AmigaAmp 3 on X1000

Today I wanted to take a look at AmigaAmp 3 under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my X1000, and also look at some recent Front end add-on software under active development in 2015 that utilises it and adds extra functionality - Song Wrangler and aTunes.

AmigaAmp 3 is a music player that supports multiple formats, MP3, modules, and more! It is freeware, the latest version was released in 2015 (3.16) and available to download from here. There is also an older Classic Amiga version that runs on AmigaOS 3.x.

There are also many AmigaAmp format support files such as skins and plugins to download from the same site to put into the AmigaAmp drawer to enable support for other file formats, skins and visualisations.

In it's standard GUI below AmigaAmp looks good, but when you customise it and use Visualisations and add ons you can make it look great!

You can customise things in the AmigaAmp 3 preferences - in the Program tab you can change how files are handled, autoplay of files and playlists, repeating playlists or songs too, amongst other things:

Under GUI tab is where we can change the default skin, and Visualisations (FX) to run - this can also be changed from the right click menu at any time without coming into this screen:

Under the Audio tab we can modify volume, the use of the equaliser and specify the AHI unit to use.

Setting the path of your music files under System tab makes things quicker too of course - the buffers section is mainly relevant if you have a slower AmigaOne machine - no issues on the X1000 of course:

You can certainly choose from a very large selection of AmigaAmp skins, available on their website here, and also on os4depot.net and aminet.net. A sample selection appears below that I have installed on my X1000:

Simply copy the skin downloaded into the AmigaAmp Skins drawer to have it available to select from, once the program is restarted next.

Everyone's taste varies of course, so what I may like for a skin doesn't do it for everyone. But certainly there is enough variety of skins (this is only a small sample) to be able to find one that appeals to everyone I think!

When you combine the FX with the skins and add-ons, your Workbench screen can look really great!

There is also full screen real time Visualisation FX for AmigaAmp 3 like the one below:

You can get more visualisation plugins from the AmigaAmp website here.

Let's take a look now at some of the recent add-ons, namely Song Wrangler and aTunes.

Song Wrangler 0.92 by Caras Ghant is the most recent entrant into the front end add-ons for AmigaAmp 3. You can download it from os4depot.net here.

Once extracted to a drawer and run, it finds the AmigaAmp 3 folder and program itself, and you then can add in your music drawers - it aims to be an iTunes style interface. Note that at the moment it is limited to MP3 files only:

Here is the initial view once the music drawer contents has been loaded in, and playing a song using AmigaAmp 3 iconified in the background:

You can use the Search/filter section to find songs and albums easier:

There are some settings available in Song Wrangler from the right click menu as below:

Important one to turn on is Use AISS toolbar images to enable the nicer toolbar icons from AISS, which I already have installed - you can get it from os4depot.net here.

After restarting Song Wrangler with AISS toolbar images it looks much nicer:

Listening to some music made by yours truly - if interested in my music you can listen to some of it on soundcloud here:

You can still de-iconify AmigaAmp with SongWrangler and use it's functionality too - including turning on some of the FX:

In case you are wondering, in these screenshots I am running CANDI (available on AMIStore), using rotating background images I got off the internet, which compliment using AmigaAmp 3 and Song Wrangler well in my opinion:

Ok, time now to take a look at aTunes by zzd10h, available as part of zTools package on AMIStore.

The aTunes add-on can work with AmigaAmp 3 and TuneNet players, supports all the music formats AmigaAmp 3 and TuneNet do (mods, m4a, etc) and has a lot of other functionality too!

After building up the database from my music folders on the X1000, I could then click on Play to play the selected song. You can see the options at the bottom of the aTunes screen to select the Player, and the Mp3 information.

Unlike Song Wrangler, aTunes does not minimise AmigaAmp 3 when run, but this just encouraged me to run all the FX to show it running nicely on my X1000:

aTunes includes an advanced filter (available by clicking on the Filter option in the aTunes window), which allows you to filter the list of songs in your library by a number of different criteria. Below I filtered by Artist:

Another nifty feature in aTunes is the ability to create and save/load playlists compatible with AmigaAmp 3 and TuneNet. Simply right click on the song you want in the playlist and select Playlist > Add to Playlist:

The song is now added to the playlist.

I can modify the list, or close this and go back to the aTunes window to select more songs..

Here is my playlist, ready to go:

I can also play the playlist directly from this window without saving it! I can also erase all, remove specific songs, etc. Very handy.

I can then save the playlist in M3U (AmigaAmp 3) or PLS (TuneNet) formats by clicking Save.

Having saved it I then play my new playlist in AmigaAmp 3 from aTunes.

As a final note you can also edit the MP3 tags of one or more songs in your collection from aTunes as well:

aTunes is more advanced in features at the moment than Song Wrangler, so it is still currently my preferred choice of front end for AmigaAmp 3. I have been using it for a number of years now on my X1000.

I do continue to follow the updates to Song Wrangler with interest too though - it is good to have options!

Of course AmigaAmp's competitor TuneNet (not developed for a number of years) has been picked up by A-EON recently, so no doubt we will see updated version of it on AMIStore in the future too!

It is great to have these program developments on AmigaOS 4.1 in 2015.