Inexcusably borderline linkage - Use chemicals

November 29, 2004 9:53 PM

The MilkDrop visualisation now comes by default with Time Warner's Winamp, and is the greatest thing ever.
posted by Pretty_Generic (34 comments total)

Nifty. Wonder if there will be an iTunes version?
posted by MiG at 9:55 PM on November 29, 2004

My thoughts exactly MiG
posted by twjordan at 9:59 PM on November 29, 2004

Milkdrop has been the coolest thing in the world since I first saw it. Hours have been lost staring into the milky oblivion. Glad to see Winamp finally caught on.
posted by rooftop secrets at 10:03 PM on November 29, 2004

Before I download it, how is this different from Geiss and the default Winamp visualisations? None of them seem to handle multiple instruments too well...
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:14 PM on November 29, 2004

It's different in so much as it's the greatest thing ever. Whenever I use it, it's as if I have my own personal VJ who's been spending weeks planning the visual feast in store.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:15 PM on November 29, 2004

oh yes, in this case you have to just believe and do it. milkdrop is absolutely phe-no-me-nal.
posted by ashbury at 10:34 PM on November 29, 2004

borking: IIRC, Milkdrop was Ryan Geiss's post-Geiss plugin. Nullsoft specifically hired him to write it.
posted by Ryvar at 10:43 PM on November 29, 2004

should have poked around before I posted... anyways, there's something called projectM aiming to be the iTunes alternative for milkdrop.
posted by twjordan at 10:44 PM on November 29, 2004

Dunno. I still like Geiss a good bit, and Tripex is pretty cool, although apparently dead. Requires some 3D juice though.
posted by Samizdata at 11:01 PM on November 29, 2004

I'm still happiest running a ton of AVS presets.
posted by muckster at 11:06 PM on November 29, 2004

One of those things you've just got to try. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was fantastic and now Another One Bites the Dust!

and I'm not really a Queen fan.....
posted by figment at 11:36 PM on November 29, 2004

Ryan Geiss is THE eye candy man. But why are there so few other cool visualisation programs around these days? With all the megabytes of video RAM and CPU power that many computers have now, it seems that eye candy hasn't really kept pace.
(Lots of MilkDrop user-created presets available here).
posted by Onanist at 11:42 PM on November 29, 2004

Damn, that's cool. I'm running it at work and can't get anything done!

Thanks!
posted by black8 at 12:53 AM on November 30, 2004

It's amazing that you can set it as your desktop wallpaper. I used to love Geiss; I had no idea there was a sequel. Thanks!
posted by painquale at 1:16 AM on November 30, 2004

If you have a nice video card (I have the Radeon 9800), the R4 winamp plugin is incredible (much more impressive than Milkdrop, IMO). I run it with the computer hooked up to a 100 inch (DVI-connected) hi-def home theatre projector at parties. It's cool!
posted by kevinsp8 at 1:29 AM on November 30, 2004

if you guys want to see something really bad ass with milkdrop, check this out:

go to preferences (ctrl+p)
select plug-ins->visualization->milkdrop, hit configure
checkmark "start in desktop mode"

if my directions were correct, you are now running the AVS as your wallpaper. as far as i know, itunes/windows media player have nothing that comes close to it. justin frankel even wrote in his blog about how pitiful wmp 10's visualizations were:

"I played with it a little more, and started messing with its visualization effects. These are even more pathetic! One of them was even a nearly exact copy of the rotating 3d dot spectrum analyzer I originally wrote back in like 1997, that did manage to end up as an AVS effect. It just amazes me how shitty of a product this can be. So I figured, there have to be some better visualizations out there for it, right? So I went and checked out their site, and the best thing I could find was G-force (which now they are trying to sell G-Force Gold for $10), and I laughed even more. G-Force is such a piece of crap. I mean really! Compare it to AVS or Milkdrop, and they just aren't in the same league.

COME ON PEOPLE. I haven't touched AVS in over a year, it's been out for over 6 years, and the only thing that I've seen that comes close is shit that Geiss did (cheers, Ryan). OK so there are some decent newer 3d accelerated plugins too, but those really aren't the same if you ask me..."
posted by lotsofno at 3:51 AM on November 30, 2004

Why dont the other winamp plugins do "desktop mode?" Its cool looking and doesnt get in the way of your other apps.
posted by skallas at 4:07 AM on November 30, 2004

lotsofno, its even easier than that. Just right click the window and select "desktop mode."
posted by skallas at 4:08 AM on November 30, 2004

R4 looks nice, but it costs 200 UK just to get the nag message off the screen....
posted by NationalKato at 4:28 AM on November 30, 2004

Thanks for the Bohemian Rhapsody tip....wow.

I just wish this was around a million years ago when I was still dabbling with hallucinogens.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:29 AM on November 30, 2004

I honestly have never gotten the point of visualizations. My two "music situations" are 1) as background when I'm using the computer, in which case I have the player as small as possible, or 2) when I'm not using the computer, in which case the monitor turns itself off. How do visualizations fit in?

Even the good ones, I download, say "that's neat", and never look at them again.
posted by smackfu at 7:00 AM on November 30, 2004

What smackfu said.
posted by rafter at 7:14 AM on November 30, 2004

Your monitor doesn't have to turn itself off.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:41 AM on November 30, 2004

So... you never turn the lights off, put in a good CD or fire up a good playlist and just stare at the center of the monitor until your brain turns to pudding and starts oozing out of your ears? Weirdo.
posted by bargle at 8:01 AM on November 30, 2004

It doesn't look that different from iTunes visualization in the screenshots. But I suppose I'd have to see it in action first. And it has a desktop mode, OK.
posted by fungible at 8:10 AM on November 30, 2004

I just wish this was around a million years ago when I was still dabbling with hallucinogens.

Just what I was thinking. Of course, my computer then was capacle of 320x200 4 color, so it wouldn't have looked that great.
posted by alex_reno at 9:04 AM on November 30, 2004

Milk drop is a lot of fun when friends are over.

Just sit back, grab them a beer from time to time and watch them drool.
posted by purephase at 9:53 AM on November 30, 2004

God didn't create music for you to sit at your computer desk and stare at the pretty colors.

He created it so you can get baked on the couch and watch Nova specials on mute.

Nerds.
posted by Human Stain at 9:54 AM on November 30, 2004

so i just upped to winamp 5.06 and loaded the options for milkdrop. and holy crap, it's got settings so you can use 3d glasses? hot damn. i agree - windows media player has nothing on this.

not to mention that there's practically no way to turn off visualizations on WMP, and winamp comes with the vis window hidden by default - winamp became my default media player years ago, the first time i realized that WMP took longer to load than it did to play the .wav file i'd just double-clicked.

so thanks for this. now i have to put my headphones on and see what the vis looks like...
posted by caution live frogs at 10:22 AM on November 30, 2004

I installed the projectM plug-in and was severely underwhelmed. It was sort of like the built in iTunes visualization but more... broken. (Doesn't work well at different sizes, or in full screen; can't change the options for it; it always has some annoying text in the corner). Is it just not very developed yet, or am I missing something?
posted by Wolfdog at 10:28 AM on November 30, 2004

Oh, and it doesn't really seem to respond to the music all that well, either. Which is what I really wish for.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:29 AM on November 30, 2004

it doesn't really seem to respond to the music all that well, either

I always liked g-force because of it's ability to detect musical changes, but I've yet to see anybody do a *great* job at it -- I guess there are just so many different kinds of music out there, it would be hard to write an all-in-one plugin that had the underlying AI to pull it off.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:26 PM on November 30, 2004

you watch milkdrop continuously long enough with some perceptual aids (read: drugs) and you will discover just how in tune with the music it can be...

*drool*
posted by rooftop secrets at 9:46 PM on November 30, 2004

Milkdrop is fabulous. I have to say that I don't think a lot of other WinAMP visualisations react that well to music though.

The music player Sonique used to have a very good visualisations community. Rabbit Hole was perhaps the best of the bunch - a simple tunnel vis, but it was amazingly reactive.

Thanks to the joys of the Sonique Visual Plugin Wrapper, you can use many Sonique visualisations within WinAMP.
posted by jzed at 3:31 AM on December 1, 2004