Peter’s Place

Plenty of rants lately… and it’s almost Christmas, so I guess it’s time for something positive.  If you haven’t upgraded your Winamp to the latest version yet, go do it.  There are 2 features in particular which I think are pretty cool.  Today I’ll tell you why I like them — but there are some slight glitches to watch out for.

First, Winamp’s new “auto-tag” feature.  If you’ve ever checked out the tag information on any of your MP3’s, chances are you’ve found they’ve got varying degrees of accuracy.  Newer CD’s are properly encoded so MP3 information is there if you rip the CD.  But older CD’s, made before MP3’s were even imagined, often lack this information.

For example, check out the info that came up when I queried an older Billy Joel title:

When you click that “Auto-Tag” button over near the right side of the screen… Winamp fetches the necessary information, and voila:

But, as I hinted earlier… the Auto-Tag feature isn’t always 100% perfect.  Anytime you use it, you should double-check the results and make sure you don’t get something not-so-useful, like this:

Sure, ”Allentown” has appeared on Greatest Hits Volume One… but that doesn’t really help if you’re looking for information like the name of the original album, or the year it was first released.  In cases like this, you’re stuck looking on places like Wikipedia — where you’ll find “Allentown” appeared on the Nylon Curtain album from 1982.

The other neat feature with Winamp 5.5 is the new “Winamp Remote.”  It allows you to access your music from any other PC — as well as web-capable cell phones or video game consoles like the Nintendo Wii.  All you have to do is tell Winamp which folder(s) on your hard drive should be accessible, and setup a username and password.

From any other computer (or other capable device) you go to the Winamp Remote website, and login with that username and password.  As long as your main computer is powered up and online, Winamp Remote makes the connection to allow you to hear your music.  It doesn’t let anyone actually “download” the songs, so it’s not like you’re breaking the law for sharing or distributing files.  It only lets you (or others you share your login with) to listen to your music.

The only flaws I found here were minor.  For some reason, Winamp tries to display “album art” for every song when you’re accessing your music remotely.  It seems to take the album art from one random song in the folder, and applies that graphic to EVERY song.  Looks kinda weird to have the cover of Billy Joel’s “52nd Street” on the screen while you’re listening to say, the Black Eyed Peas or Metallica.  But, it’s a pretty minor flaw — and since Winamp Remote is still in beta-testing, I’m assuming they’ll get it fixed before they announce the “final” release.