[~misfit~[_3_]]

Hi Folks,

A quick question; I was wondering if anyone can help me with the subject
line? I know I could Google but there seems to be a depth of knowledge here
that out-strips what I'm likely to have to spend many hours sifting through
with a web search.

I'm poor (invalid on wefare - the mighty have fallen due to the smallest of
freak accidents) but have three sound systems in three different rooms of my
home. In my bedroom (where I have to spend a bunch of my time - bad
back....) I have a fairly old and basic (but 'clean') surround system that
is mostly used for A/V duty but also sounds great in stereo mode. With the
lights out at night it sounds as good as any 10K+ system I owned before my
fall - it's amazing what you can put together cheaply with enough time on
your hands to troll through internet listings - and knowledge to pick out
the pearls.

In the lounge I have the 'standard stereo' - reasonable quality CD player
and integrated amp playing into self-refurbished Gooodmans Magnum SL
speakers. It sounds good enough to not sound 'wanting', I don't feel the
need to replace any of it and it would be hard to better it on my budget

However it's in the office / living room / kitchen space where I spend most
of my listening time. I have the amplification and speakers sorted so that
it sounds actually *too* good. At times when I'm using it for background
music I find myself getting distracted from whatever task by the music -
even at low volumes. I don't have many people visit but the few who are
'hi-fi aware' have been stunned by the fidelity - usually I hear comments
like 'better than my main system'.

The problem though is the source material. As it spend most of it's time as
background music I have a laptop playing several thousand tracks on random -
with a CD player connected also for times when I want to do some more
critical listening. I'm hapy with the hardware - I have a few IBM-era
ThinkPads and use one of those as a dedicated sound server. They are 'clean'
enough that they were (and still are) popular as DAWs.

The software I've been using is WinAmp played through StereoTool. I'd like
the sound to be as true to source as possible but find I need to use
StereoTool for it's volume auto-leveling abilities. Before I started using
it I found that, as the source files are diverse - both in genre and format
(mp3, FLAC, wav...) - the volume was constantly fluctuating between tracks
from too quiet to too loud. However my problem is with WinAmps 'random'
engine. It seems that, from my fairly large collection I constantly hear the
same ~20% of tracks.

I need freeware as times have got tougher of late - what audio gear I have
now will likely have to see me out.

Can anyone advise me of suitable software? My main needs are fidelity,
'auto-leveling' between tracks without compression and a good random mode.
The CPU available is a Pentium M running at 2GHz with 2GB of RAM running
Windows XP from a 320GB internal HDD with a 2TB USB HDD attached.

Thanks in advance.
--
/Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
[Sent from my OrbitalT ocular implant interface.]