I would go at night.

One night I left my house at about midnight and rode into town and followed my usual 12 mile loop around the outskirts of town. About 1:00 AM I came across a city cop stopped at a stop sign, but standing next to his car. As I stopped for the stop sign he said hello so I started talking to him. We had a 45 minute conversation, during which the subject of why he was standing there, he was watching a known drug house. I told him that was why I preferred to live out in the county instead of in town. Too damn many tweakers. Out where I live there are a lot of deer, an occasional elk, less frequently a bear or two, the only thieves we have are raccoons, but NO tweakers. He said he was looking for a house in the county himself so I told him about the realtor I rent from. One thing we talked about was my headphones, he said it was illegal to wear headphones while driving.

They are the neckband over the ears type, very light weight, and at the time I could get them at CVS for about $15 a pair.


I told him "We've been standing here talking for almost an hour, did I miss any part of the conversation?" He said no. "Here's why..." I took them off and handed them to him, he put them on for a second, then laughed and took them off and handed them back to me. I said something to the effect of "I mostly wear them to keep dirt and such from getting in my ears, and that is the volume I always have them set at, even in the daytime when the noise level is a lot louder. Plus my mp3 player has a pass-through option that I keep on, so the small microphone on it picks up sound around me and I hear it with my music."

He decided not to write me a ticket. But if he had, it would have cost me a lot of money. The fine for the first offense is $100, the second is $250, and if you get a third it's $500 and 5 days in the county Grey Bar Inn. And that's just for the city ordinance, the state law fine is $197 and a point on your drivers license. If you get more tickets, the fine stays the same (I think, don't hold me to that), but as usual, if you accumulate too many points in a specific amount of time (4 points in 2 years, 6 in 2 or 8 in 3), DMV can suspend your driver's license for 6 months or revoke it if you are in an accident where someone gets injured or killed.

However, there are exemptions. One I could qualify for is if you are using a hearing aid, and the pass-through option on my mp3 player might pass muster on that. On the other hand, the law is specific on it being illegal to cover both ears. If one ear is not covered, that's a legal defense. So whenever I see a cop while riding with headphones on, I quickly uncover one ear just in case I get stopped for whatever reason. In my opinion, the law should be even more specific and state that low volumes are acceptable, specially from non-noise cancelling headphones and noise cancelling headphones should be specified as always being illegal, even when not producing any sound. Because if the whole idea is to not prevent you from hearing what's happening around you, it seems to me that banning noise cancelling headphones while driving should be a no brainer.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2022, 07:43:38 AM by Axel Slingerland »
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Aminifu

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Re: Editing a Winamp Skin so that all Windows are Double Sized
« Reply #29 on: March 14, 2022, 04:29:34 AM »
Hi Axel,

I hope you are in good health.

I've been trying to figure out your method of extracting mp3s from YouTube videos. The overall process works, but it is taking a long time to download a video. I'm using youtube-dl-gui v2.3 with youtube-dl v2021.12.17.0 and must be doing something wrong. What settings do you use with youtube-dl-gui?


Windows 11 Home 64-bit v23H2
Logitech Z906 5.1 speaker system