Hi,
One of things I like about Winamp on windows, is that in less than a second I can add a large folder of 8000 songs and start playing, searching etc. There is a setting so that song details (such as length of track, tags etc.) are only loaded when the song is played. Personally I have always like this flexibility.
Is it possible to setup Amarok so that it operates in similar way? I hate waiting so long for it to load all my files.
I haven't found any app on Linux that can do this.

There are plenty of apps that can do this. XMMS and it's clones for an example.

What daluka means is: no, thats not what Amarok is designed for. The playlist in general doesn't perform very well with thousands of items in it. Your supposed to look stuff up in the collection browser instead of relying on the playlist filter.

To make it load faster, you could have that music be in your collection. Dragging music from the Collection Browser to the playlist is just a database call and doesn't have to read anything (again) off the disk.

Personally I just listen to my music with Random Mix.