beatmapping?

im sure this has been brought up before, but to put it bluntly, beat detection [algorithms?] suck ass especially when there is a breakdown or buildup or the beat is irregular, which is a tragedy as there are some really cool avs presets.. so my suggestion (which has been brought up before im sure) is why cant there be a little avs toggle switch and if you activate it every time you play back a new song (which it can .get from winamp if on random or whatever ahead of time) it maps each and every beat to a text file on disk.. im not sure how beat mapping would work, but from my [limited] understanding, the reason beat detection is necessary is by the time the beat is played, the player head to know *ahead* of time, making the point moot... soo isnt it feasible and rather simple to map beats to a bunch of text files.. it wouldnt take up much disk space i imagine and then avs would be really awesome ???

First off, this should be in the wishlist subforum. Also, this has been brought up before. Yeah, beatmapping would be great, but it is doubtful that it will be implemented anytime soon. The best way for this to be implemented, though, would be do have it save the beatmapping to an ID3 tag(IMHO, although some wouldn't like it) and have winamp improve on it every time that song is played. This would only increase the accuracy some, however, because the beat detection algorithms still aren't great(and won't be until we have Terahertz computers out).

Anubis: Yeah, let's make Winamp do even more things to my computer behind my back! That's an absolutely FABULOUS idea...

Hey, I said most people wouldn't like it. And you would be able to turn it off or save it to a text file too.

Actually I think that Milkdrop may have the answer?? It seems to have a more refined 'beat detection'. It doesn't just pick up the 'bass' beat - it seems to find a dominant repetition in the sound which can be at higher or lower frequencies (or even both). I.e. lets say we have a 120bpm beat, and a violin rythm over top. The visualisation of the sound CAN 'mimmick' the violin changes rythm - and usually its when that rythm appears to be more 'dominant' in the sound. The interesting thing is that it can even stretch a single beat (chord) over a longer time period graphically.
I may be wrong - I don't have time to find out for sure but thats my observation.

I'm pretty sure you are, seeing as how a violin has a much weaker sound signal compared to that of a bass or snare drum.

Hmmm, I thought all winamp plug-ins/components used winamp's beat detection? I'm probably wrong though.

nope. climax (or something a lot like it) has to have user input.

Yeah, MilkDrop has a section for author defined beat detection. (if I remeber correctly, it's been a while)