so, on my laptop i downloaded a DAE (digital audio extract) module to play cd's using external audio devices in winamp - which works great. worked so well, i totally forgot about it, and anyway for the most part don't play cd's much that way.
so, i was stumped when i started to play a cd - but it wouldn't play through the designated output device. feeling irked, i started to fuss with it...
first checking the device - worked with another program just fine. ok, so what gives? the device shows up in the output list - but winamp ignored the setting, only sending audio the built-in analog device. actually two winamp sessions would used the same output, but not sharing - each would steal the output -- totally new behavior.
even more curious, when selecting the default output audio device in the control panel -- guess what -- i could direct the output to the external audio device just fine. in fact switching it there caused the output to shift devices, right on the fly. so, now i'm confused - and feeling this is totally new behavior for winamp -- given the output device appears to work fine and yet winamp refuses to route audio there. winamp is so totally rock solid, i've almost ~never~ an issue like this. yikes.
so, then i start playing around, copied everything to another folder (winamp is nice and simple like that), deleted all the extraneous plugins and ini conf files. still no luck... so i make a separate clean install in another folder and sure enough, and everything worked.
now i go back, copy files - shuffling things around looking for the rouge dll, bad ini, or corrupt exe. swap everything out -- but can't figure out what the deal is.
i find it curious, that windows was totally able route the output on demand (in the end maybe that's a driver dependent issue?). anyway, while that's great in it's own way -- the output still suffered from not sharing a 'single output device', so not a real solution. i wanted to get things back to the way they used to be!
i'm scratching my head at this point since i've done a pretty good A/B comparison, swapping out all the components -- when it hits me i've been testing using a cd -- and the output was always being routed to the analog output device on the laptop, despite my setting (but not with my test install which loaded the stock playlist!).
the solution was in the preferences for cd audio, and somewhere along the way, the setting to route sound using DAE got unchecked overwritten or reset to factory. once i put that back, everything was peeeeerfect again.
this also explains why multiple sessions exhibited the extremely odd 'single output device' behavior (one session not sharing, but stealing the output channel). without the dae, this would be exactly how winamp function.
winamp is still the most versatile, robust, flexible, best looking, rock solid, audio player out there.