Liking XMPlay

Winamp's been my default mp3 player since I discovered mp3s, but it's been getting ahead of me over the past few years. I think it started one time when I updated it and it made itself the default video player. It pretty much sucked as a video player then and as far as I know it sucks as one now (see the bottom of this post for my default video player).

Winamp's been adding more and more new features, some of them cool, most of them annoyances. How sick am I of clicking away the dialog that pops up every time I plug in an USB drive, flash or otherwise, asking me if I want Winamp to manage it. I'll tell you if I want you to manage it, Winny Old Chap.

I've been looking for a player on and off for years now. The trouble is I love Winamp's interface, I just hate all the extra bullshit they've started shoehorning into it. I used foobar for a while, it's nice and super-customizable, but perhaps a bit too advanced for me and takes up a lot of screen real estate unless you want to install a dozen plugins.

SnackAmp is interesting but a bit dated. In Linux I use Audacious and it's awesome, but there's no windows build available. VLC can kind of work as a mp3 player and even has some skins that seem to be dedicated to that function but the playlist editing isn't as capable as I'd like it to be.

Well I finally stumbled on the perfect program. XMPlay (you have to click on "XMPlay" in the sidebar to get to it's page).

So what's so great about it? It's small, a downloadable zip file weighing in at 330KB. It's very customizable. I set the playlist to shuffle and I noticed when I try to go forward or backwards a track it goes in their proper order. That's right, you can have it shuffle when tracks are continuously played but seek tracks in their order in the playlist. That's pretty cool, though I don't use it that way.

It also has fully customizable global hotkeys--global hotkeys allow you to control the player no matter what application you're in. I have it set up so I hit ctrl+alt+z to skip back a track, ctrl+alt+x to skip forward, and ctrl+alt+space to play/pause a song. In XMPlay you set individuals key bindings as global hotkeys, which is a pretty cool idea.

The Euphoria skin (pictured above) is pretty awesome--you'll find it on XMPlay's download page. There are playlist and equalizer windows you can show and hide at will. To shrink the whole thing, player and all, you just double-click anywhere there aren't any buttons. By default it stays on top of other windows in this "mini" mode, but not in full mode. You can change that in the settings too, making it always on top or never in both modes.

In all honesty I've only been playing with this for less than an hour, and barring a lot of terrible bugs cropping up, I already like it a lot better than Winamp. It's lighter weight, no install process (compared to Winamp's minefield install process), and I like it's mini mode way better than Winamp's.

It took a handful of years, but I finally found a replacement for Winamp, one that is in no way a compromise.

Who says I never did anything with my life?

David

P.S. - I use SMPlayer as my default video player btw, I like having audio track and subtitle selection panels embedded in the skin, and it's cross-platform (I even have it installed on my Nokia N900, yes I am a tool). I also keep VLC and Media Player Classic (via CCCP) handy on all my PCs just in case though.

Quick Logitech F540 PC mic workaround

Okay, this is a little kludgey, but nonetheless I've found a relatively simple way to use the Logitech F540's mic on a pc in a pinch.

To do this you need a Xbox 360 controller that you can use on your pc, meaning it's either wired or you have a PC wireless adapter to go with it.

Plug your 360 controller into your PC. Probably has to be a Windows pc for this to work. Plug the 360 mic cable into the controller. Plug the other end into the mic port on your headset. Viola! Windows 7 on my pc recognized the mic immediately, and a quick recording test shows it's working well.

It's not pretty, but like I said, in a pinch...

David

Logitech F540 Review and Notes

[caption id="attachment_1217" align="aligncenter" width="455" caption="Image taken from logitech.com."][/caption]

Yesterday I bought the Logitech F540. It's a wireless headset aimed at gamers. It particularly appealed to me because it has ports for up to 3 inputs. Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, those are my audio requirements, all covered. Thought I'd write mini review.

First of all, the headset is very comfortable. I've been wearing it for a few hours straight now, no problems. The sound is okay. Not mind-blowing, but not muddy either. There is a slight--super slight--hiss in the background, constant at any volume level, but I'm not bothered by it. Really, the sound is nothing special--it's perfectly adequate. The volume wheel could be a bit more responsive but I think I just need to get used to it. Really good wireless range--the receiver is on the first floor of my building and I can go up to the third floor (the top floor) without even the slightest signal degradation. This was after I fixed the interference problem mentioned below. Hey, and it has an USB port on the front of the receiver you can use for charging the headset, that's pretty handy, right?

I haven't tested the mic, so no judgment there yet. Now for some disclaimers:

+ This headset isn't surround sound. It's just stereo. I knew this going in but nearly every gaming headset above $75 nowadays is surround sound so one might forget to check.

+ As far as I know, you can't use the headset's built-in mic with anything but the 360 or PS3. There is no mic output port for use with a PC or other device. It has 3 inputs, not 3 outputs. That's the biggest and really only problem I have with this device.

+ To clarify the previous point, you plug an included cable from the headset into the 360 controller to use the mic with your Xbox, and you plug a (also included) mini-usb cable from the receiver into the PS3 to use the mic there. There really is no way I can see to use the mic anywhere other than on these consoles. Well, maybe you find a cable to go from the 360 port to a traditional 3.5" jack, then plug it into a PC or whatever. That may work, either way it certainly wouldn't be wireless anymore.

+ You might have problems with interference. I was getting intermittent scratches and clicks. I was losing the audio for half a second here and there, probably 1 to 10 times every 5 minutes. That was a bit annoying. It seems wifi signals can interfere with the receiver. I managed to resolve this--read on for details.

If you have interference problems, it definitely depends on the receiver's position as opposed to the headset's position. Try to move the receiver as far away from any other electronic devices as possible. That's not so easy--the receiver is tethered to it's audio sources after all. My first attempt at eliminating the interference involved putting the receiver on the floor. My floors are carpeted cement, moving the receiver there eliminated all of the interference. Once I was sure my problem was signal interference I then moved the unit around until I found a more convenient spot with no interference. As a last ditch effort I probably would have built a box out of aluminum foil or something, leaving one side open facing the direction my headset normally would be in. Who knows if that would have worked, but it would have looked awful! (I still would have use it if it worked though).

Final thought: I have a stereo bluetooth headset that I abandoned. It was slightly uncomfortable, but worse than that it sounded awful. It took a handful of tries to pair it with my PC or phone each time I turned it on. I couldn't talk over the mic without the audio cutting out, so it was useless for gaming or making VoIP calls. The range was about 10 feet, not unreasonable but not what I wanted. I still used it for weeks, because it was so expensive and I was married to the idea of it working--it would be so convenient if only it did what it was supposed to--so I more or less lied to myself, pretending like it was a good device.

This is not that sort of situation. I'm really happy with this purchase. I've finally got a headset that lets me turn on a podcast and listen to it while I'm doing laundry in the next room. Once I took care of the interference I've had no problems. I really, really, really wish I could use the mic with my PC, but I've got a handful of old freestanding mics I can use, so it's not too big of a deal. I bought this headset for $150. If it lasts me a year, maybe even only six months then it was absolutely worth the price.

That's all my thoughts on this device so far. If anything really cool or annoying pops up I'll be sure to post about it here.

Till then,

David

N900 as a mp3 player revisited

I had an iAudio X5. It was awesome. The device's built-in UI was pretty cool, but just for the hell of it I installed Rockbox on it. I've been a big fan of Rockbox ever since.

Rockbox, for those of you who don't know, is an open source OS, primarily for mp3 players. It allows audio recording, picture and video viewing, basic text editing, and supports a wealth of codecs.

It's by audiophiles, for audiophiles. You can choose to browse songs by file location or through an internal id3 database. It has an equalizer. It supports lossless codecs. It has gapless mp3 playback and crossfading.

What does this have to do with the Nokia N900? Someone ported it to Maemo. It should work on the N800 too, though I haven't tested it. It's this relatively new concept called RaaA, or 'Rockbox as an Application'. There's a team working on an Android app as we speak. The Maemo app has only been in development a few weeks and it's already fully functional as far as I know.

Gapless playback on the N900. Consistent album art detection. An id3 database that looks for new albums upon each startup without slowing your device to a crawl! Let that all sink in...the N900 has finally arrived as a proper mp3 player.

It's not much to look at--it was originally designed for old small-screened mp3 players after all, but the while-playing screens are really customizable (though it's not necessarily easy, I still haven't managed to make a theme that actually works). The menus aren't that finger-friendly, but you can increase their font size enough to make it at least usable without a stylus or keyboard. Too bad Rockbox uses a custom font format, and the only known convertor for it can't seem to handle fonts bigger than 34pt.

The current theme is a little wonky too, but give it time, there'll be a ton to choose from soon enough.

Made my day anyway.

David

btw this post was entirely written on and posted from my N900.

Comment problems

Been poking around on the site a bit and discovered a handful of comments that have been pending, some from as long as a month ago, some from a bit longer. All comments need my approval before they are visible on the site. Apparently I've stopped getting notification emails that I have comments I need to approve.

I apologize to anyone who's comments weren't posted/still haven't been posted. I'll try to keep a better watch out for new comments in the future.

David

Burnout Paradise and Hot Pursuit

Leading a fairly boring life lately. Not working much, so I'm more or less broke. That does leave me more time for other things, and I hope to have some videos online in a few weeks or so.

In the meantime, I was really looking forward to the newest Need for Speed game, Hot Pursuit. It's made by the same people who made Burnout Paradise, so I figured it would be pretty cool. I liked Burnout Paradise but I never finished it. There were a lot of annoying little things that made me give it up. I hoped NFS: Hot Pursuit would have the incredibly fun driving of Burnout Paradise, with all of the annoying bits ironed out.

The main problem in Burnout Paradise is the camera. Control of your car is constantly taken away from you while they move the camera somewhere else. When another car crashes, you get a slow-mo close up of it. Cool at first, but there is a lot of crashing in this game and after the first few events I was desperately combing the settings, looking for a way to turn it off. There is no way, at least not one that I've found.

The game also insists on showing you slow motion footage of your own wrecks. Once again, cool at first, but some of those cars are made of tissue paper and wreck all too easily. And, to be a little petty, sometimes the game cuts to a slow motion shot of my car wrecking before, in my opinion, it was even a sure thing that I would be in a wreck. Sometimes I'm sure I'm only going to clip a car, or I know I can drift a bit and just barely tap a wall, but before I get the chance the game has taken over and wrecked for me. This is only a second or so before the wreck, but it happens enough that I'm sure at least some of the crashes could have been avoided.

Anyways, the reviews are in. Sounds like NFS: Hot Pursuit has a lot of problems, many of them the same as what Burnout Paradise had. Bad menus (though not as bad), control of your car taken away quite regularly, all that. Also, some people are reporting that it takes as long as thirty seconds in the menus to restart a race. Seriously?

Oh, and it's not on Steam.

Were it on Steam, I probably still would have bought it in a few weeks. The concept seems fun enough to weather most of it's annoyances. As it is, I still have Burnout Paradise in Steam, and Grid, and Blur. Why would I install another game manager for a possibly mediocre game when I have a handful of decent to good games in Steam ready to be played right now?

This exclusivity bullshit has got to end. Eventually publishers need to understand there's no shortage of good video games. We don't need their specific racer or their specific shooter. If you don't make it available to us in the way that we want, we'll just go get someone else's racer or shooter, one that is available on our platform of choice. Even if the one we end up buying is the lesser of the two games.

That's just how it is.

David

Somebody's retiring or something...

Last year I was looking for a PC only gaming site. I found Rock Paper Shotgun. I liked it a lot. I read (present tense) it daily.

RPS has a very cool, informal style. They're referential, but not in a way that comes off as creatively stilted. They're just constantly reminding us how something they're talking about fits in the current gaming/pop-culture landscape. Or they're being clever. Or punny.

Some sites have staff writers I hate, and I end up skipping most of their posts. I like all the writers on RPS. I do have a favorite. Kieron Gillen, of course. He seems to be a favorite of many, but that may be because he's announced that he's retiring from writing up video games. Well, he's retiring from doing it on a regular basis.

I have a few weekly highlights. NBC's Thursday night lineup (with Community as my favorite). G4tv's web series Feedback, which honestly hasn't been the same since Patrick Klepek left but it's still quite good. One of my favorite weekly things though is (was?) Kieron Gillen's The Sunday Papers. It's a roundup of notable video game news/opinions and is usually ended with a nod to a certain band or song. Reading it's posts is a great way to spend a nice, relaxed Sunday.

This week's Sunday Papers was followed by an additional installment--a "Gillen-y Supplement". The supplement contains highlights from his 15 years of games journalism, selected by Gillen himself. I was familiar with his writing from my one+ year of reading RPS but that obviously only scratches the surface. This is well worth reading.

If you keep hearing people expressing sadness about his retiring and can't put a face (or article) to the name, the aforementioned supplement is required reading. Really great, fun writing, and I've got a handful of new games to go out and try as a result of reading it.

I'm going to close this by adding a post that's been in my bookmarks for years. Yes, years, because even though I've only been reading RPS for a little over one year apparently I've known of Gillen for quite a lot longer. "How to Use and Abuse the Gaming Press". I stumbled on this article a long time ago--um, I don't know how, or what I was searching for when I found it, or why I didn't start reading his blog regularly, but it's there, in my bookmarks, and I've never forgotten about the article since I first read it. Regardless of how I found it, if you're even a little bit interested in games journalism or marketing in general, you should check it out.

Ahh, finally put his blog in my feed reader. Should have done that ages ago.

You should do it right now.

David