Sorry, did I say “crap”. Yeah well I needed a stronger word! Even “crap” isn’t enough to express my angst. There are times when the word “disappointed” just doesn’t say everything you feel.
1) It sounds like low fi AM radio quality sound
2) There is NO EQUALIZER! What?
3) It’s clueless about my zen media player
4) It doesn’t like to stream online media properly.
In summary Windows Media Player 12 on Windows 7 Beta 1 is something to avoid unless you like to have all your music played for you like a cheap radio.
I’ve gone to the FREE and now very nicely updated Winamp and I am so happy with it I probably won’t look at Media Player for a long time. If you tried it, you might feel the same and for FREE? Why not try it out. It’s cool.
If you want your sound to be even better, see my previous posts on the Sonic Focus and Andrea Electronics drivers from ASUS. They work fine on Windows Vista SP2 Beta and Windows 7 Beta.
Another great plugin marketed for Winamp, but available to all players because of it’s unique design is called “Breakaway”. If you cannot get Sonic Focus, then get Breakaway since it’s almost the same. A quick Google search will get you the updated version. It’s not free, but it’s cheap and worth it.
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January 14th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Your not only retarded, but “detarded” Ya know what that is….it means your dumb and retarded. Windows 7 is the best to come out from microsoft yet. Full of sweet new features, and add ons to old features to enhance them all. Take your head and dump it in a toilet. Cuz my friend no one wants to listen to you.
January 14th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Gee.. Yes, I’ve said that Windows 7 is fantastic. I’ve also said that Windows Media Player 12 on Windows 7 is crap.
Why? Because it’s the ONLY media player in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD that used to have an equalizer and now does not. What’s next? Mono sound only?
Microsoft has stripped a lot of functionality out of Windows Media Player 12 on Windows 7 Beta
January 15th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Hence it is a BETA that is ONLY available with a Windows 7 BETA (no releases for XP or Vista). For me sound overall sounds fine and functionality is decent (minus the equalizer). Improvements thus far are increased codec support out of the box (H.264, AAC audio, DivX, and Xvid). The only time I specifically notice reduced audio quality and buggy behavior compared to WMP 11 is when playing FLAC files which it does not natively support. External drive support seems to be fine for me though as it is willing to sync with a flash drive of mine.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
“3) It’s clueless about my zen media player”
Which model of zen media player are you using ?
January 16th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Use the revert skin and you can access the equalizer
January 17th, 2009 at 8:46 am
@Artur, Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Yes indeed its there and works great. The equalizer settings stay the same even when you revert to the new WMP skin, so its probably means that they haven’t finished working on the new WMP skin.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:54 am
dude really, who the hell uses the stupid equalizer anyway.. you are one of the prime examples of Gods wonderful since of humor
January 19th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Well we don’t all have perfectly balanced flat frequency response speakers on our desktop to i’d say probably a whole lot of people would like to use the EQ to make things sound at least close to correct.
The previous poster could be:
1) a guy that doesn’t care about the quality of sound,
2) a microsoft paid fan boy (yes! Microsoft people have posted here from a microsoft ip address before more than once!)
3) a guy that doesn’t know how to use the EQ
OR
4) ‘joey’ has flat frequency response speakers suitable for a recording studio on his desktop.
You choose.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Mr. Williams,
I agree with you 100%! I am somewhat an audiophile, I can’t stand the sound of low bit rate mp3’s. I rip all my music into loss less formats to preserve quality, regardless of storage space needed. I’m up to four 1TB drives. lol I also feel that WMP12 Sounds “tinnier” …..not as warm…..or something…Maybe its the beta status, not sure. After hitting play on the first song, I started looking for the EQ. Thats what led me to your blog. I haven’t tried the skin mode yet, will do that next, but I wanted to let you know that I USE THE EQ also!! Thanks
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
There IS an equalizer and ALL the other functions. Well, look for it here:
http://bj-blackcat.blogspot.com/2009/01/wmp-12-equalizer-srs-etc.html
Sorry for the spam, but is kinda complicated to explain only with words.
January 24th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Hi, Awesome post, nice blog too. It’s never spam around here when it can help someone out. I’ll never stop people from dropping links to valuable resources. Rather than let the cat out of the bag, please go to the blog he mentions above and all will be made clear in about 10 seconds.
THANKS -
D
March 8th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Got this from another forum and it works! Just go to the now playing view of WMP, and click show list, and there will be 2 more buttons showing. Click on the right one, and it’ll open the enhancements which has everything including equalizer and SRS WOW effects.
P.S. I love Windows 7!