This breaks my heart, as Milkdrop is the best visualization plugin ever made.
For quite a few reasons I agree with you, and I have been bummed since I moved to x64 media center. But I soon realized it is pretty trivial to run winamp through media center in order to bask in the glow of milkdrop.
I do not run mc as a dedicated media server and if you're like me, then all you need to do is:
- Make sure you have the WDM driver installed from media center (options --> general --> features --> check WDM driver at the bottom).
- From tools --> advanced tools --> select media server.
Now you have a nice little (virtual) audio output device in your windows audio settings. (Do not change your audio out settings in mc, for those who may not be familiar with running virtual devices).
At this point you can set
JRiver Media Center 24 as your default audio out device under sound options in window, but since you're probably only using winamp for this specific reason, it is easier just to set the default audio output of winamp to the virtual mc device.
I went through winamp and made sure all dsp, leveling, and funny audio tricks were off, and that is pretty much it. Throw some tunes into winamp, fire up milkdrop, and let your brain melt, while retaining the goodness of mc. Shouldn't take more than a couple minutes and all of this is a one time thing, meaning you shouldn't have to repeat any of this once it's done. And milkdrop is running in its native environment so unless you really start messing with milkdrop and the output (and why wouldn't you?
), everything is as stable as it can be. Overall, very easy and non-intrusive.
If you've never messed with anything like a virtual sound card, once it is installed as a windows device, make sure you go into your sound settings and set it up just like you would a physical device (number of speakers, format, etc.). Also, if you're experiencing crazy latency, make sure you're adjusting on the winamp side, because that's where it is. For doing something like this, the default winamp buffers are huge, so you may have to smack them around a little. I don't think I ever experienced anything during playback, but skipping to the next track or scanning through a song caused problems until I got the buffers where they wanted to be.
Anyway, it works very well for me when I want it to and it's simple enough for something as awesome as milkdrop. And if you're feeling spunky you can cram spout into milkdrop for added flavor.
http://spout.zeal.co/If you have any questions feel free to let me know. I have managed to get a lot of programs to work in or with mc over the years, including an embarrassing amount of vst plugins, so ping me if you dare!
Also, I would like to thank everyone that helped in getting milkdrop to function in mc. It worked very well thanks to your efforts, and that was the only reason why I even hesitated upgrading to x64 mc.