Back on Saturday, I found out that Winamp, an ages old but incredibly beloved media player very popular in the late 90’s and through the 2000’s, had a new version release. Normally this wouldn’t be anything major – for comparison, Spotify seems to want to update every damned day – but this was something else.
Winamp hasn’t had an update in 4 years, the last update being 2014’s version 5.666. Since Winamp was purchased from AOL in 2014, things seemed to stand still for the project and the team. While they insisted something was in the works on what was thought to be a dead project, we saw nothing of it over the past few years.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/10/20/0036253/winamp-58-the-first-update-in-4-years-is-released
Now, I was happy with 5.666. I’ve been using Winamp easily since, oh, 2000 or so with no real issues on my end other than a few bugs which I could deal with – updates kept things going smooth for me.
I never had any issues with 5.666 in Windows 8 or Windows 10, but apparently, the Winamp team was working hard behind the scenes to keep the program up to modern standards.
Enter Winamp 5.8. This is actually, apparently, a leaked build that was originally not intended for any kind of public release, but thanks to said leak it’s since been released to the public officially. I can imagine the team was wanting to get all their planned features implemented and release a proper fresh update as Winamp 6, maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is I like what I see.
Winamp 5.8 doesn’t have too much different as far as appearances go but what is different is pretty nice. Most obvious to me in the bit of time I’ve spent with it is that search is now built into the playlist pane and when changing tracks a little notification tab pops up. Neat!
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=453675
Beyond that I haven’t gon into depth testing things – I just loaded up my music and gave things a listen, noticing these elements immediately. Performance does seem quite a bit more snappy with this build compared to 5.666, and I’d imagine things will only get better with future releases.
I would have used the previous version until it just couldn’t run if I had to for my local media playback, but if new things are coming down the pipe for Winamp, then even better. I refuse to put my massive library of local music in my Spotify playlists so having a more current local player is just that much better a thing for me.
I’ll probably cover more releases if / when they happen, depending on how things go and if I find anything worth discussing. More to come, as always.
Oh yes, something about llamas….
List of updates in Winamp 5.8:
Winamp 5.8
* New: Windows Audio (WASAPI) Output plug-in (w.i.p.)
* Improved: Added an option to completely disable Winamp’s video support
* Improved: Added an auto-fullscreen option to video prefs
* Improved: Added /ENUMPLAYLISTS to the command-line support
* Improved: Windows 8.1 and 10 compatibility
* Improved: [in_mod] OpenMPT-based Module Player (replaces old MikMod player)
* Improved: [ml_playlists] Added browse path & edit title functions in Ctrl+E editor
* Improved: [Bento] Updated scrollbars and buttons and other tweaks (thanks Martin)
* Improved: [Bento & Modern skins] Added a Playlist Search feature (thanks Victor)
* Fixed: New URLs not being remembered after using Reset history in Open URL dialog
* Fixed: Various memory leaks
* Fixed: [gen_tray] Not showing correct current icon pack in preferences
* Fixed: [in_avi] Divide-by-zero crash with badly formed files (thanks ITDefensor)
* Fixed: [in_mp3] Crashing with some ID3v2 tags
* Fixed: [ml_wire] Slow loading issue
* Fixed: [ssdp] Crash on load if jnetlib was not correctly initialized
* Misc: Minimum required OS is now Win XP sp3 (Windows 7 or higher recommended)
* Misc: More general tweaks, improvements, fixes and optimizations
* Misc: Moved shared DLLs to Winamp\Shared folder
* Removed: All former “Pro” licensed functions (Winamp is now 100% freeware again)
* Removed: gen_jumpex & UnicodeTaskbarFix (making way for native implementations)
* Removed: ml_nowplaying
* Removed: [in_wm] DRM support
* Replaced: CD playback and ripping now using native Windows API (instead of Sonic)
* Replaced: MP3 Decoder now mpg123 based (instead of Fraunhofer)
* Replaced: AAC Decoder now using Media Foundation (Vista and higher)
* Replaced: H.264 Decoder now using Media Foundation (Vista and higher)
* Replaced: MPEG-4 Pt.2 Decoder now using Media Foundation (Vista and higher)
* Updated: [in_vorbis] libogg 1.3.3 & libvorbis 1.3.6
* Updated: [libFLAC] FLAC 1.3.2
* Updated: [libyajl] libyajl v2.1.0
* Updated: [OpenSSL] OpenSSL v1.0.1i
* Updated: [png] libpng v1.5.24