Favorite Software

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{this page is about some of my favorite pieces of , well I guess that you'll guess}

Favorites:
music player: dBpowerAmp music player (www.dbpoweramp.com)
internet browser: Opera (www.opera.com)
video player: mv2 player (http://mv2.czweb.org)
text (short) / source editor: Crimson Editor (http://www.crimsoneditor.com)
file browser: Total Commander (www.ghisler.com)

The favorites list was last time (seriously) updated in February 2004, and strangely enough the above list still sticks now September 2006 :) I've gone thru some of these and fixed a few things.

dBPowerAmp Music Converter  for all of your music conversions - just great!
The basic version comes with mp3 and wav (which is enough for most people) but you can also download a lot of plug-ins for the more popular formats such as wma, real, ogg, ....  It has a CD audio input and a converter witch is easily activated by right-clicking an audio file and selecting "convert to..". Really handy.

dbPowerAmp Player Ok, now this is a real fine piece of software. It's an audio player with some special ideas. The main player has most of the common features and some not so common like the double spectrum viewer (for the R and L channels). The real heart of the system is the music collection - it contains all of your audio files (or just some that you prefer) and usually you will turn dap on and let it play your music collection randomly, and you'll add a song or two to the queue. I said queue because this one doesn't have the classic system of playlists. Instead you can put your songs on queue and when they are done dap will continue into the random stuff from your music collection. Playlist are still here just they are being added to the queue as separate items (each song for itself). You can rate your songs, monitor how many times they are played and so on...

turn it on on windows startup, and turn it off on shutdown, .......

and get skins

also, one of the things that should be noted is that db is changing almost all of the time. Spoon (the developer) is constantly adding new features, that can be found in the beta versions, and whatever problem you have, him (or me ;), or someone else on the forum) will help you with it in a matter of hours (in the worst case a day, or two)

 www.dbpoweramp.com

review date: Oct 2003 - Sep 2006

MV2 player

Ah, the almost perfect video player :) though it is still in beta version it was already a stable program in the alpha versions, so you don't have to worry about that:).

Some of the main features - it automatically loads subtitles, loads folders of files, auto-recognizes if the file is in parts (like file1.avi, file2.avi, file3.avi...), has option to show double subtitles, totaly compatible with MicroDVD player (if someone needs their old autostarts), has OSDs, support to get info from imdb, ....
in the newer versions it can even play QuickTime and other files ...

something you should definitely get if you play a lot of videos....

review date: Feb 2004 - still great Sep 2006

WinAmp

WinAmp 5 - it really is 3+2 - with most of the good ideas from both worlds... it is a pretty cool player (although I wouldn't change db for nothing :) ) .... You can use the new skins and the old skins, it is fast (especially if you use the old skins), and the new vis milkdrop is simply great ;)

This is a winamp 2 plugin for playing real audio/video files - works great:)

http://classic.winamp.com/components/download_component.jhtml;$sessionid$DTZAZLJJE4ZBU5YAAAARCZQ?filename=http%3A%2F%2Fftp.winamp.com%2Fcustomize%2Fcomponent%2F2000%2F6%2F30%2FP%2FTara.exe&componentid=22143

review date: feb 2004

And do take a look at my winamp skins

I really liked Rad Light, an all-player, but primary for video files (DivX, Video CD, avi, ..), it has nice skins that you can find on the same site, and on a few other. Anyway it was one of my first players.