Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

So a friend recently introduced me to foobar2000, which seems to be an excellent music-playing program--and it even has built-in compatability with NSF, GBS (better than Meridian Winamp GBS!), SPC, VGM, GYM, PSF, and PSF2!

So now I'm stuck between two programs for playing SPC files: Winamp and foobar2000. Here're the choices:

Winamp: Winamp2 SPC Player plugin (what I've been using so far)

# works on most tracks (a rare handful fail, such as DKC2's Rambi Rumble theme)
# able to play indefinitely

Winamp: SPCamp plugin (I have a copy of this plugin but don't like to use it)

# seems to work on all tracks
# unlike Winamp2, can set "sample rate" which seems to affect timbre/"sharpness" of the music, but I don't know my ideal preference, and I don't feel like using a huge amount of time to find out
# cannot play indefinitely

foobar2000 (the new contender)

# seems to work on all tracks
# instrumentation seems slightly different--and a bit duller--than Winamp2 SPC Player plugin, so some tracks might be less effective as alarm clocks (yes, I use my computer to play loud music as alarm clocks)
# able to play indefinitely

What're y'all's thoughts on this? Got any recommendations?

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 6th January 2006 05:47

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I use the Winamp2 SPC player on account of two things: authenticity and convenience. As far as I can tell, the soundtracks I listen to duplicate the sound exactly as it would come out of an SNES, and if they don't I can't tell the difference. I also tend to mix SPC's with other formats, like mp3's, USF's and NSF's. I like using Winamp to play all of them without having to open separate programs to play different formats.

Although I've never tried Foobar, if it can do the above things for you, then it's probably just a matter of preference for you.

--------------------

Cannis Rules: Balance of Power - My favourite Yuri's Revenge Mod

Winamp. I use Windows Media Player to play videos, but for audio files I always use Winamp.

--------------------

The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

SNESAmp (another Winamp plugin) works on everything, has a sample rate setting and allows indefinite play. You can also display a mixer with amplification, pitch, speed, stereo separation and echo feedback crosstalk controls and the ability to mute particular channels. As far as I know, it is pretty much the definitive SPC player these days. This is what I use. I previously (until 2001) used the standalone SPC player Super Jukebox, until its emulation core became somewhat out of date and it had major issues on Windows XP.

I'd like to switch my music player away from Winamp, really, but I know that there are Winamp plugins for all the crazy emulation formats I'll ever want, so I tend to stick with it. The problem with builtin vs. plugin support is that if there's a new version of a particular format (as there was with VGM recently to support better compression) you need a whole player upgrade, though if updates are frequent, there's no problem.

This post has been edited by Tiddles on 8th January 2006 10:16

Are the Winamp2 SPC Player and the SNESAmp two different programs? I thought they were the same. The original exe that I downloaded a good five years ago is called SNESAmp2.1, but it's called Alpha-ii SPC Player v2.1 in the Winamp options screen. If I've confused the two -sorry about that- then I'm definitely using SNESAmp, and will continue to enjoy it until my PIII Dell kicks the bucket.

--------------------

Cannis Rules: Balance of Power - My favourite Yuri's Revenge Mod

I don't truthfully know whether "Winamp2 SPC Player" is the same thing as SNESAmp, but SNESAmp is certainly the same thing as Alpha-II SPC Player.

Tiddles: Winamp2 SPC Player is an SPC-playing Winamp plugin that's also available on Zophar.

Also, a few notes on infinite playback on SNESAmp:

1. I can either set the "playback timer" (which limits time) and have the track-position-scrolling-cursor-whatnot, or have neither. I guess I could theoretically time everything to 9999 minutes, 59 seconds, 59.99 seconds fade, but I don't feel like going to the trouble of doing that.

2. Some SPCs come automatically with a default timing, and the way that SNESAmp does it; it gets rid of that and puts on either 0:00 (for infinite playback) or a set time. Now, I'd have to set this timing for each track if I were to put SPCs in a playlist. I have never put SPCs into a playlist (and once I find my both-ends-male sound cable I will never have to since I can record SPCs to myself) and likely will not do that much, so this probably isn't so much of a big deal for me.

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Point 1 is certainly an annoyance, but just about every other plugin I've used that supports infinite playback of any format does the same thing. The main exception is Highly Experimental, but other plugins for PSF-derived formats don't seem to keep that feature.

On point 2... I'm not sure how else it could work? Surely the idea of setting infinite playback per track is entirely incompatible with the notion of a playlist. If you need to create or play a playlist, I would've thought it would be easy enough to turn the option off temporarily. It's not like the track length information stored in the SPC gets deleted when you play indefinitely; it's just ignored.

I've just found out something:

When I try to search/scroll/move around/whateveryoucallit in a single SPC file, both Winamp plugins scroll forward pretty quickly, and scroll backwards by apparently re-scrolling from the beginning.

foobar2000 can scroll, but it scrolls noticeably slower (and "backs up" on repeated scroll commands more easily) than Winamp using either plugin does. It seems to do the backwards-scrolling the same way, but that's also slower, apparently proportionally.

I actually had set foobar2000 as my SPC player for the past few days, but a few hours ago I reverted to Winamp. I'm considering switching back and "opening with" Winamp whenever I need fast scroll or playlist functionality.

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

There's no avoiding the "backwards scrolling" thing, it's just how the SPC format works. An SPC is nothing more than a music scripting language (dumbed down, that's basically it). You can't hop about randomly in a program or script because nothing tells you which state whatever's running it will be in at that precise point (there could be a set of notes loaded in memory as part of, say, a drum loop near the beginning that you'd miss out on if you just started flat out from where you clicked.) Kind of a drag, but hey, the SPC7000 chipset wasn't designed to be a jukebox.

I used to have a program that ran SPCs pretty well and supported multiple different rendering engines. I'll see if I can dig up the name... Got it back in the old days of Zophar.

--------------------

"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

So...does anybody know if this version of the SNESamp SPC plugin works with Winamp 5? Or is it only Winamp 2?

SNESamp v3.2

I'd prefer to no longer have two versions of Winamp on my compy if I don't have to.

--------------------

Selyne - FFXI - Siren Server
Linkshell: Kindred
Only MMORPG worth my time...because it's Final Fantasy

Old school gamer at heart...
Final Fantasy VI: Best. Game. Ever.

Winamp 2 plugins should always work in Winamp 5, just not Winamp 3.

I use this version in Winamp 5 with no problems.

Quote (Tiddles @ 22nd January 2006 09:14)

Winamp 2 plugins should always work in Winamp 5, just not Winamp 3.

I use this version in Winamp 5 with no problems.

Doh! I remember way back when Winamp 3 was released that SNESamp wouldn't work with it. I didn't realize that was no longer the case with Winamp 5!

I went ahead and installed it, and my SPC's are playing with my Winamp 5 like a charm.

Excellent! Thanks, Tiddles!! =)

--------------------

Selyne - FFXI - Siren Server
Linkshell: Kindred
Only MMORPG worth my time...because it's Final Fantasy

Old school gamer at heart...
Final Fantasy VI: Best. Game. Ever.