Winamp 5.5 lite vs. XMPlay Memory Management
A new beta version of Winamp 5.5 has just been released as usual in a full, pro and lite version. Winamp lite is basically a music player supporting many different audio formats while the other Winamp editions support video playback, cd ripping and an integrated browser to browse sites like Shoutcast.
I never quite understood why someone would use Winamp to play videos because this functionality was introduced into Winamp when several other great software video players like VLC, Mplayer or BSPlayer were already in existence. I therefor decided to compare the lite version of Winamp 5.5 against my favorite music player XMPlay.
The Winamp executable has a file size of roughly 2.2 Megabytes while XMPlay one of 340 Kilobytes. The XMPlay folder has a size of 1.9 Megabytes after installation while Winamp's folder one of 6.6 Megabytes. The first noticeable difference can be found if you open both players without a song and take a look at the Windows task manager.
XMPlay uses roughly 550 Kilobytes of memory in idle state while Winamp lite uses 1.37 Megabytes. I decided to load a seven Megabyte mp3 file into both players. XMPlay was using 2.52 Megabytes afterwards while Winamp 5.5 lite was using 3.88 Megabytes. The difference between both players rose from roughly 800 Kilobyte in idle state to 1.3 Megabytes in idle state with a 7 Megabyte file in the playlist.
I pressed the play button in both players and switched back to the task manager. Winamp 5.5 lite was now using 6.24 Megabytes of memory while XMPlay was using 3.84. The difference rose to 2.4 Megabytes.
Last but not least I decided to see how both players would do when playing Internet radio streams. XMplay was using 3.53 Megabytes while playing a 128 Kbit stream while Winamp used 7.66 Megabytes.
The conclusion is that XMPlay has a far better memory management than Winamp. The real important state is of course when playing music files in the music player and this is where XMPlay really excels. This means, if you really want a "lite" player you should switch to XMPlay instead of Winamp 5.5 lite.
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and i though foobar200 was lean… thanks martin. great content
Great article.
I switched from Winamp to Xmplay since ages, but I didn’t know about the memory things.
When having 2gb of RAM (which a lot of people nowadays do), people prefer looks over lite. For example foobar2000 has skins which both look good and are fluent to use.
http://dawxxx666.deviantart.com/art/AvA-1-4-on-Vista-63667544
This one is my current favorite. Waiting for the next version.
I know the feeling, i prefer foobar2000 especially with this config
http://www.fooblog2000.com/2007-06/fofr-version-09
Well I got 2 Gigabyte of Ram and prefer it as light as possible. Must be a relict from the past ;)
Does that few MB really matters?
You have 3MB more free ram, but for example Firefox consumes more than 100. One FF plugin can consume few MB.
Of course lite programs are better, but only if they dont slow down computer in the long run.
I’m personally a fan of Winamp for music (love the skin availability) which I find isn’t readily available for Foobar or XMPlay. As Thinker mentioned, when Firefox (love, dislike relationship :P) is taking up tonnes more memory, 2-3 MB extra from Winamp isn’t really going to hurt. It would be nice (one day) if I could find a current Winamp version that *didn’t* support video play-back, since as Ghacks has already pointed out – it video functionality is rubbish – and VLC or MPC are far better alternatives.
@thinker: even if you have 50gb of ram, why use an inefficient program if you have a more efficient one?
That is the policy I follow, and it doesnt have to sacrifice on looks: xmplay has really nice skins. For me its also not only memory usage, but how snappy and fast the program feels. This is strongly ocrrelated to memory usage ofcourse, but not solely.
Does XMPlay have dsp plugins or feature and can it crossfade to the beat and take out dead noise like sqladvanced crossfade?
I cant listen to music without those features. I could care less about looks as long as my music can sound like amazing with those two features.
XMPlay does in fact have DSP plugins and crossfades.
Winamp Messed up years ago when they made winamp 3, it got slow and buggy, XMplay is nice and great for a memory stick but I’ve moved to media monkey it’s great for managing media and you can have all your favourite winamp plugins