Windows media players

The news that the main developers of Winamp have now left AOL has prompted me to give up hope that my major problem with Winamp would be resolved. Most of the music I listen to is via internet streaming audio, and usually it's from Icecast relays. However, when I use Winamp to listen it always gets stuck after a random time (4 seconds to an hour), with the display permanently at buffer 0%, until I press play, at which point the music plays on.

Despite much lurking on the Winamp.com forums I could never find a reasonable explanation, so I thought I might as well try other media players to see if any acted better. I knew that it was possible, because XMMS in Linux always worked perfectly on these same streams.

In summary, I was looking for a player that, in order of importance (most first):

• could play m3u and/or pls icecast streams without stopping
• was as small and functional as Winamp's classic winshade mode
• would scroll the song title in the task bar
• allowed volume adjustment by scroll-wheel with program active

I got the most advanced-looking and highest rated media players from Tucows.com and Nonags.com and had a play. I separated the results into those that could play streams continously for extended periods of time, and those that couldn't, or could only briefly.

Stream-friendly

• Quintessential Player (v4.51): Copes with most network errors, though not all. Lots of skins to choose from - found Minibar was about Winamp's size.


• Sonique (v1.96): perfect audio quality. Could not get pls or m3u to work. Not being developed any more, so no good new skins. No winshade mode. Didn't like the interface - much too cluttered.


• Windows Media Player (v9) (v10 unavailable for Windows 2000): no tiny usable skin found. Absolutely no problems playing streamed audio. Perfect recovery from breaks in the stream.

Stream problematic

• Coolplayer (v2.15). Could not play pls or m3u.


• Foobar2000 (v0.8.3). No built-in fancy UI. Stopped on network error.


• Media Player Classic (v6.4.8.2). Could not play pls or m3u streams.


• Real Player (v10.0). Stopped on network error.


• XMPlayer (v3.1). Promising, but couldn't cope with network errors.


• VLC (v0.8.1). Despite the network problems it was never brought to a complete halt. However, it did produce rather a lot of breaks in sound, which were enough to make it unlistenable. It did, however, provide a very useful message window, which told me exactly what was going on at all times, so I could see why the sound was breaking up. For this reason, I shall keep VLC installed - not as a media player, but as a media player debugger.

By the way, according to VLC, the errors are:

main warning: buffer is 48083 in advance, triggering downsampling
main warning: resampling stopped after 2656273 usec (drift: -85163)
main warning: buffer is 87911 late, triggering upsampling
main warning: audio drift is too big (122221), dropping buffer
main warning: audio drift is too big (120485), dropping buffer
main warning: audio drift is too big (-121331), clearing out
main warning: timing screwed, stopping resampling
main warning: mixer start isn't output start (-10120)
main warning: audio drift is too big (-122427), clearing out
main debug: audio output is starving (199650), playing silence

If any can give me a guess as to a possible cause then I'd be delighted to see your comment.