MediaMonkey or WinAmp?

jhay — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:11:04 +0000

For the past two weeks, I’ve been using Media Monkey to manage my digital music both on my laptop and my SE K800i. So far, MediaMonkey has performed well.

It’s light on system resources, quite simple and intuitive interface yet this program is packs in quite a lot of features. And I haven’t paid for a premium license to unlock all of its features and functionality.

Before trying out MediaMonkey, I’ve been a loyal user of WinAmp. Even though the buzz and fanfare has toned down for this nimble and pioneering media player, I’ve stuck with it all throughout the years simply because it works and works well in giving justice to my digital music collection.

Among my most loved feature about WinAmp is the ability to skin it. I’ve downloaded a skin maker years ago and created skins inspired by my favorite Japanese mecha-anime, Gundam Wing. In fact, I still use the same skins up to now.

Going back to MediaMonkey, I’ve decided to give it a try just to see how the media player works since I’ve read some great reviews about it. Here’s a very good one by Max Limpag and just recently, I’ve come across a list of the top media players out there, MediaMonkey is in the top 5.

What I liked about MediaMonkey is how it makes managing music files and playlists on my hard drive and on my portable media players like the Sony Ericsson K800i and the Creative Zen Stone Plus. MediaMonkey detected both devices the instant I connected each to my laptop. It really saved me from a lot of pain as the default software suite for the K800i, which I used to managed music with before, has been screwing itself up for the past few weeks.

The only gripes I have with MediaMonkey is the lack of built-in presets for the equalizer. I’m no sound technician nor expert in tweaking equalizer, call it laziness but wouldn’t it be grand if MediaMonkey came with built-in presets just like in WinAmp? That way, I wouldn’t have to spend so much time tweaking the way MediaMonkey delivers my mp3′s.

Because of this, I was back to using WinAmp as my default music player. Don’t get me wrong though, MediaMonkey is still on my laptop and it’s now my default music management app. You could say I’m enjoying two of the best media players out there, and both are for free – the basic versions that is. Eventually I’ll learn how to skin MediaMonkey and tweak its equalizer to my liking, but I’m just too lazy for that right now.

So now it’s up to you on which media player to go for, I’d recommend both as it all boils down to personal preferences. Though I’m sure Windows Media Player won’t be among the top of your list.

The Four-eyed Journal » Mediamonkey

MediaMonkey or WinAmp?