Lief Clennon is a computer hobbyist and Team OS/2 member currently residing in Albuquerque, NM. He can usually be found badgering his friends on IRC.

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Summary: The two top MP3 players for OS/2 are pitted head to head in this comparison review.

This month OS/2 e-Zine! focuses on audio, and once again the controversial mp3 format is a topic for discussion. Using lossy compression (similar in concept to jpeg for images), mp3 files are able to deliver CD-quality stereo sound at a file size of less than a megabyte per minute, and like jpeg, the quality can be reduced to create additional savings in size. Compared to raw audio (i.e., WAV), which takes over eleven megabytes per minute for the same quality, this is a truly impressive technology, and the only price is a fairly heavy CPU load for decoding in real-time.

The list of graphical mp3 audio players for OS/2 is very short. In fact, there are only two viable options: PM123 and WarpAMP. And despite appearances, there is no clear-cut winner between them just yet; this is a race between tortoise and hare. Both players are very easy on the CPU, only using about 10% of my 200mHz P6, and so could conceivably run on a fast 486 at full quality; and both offer the option to "downmix" from 44kHz to 22kHz sample rates, and from stereo to mono, each conversion halving the processor power required.

Common Ground

WarpAMP (right) is still in beta. In fact it has been frozen at beta 4 since late March and I do not know when or if a new version is due. PM123, on the other hand, has gone from free beta software to commercial shareware, with a version 1.01 recently released that fixed various problems including the inability to play some files, and difficulties with GUS audio cards.

Both players offer similar functionality to your average CD player: you can skip ahead or behind a full track, or scan within the current song; both also have shuffle-play features. However, unlike a CD, there is no limit to the number of songs in your playlist. I myself have over 300 songs in a single list, and using shuffle-play it's like having a personal radio station.

Finally, both WinAMP and PM123 have a full suite of playlist management tools, allowing you to automatically sort or manually arrange your play order. They also each have an ID3 tag editor; ID3 is a method of embedding information into the mp3 file, including artist, song and album title, year of release, etc. I'll comment here that WarpAMP's tag editor is a bit better designed: it allows you to scan through the playlist from within the editor dialog, rather than requiring you to select a song, edit the tag, close the editor, select another song, etc.

Head to head

PM123 (right) has quite a few things WarpAMP doesn't. First of all, the DLL that actually plays the files (both players keep their guts in a DLL, while the EXE contains the interface) is significantly more complete. WarpAMP has problems with forward-seeking within a song, and reverse-seek is quite nearly useless; PM123 does both quite smoothly, and furthermore can jump to any specific point in the song; this is controlled by a slider bar that moves across the screen over the course of the song. Also, WarpAMP's player doesn't properly flush the DART buffers, often causing clicks between songs; PM123 fixed this with version 1.01.

The real selling point of PM123, though, is its support for both plugins and skins. Plugins add functionality to either the player or the interface; included with the PM123 distribution file are a spectrum analyzer display; a professional-quality equalizer (which is more of a load on the processor than the player itself), and a smooth-scrolling text display for filenames and tag info.

Now, what is a skin? Essentially, skins allow you to completely redesign the interface. You can include custom graphics for every button and display, and arrange them as you please. PM123 has its own skin format, but it also supports skins for the popular WinAMP player for Windows 95. For instance, FoxAMP (.GIF, 14K) is a converted WinAMP skin. Everything works as it should -- even the spectrum analyzer displays correctly while playing.

But, this comes at a price. PM123 has a mild case of creeping featuritis: in the rush to add newer and cooler stuff, some basic functionality has been overlooked. The most obvious at first glance is that the character set for the graphical fonts is extremely limited. It has the letters a-z (there is no distinguishing between upper- and lowercase), the numbers 1-9, ä and ö, and these symbols: -_&.():,+%[]

This isn't enough to handle all possible filenames, much less the contents of an ID3 tag. This problem can be avoided by using the system-font display plugin, but that doesn't work with custom skins. An even worse problem for me is that any file with a semicolon in the name cannot be loaded in a playlist. This includes semicolons in directory names. So for example, if you have a file called "TooOldToRockNRoll;TooYoungToDie.mp3" PM123 won't be able to load it because of the semi-colon.

This isn't a problem if you don't use semicolons in your file/directory names, but my naming scheme matches the names of songs and albums, and I've got a few with semicolons in them, leaving me with several songs and an entire directory that I just can't load.

WarpAMP has no skin support, but it uses the system font for its display, meaning it can show any character used in a filename. Plus in my opinion, WarpAMP's playlist management is markedly superior; it doesn't have the semicolon problem and its editing window is easier to navigate. Another minor difference is that when you hit the random button, PM123 actually shuffles the playlist, whereas WarpAMP keeps it sorted as-is and only randomizes its internal play-order. I personally prefer the latter behavior, but it's a matter of individual taste. PM123 does have one playlist advantage: you can add, remove or change the order of songs while the playlist is active. With WarpAMP, you have to re-activate the list (which resets the randomizer and starts it playing from the beginning again).

Wind Up

In the final analysis, both players have significant potential, but both need work. As it stands, I use WarpAMP day-to-day, but there are functions for which PM123 is better, most notably when you wish to seek back and forth within a song. If you're willing to fit your filenames into PM123's limited range, it is suitable for professional use; WarpAMP, with its occasional clicks between songs, is not.

Future revisions may place one solidly above the other, but at the moment I suggest downloading and trying both. Only personal preference can dictate which is superior.

PM123 1.01

by Taneli Leppä / Samuel Audet
download from BMT Micro (721K)
Registration: $15

WarpAMP Beta 4C

by Software Developer's Guild
download from SDG Homepage (256K)
Registration: Freeware