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The great MP3 player match-up
By H. Cunningham
(3/19/03)
Heavyweight Winamp 3.0 should have no fear of upstart JetAudio 5.1 in this contest. The downloading public favors Winamp, demonstrating this through the huge amounts of user-created skins and plug-ins. But JetAudio may have a few surprises up its sleeve. While Winamp enjoys the backing of media conglomerate AOL/Time Warner, JetAudio's publisher, Cowon, shows its chops with hardware such as the iAudio MP3 player.
Interface
The chameleon nature of Winamp 3.0's interface makes it hard to pin down. Thanks to the enormous number of user-created skins it can go from ferocious to minimalist in seconds, or vanish altogether with the handy opacity settings in NT and XP. But when it comes to default skins, challenger JetAudio, with its home-audio-style interface, is as easy on the eyes as its popular adversary and then some; it’s flat-out prettier and more intuitive than title-defender Winamp 3.0. Like Winamp, JetAudio features user skinning and development, though users have not posted as many skins.
Performance
Popular Winamp 3.0 suffered a body blow in the early rounds by freezing up on our computer; and it put the heavy in heavyweight by loading up sluggishly, compared to the aptly named JetAudio. With lightning-fast reflexes, JetAudio dodged and weaved between in-program functions and features with nary a glitch, while Winamp 3.0 was still recovering on the mat. In the most important area, audio quality, bantam-weight JetAudio delivered yet another serious blow and bested Winamp 3.0 in listenability, even for poorer quality audio files. JetAudio’s broader range of controls and filtering got the best out of our music, and even the default settings produced noticeably better sound than Winamp 3.0 did with the same files.
Features
With better playlist controls and dynamic shuffling options, Winamp 3.0 is back on firmer ground in the features round. Both Winamp and JetAudio are highly customizable, but long-popular Winamp has more going for it in populist goodies such as plug-ins. Cross-fader, timing/speed, and equalizer controls in both programs let you make quality custom mixes relatively easily; and each program offers its own brand of broadcast support so you can display your musical chops over the Internet. If listening is your thing, both Winamp and JetAudio have a wide choice of built-in radio stations. JetAudio offers CD burning, but WinAmp 3.0 does a better job finding, organizing, and editing songs long before they hit the CD. JetAudio shows more muscle in video playback capabilities, and sports a frame-capture feature and more engaging visualizations--unnecessary flash, yes, but fun all the same.
Quality
Both Winamp 3.0 and JetAudio strutted into the ring with quick, clean installations. But the fun ended there with Winamp 3.0, whose much-vaunted media player prowess was not on display in our match-up. Sluggish, CPU-hungry, and more sumo than lucha libre, this latest incarnation of the previously gold-standard Winamp acted punch-drunk from the get-go, though this problem may be limited to older machines. Still, we spent more time controlling the hung Winamp from the Close Program dialogue box than we did singing along to our MP3 collection. Winamp 3.0 starts by taking up less disk space than JetAudio, but by the time you add the plug-ins to have comparable video control, Winamp 3.0 is almost as heavy. Both media players come with uninstallers, but we found that we had to manually remove Winamp’s numerous Registry entries and change back our media player defaults post-uninstall. JetAudio was in there and swinging problem-free from the bell. Though we did have more work to do manually organizing our audio files, we at least got to hum while we did it.
The winner
Oddly enough, a contest between JetAudio 5.1 and any earlier Winamp 2x would have been harder to call. But when the dust settled in the battle with Winamp 3.0, powerhouse JetAudio 5.1 dominated the ring, beating the odds and the house favorite while playing a high-fidelity victory song.
H. Cunningham, a frequent contributor to CNET, is a freelance Web designer working primarily to keep her Chihuahua in furs.
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