i use winamp minus half of its built in plugins. winamp has a nice little module uninstaller if you wish top remove some if its bloat. you can even strip it down to its bear minimum if you want. you can make it faster still by using classic skin mode. the core of the program is still predy solid once the bloat is removed.
i usually uninstall all visualizations accept avs, any dsp plugs, you can do away with modern skins, jump to file and tray controls are useless. in the media library plugins theres lots of stuff to kill, like online services, the dashboard, now playing and so on. half of those dont work anyway, slowing down or crashing the program. i kill shoutcast cause they dont have a kvlt enough metal station. shoutcast slows startup

. onve you kill all you dont want winamp kicks ass.
winamp on my machine loads in 3 seconds. wich is really fast considering the size of my library.