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Music Software

Winamp, the Best MP3 Player of the 1990s, Receives Major Update (arstechnica.com) 127

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
Winamp, the premiere music player of the late 1990s and early 2000s that was acquired by Radionomy from AOL in 2014, has received a major new update for the first time in four years. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Ars Technica: The release notes for Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 1999 say that the update represents four years of work across two separate development teams, delayed in between by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the work done in this build focuses on behind-the-scenes work that modernizes the codebase, which means it still looks and acts like a turn-of-the-millennium Windows app. The entire project has been migrated from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2019, a wide range of audio codecs have been updated to more modern versions, and support for Windows 11 and https streams have both been improved.

The final release will be version 5.9, with some features targeted for release in version 5.9.1 "and beyond" (version 6.0 goes unmentioned). It requires Windows 7 SP1 or newer, dropping support for Windows XP. That said, in our limited testing the "new" Winamp is still in many ways an ancient app, one not made for the age of high-resolution, high-density displays. This may cause usability problems, depending on what you're trying to run it on. But hey, for all you people out there still trying to keep hope alive, it's nice to see something on Winamp.com that isn't a weird NFT project and a promise of updates yet to come.
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Winamp, the Best MP3 Player of the 1990s, Receives Major Update More

Winamp, the Best MP3 Player of the 1990s, Receives Major Update

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  • Best MP3 player.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:04AM (#62764256)
    ...period.

    • Re:Best MP3 player.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:20AM (#62764302) Homepage

      Right up until the moment they decided it should play videos as well.

      • That is why you install WinAmp first and VLC second.

        • Re: Best MP3 player.. (Score:4, Informative)

          by kellin ( 28417 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:57AM (#62764416)

          Or, ya know, just use vlc. It's clean and does exactly what's needed. Plays video and audio files without any nagging or whatever.

          Don't see the point in using Winamp.

          • Doesn't have that nice library interface.

          • Re: Best MP3 player.. (Score:5, Informative)

            by Ottawa_m_31 ( 1716550 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @10:21AM (#62764486)
            20 years later, and VLC still can't handle shuffle/random with sub folders. Winamp handled it properly from day 1. Don't get me wrong, VLC is nice, but as a pure music player, despite its maturity, it can't fully match the functionality of WinAmp.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Junta ( 36770 )

            VLCs interface is nicely geared toward video playback, out of the way, the controls you need without a lot of fluff.

            However, when it comes to audio, that interface isn't very good for me. I want an experienced geared towards "playing a bunch of short pieces in the background while I'm doing other things, with quick and easy access to go to next song and/or see info about the song at a glance and then getting back to my normal experience".

          • One word: Milkdrop.

            Oh, you'd like more? How about playing tracker files (MOD, STM, S3M, XM, etc.)? Still a better interface for organising and playing internet radio stations than anything else I've tried.

        • Or why you install a proper music player like Foobar2000 first and VLC second. Even if Winamp was still in its 2.0 glory days Foobar is orders of magnitude better (and bonus points, it was written by a former Nullsoft employee who was pissed at what Winamp became).

    • Re:Best MP3 player.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:36AM (#62764350)

      Nah, that ship has sailed, Foobar2000 is the best

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by darkain ( 749283 )

        Yup. I'm on the foobar2000 train too. Its created by the same person that wrote the MP3 codec for Winamp. I've written a number of plugins for each, and found that foobar2000 while needing a bit more programming experience to get going, it has a hell of a lot better features. It has the best library management, and a nice minimalist design. It just isn't "pretty" like Winamp was with the skinning, but otherwise completely destroys Winamp in functionality and audio reproduction quality.

      • Foobar 2000 with the proper plugins will play 5.1 audio (Mac Mini on my Marantz 6015)

        Will try with plex

    • Re:Best MP3 player.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:51AM (#62764396) Homepage Journal

      I switched to Foobar2000 years ago and never looked back. It's got a very steep learning curve, but once you get it set up it does everything you could ever want. Library, temporary playlist, tagging, replay gain, all formats, visualizers etc.

      • This is what I love about Slashdot. I did not know about foobar2000 until this thread. Thanks

  • It really whips (Score:5, Insightful)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:14AM (#62764282)
    the llamas ass!

    If you know, you know.

  • I'm always interested in good media players. I used to quite like VLC, but lord have mercy, the VLC for Windows 10 is completely shit. There's no menus. It forces itself to full-screen and I four clicks to put it in a window. It has a horrible interface. None of the usual Windows shortcuts do anything. It will often lock up and have to be force-closed.

    • Re:Now do VLC (Score:4, Informative)

      by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:39AM (#62764362) Homepage Journal

      I've never experienced any of that, and I use VLC a lot. Is it possible you have an old version?

    • Make sure you get the Win32 version from the website and not the Store app. The Store app is shit.

    • Not to mention there is a bug that they haven't fixed for about twenty years. Go on the wikipedia article "Roundhay Garden Scene" and try downloading and playing that OGV file. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] It wonks out on every platform, haven't bothered to look but I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some sort of security vulnerability in there too.

    • I used to quite like VLC, but lord have mercy, the VLC for Windows 10 is completely shit.

      It's completely shit on Mac, too. Try pausing it and single step. It will lock up after a few frames.

      It's stuck in the 1990s. The authors refuse to let a mouse click pause the video because of "DVD menus" - like anybody plays DVDs with it.

      (And surely they know if there's a menu on screen or not)

      They also have different shortcut keys on Windows and Mac versions so you press 'S' for subtitles and it stops playback on Windows.

      Playback over Wifi will also stutter on busy scenes (rain, sea) because it still only

  • My preferred media players... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mkoenecke ( 249261 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:35AM (#62764348) Homepage
    foobar2000 with the Facets extension, in my opinion, has always been far superior to Winamp. And, although VLC has its uses, I've always found Media Player Classic the easiest for playing videos. YMMV.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      https://mpv.io/ [mpv.io]

    • Don't forget who wrote Foobar2000, a former Nullsoft employee ... started just after Winamp 3 was released. Presumably he was disgusted as what his former employer had done to one of the most beloved music players ever released.

  • Winamp was great through 2.x (Score:5, Informative)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:48AM (#62764382) Homepage Journal

    After 2.x they started putting shit in winamp that didn't need to be there, so there was no longer a good reason to run it.

    • Yeah, but they learned their lesson and made it a lot better when they called it version 5.

  • Only before v3 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:50AM (#62764392)

    The Winamp 2.xx series was the best player of the 1990s. Everything got worse with version 3 and 5 was absolute garbage. Therefore, no, The best mp3 player of the 1990s did not get an update, it's crappy successor did.

  • Correction: (Score:3)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:58AM (#62764422)

    "the best MP3 player of the 90's"...until one version came out where they had turned a great little standalone MP3 player into effectively an internet-driven storefront.

    Given that change was made relatively near the end of Winamp's life, I'm going to guess that change is exactly what killed Winamp's popularity the first time round. The new owners makers are apparently still missing that whole point though, as just from the new website, the storefront concept has if anything been grown.

    I just want a good media player, all the internet crap just gets in the way, so I'm sticking with VLC thanks.

    • "the best MP3 player of the 90's"...until one version came out where they had turned a great little standalone MP3 player into effectively an internet-driven storefront.

      Given that change was made relatively near the end of Winamp's life, I'm going to guess that change is exactly what killed Winamp's popularity the first time round.

      One of the things I appreciate about Winamp is they made an incredibly modular installer. While the default install is pretty big and includes lots of unnecessary things, it's easy to customize all the way down. The config I just installed for this test was about 30MBytes, 80% smaller than a default install of VLC.

      The default Bento skin is crap, I completely agree, but "Winamp Modern", with its color themes, opacity options, and better support of scaling for higher DPI screens, is a good compromise that can

    • I just want a good media player

      When Winamp 3 was shat onto the world, a Nullsoft employee quit in anger and developed his own lightweight media player. Foobar2000 was born. VLC is good as a movie player, but Foobar2000 is orders of magnitude better for managing and playing a music library.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        thanks, I didn't know about foobar2000. For me personally though, the fact that it's windows-only makes it not much use.

        I do have a windows PC, only used very occasionally for gaming, but for anything serious I use sharper tools. My 2 main computing environments are Linux and android, and VLC is available for both.

        • Foobar2000 is for Windows, iOS and Android, and the Windows versions runs perfectly under Wine.

          It's an excellent music player, and well worth a look if you're serious about music.

  • The website is pretty bloated and sucks for load time. Hope it's not an indicator of where their app is going.

  • XMMS rulez forewa!

  • What did WinAmp do to deserve the name calling? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @10:20AM (#62764484)

    it still looks and acts like a turn-of-the-millennium Windows app

    it's a program. Repeat after me: PRO-GRAM.

    It doesn't deserve being lumped into the junk bin with your apps.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      it's a program. Repeat after me: PRO-GRAM.

      App is short for application, which is short for application program. When someone says app, they are saying program... In modern English. Welcome to the present.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xonen ( 774419 )

        App is short for application, which is short for application program. When someone says app, they are saying program... In modern English. Welcome to the present.

        Not really. Nine times out of ten they are referring to a website. People are pretty clueless what they talk about anyways - not limited to tech or computer-related topics either.

        Apart that, i'm also on the team that considers 'app' an ugly abbreviation. Has very little to do with `present`, unless you mean by present `clueless millennials`.

        • Not really. Nine times out of ten they are referring to a website. People are pretty clueless what they talk about anyways - not limited to tech or computer-related topics either.

          An application delivered through your browser is still an application. Not liking how it's delivered is irrelevant to that.

          Apart that, i'm also on the team that considers 'app' an ugly abbreviation. Has very little to do with `present`

          Mac users have been doing it since the eighties, but it only really took off recently — the ubiquity is the present.

          • No, it a website.
            An app is user software. Software is anything running on the hardware. OS, drivers, apps, web browsers, websites in web browsers.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Nine times out of ten they are referring to a website.

          That's not my experience at all. Even my mom knows the difference between an app and a website and she's a tech illiterate.

        • Not really. Nine times out of ten they are referring to a website.

          I've met some really dumb users in my life, but I've never heard someone refer to a website as an "app".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gTsiros ( 205624 )

        apllication... application *of what*?

        what was applied?

        Can you not tell that it's a completely unnecessary word?

        "application program", my ass

      • App is short for application, which is short for application program. When someone says app, they are saying program... In modern English. Welcome to the present.

        Huh? Have you been away for the last three years? These days we call them "experiences".

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Jimmie is a nickname for James, but you don't call James Jimmie unless there's an understanding.

        Apps are the Jimmie of applications.

  • WinAmp *was* the greatest player, but then succumbed to corporate greed, buried under features and bullshit unto uselessness.

    Last good one was what, 5.666?

    Personally I use WACUP or Foobar, community/os versions using root 5.666 code.
    5.8? 5.9? The newest? Why would I POSSIBLY want to rejoin that when the last updates were all shitshows?

    The point of WinAmp was
    - easy to install
    - easy to use
    - very small footprint both HD and RAM
    (Notice that "best leveraging of user data to be sold to 3rd parties" isn't on th

    • Last good one was what, 5.666?

      I'm using 5.623

      (minimal version - doesn't support video playback)

  • Foobar2000 is the best now (that's not a joke). (Score:5, Interesting)

    by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @11:17AM (#62764632) Journal

    Check it out. [foobar2000.org] With PLEX and/or VLC as a secondary. I've run it with WINE effortlessly too.

    • This. Winamp had it's place as a hyper efficient light weight media player at a time when everyone was piling on loads of crap into their media players (remember Realplayer?). Then Winamp 3 came out and shat the bed hard! Like diarrhea combined with burrito night hard. So hard that users reverted to using Winamp 2.

      So hard that a former Nullsoft employee left the company and decided to create his own light weight ultra efficient media player. And within 6 months that former Nullsoft employee released Foobar2

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • There was a gapless plugin for winamp back in 2.x and it worked OK for me. I can't speak to the efficacy in any newer versions.

  • The moment when I first heard an mp3... and knew something seismic was up. Would I revisit it? Probably not.

    I actually really like MusicBee these days, although it's Windows-only. Might be overkill in some ways but it handles my rather extensive collection with aplomb.

  • If only we could get a tasteful update to John Bradley's xv, still the best image browser ever.

    It really doesn't even need much. Modern linux build compatibility, 64bit, multi-threading performance improvements, support for more image formats (and raw), improved image processing filter quality, maybe some modular support for tagging.

    • If you liked xv, try nomacs, which has everything you asked for except maybe multithreading, I don't know about that.

  • It would be cool if Winamp continues to support minibrowser capability. Perhaps it could be tied into Pandora, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and any other streaming music services.

    An evolution into a media hub would be amazing.

  • After all, it takes some real skill to make my entire browser stall while loading a webpage such that Winamp's NFT project managed to do. It instantly cast doubt on the abilities of the Winamp team to code in 2022 when they can't even make a webpage which loads smoothly.

    Downloading it now. I fully expect it to need DirectX 14 and an RTX capable video card just to rendering the interface.

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