Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unofficial Winamp Web Site

mywinamp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 149 posts

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#41

Post by raxxorrax »

sandoooo wrote: post #21
mrweasel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that WinAmp and XMMS where the last good audio players. Why is it that modern music players think that the need to do library management, why are they fullscreen applications? We need to start maintaining winamp and the clones again.

For pure mp3 playing, foobar2000 is like winamp except still getting updated, with less ugly (more OS-conforming) UI. For even more simplicity, there's no reason you should need a separate app for mp3s and movies, and mpc-hc is the best no-nonsense media player.

In my opinion, it is the best audio player and available for almost any system. Can do things you would assume are basic features, but most players fail to implement. Like mirroring stereo sound through all you other speakers you might have.

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#42

Post by manuelfcreis »

MrGilbert wrote: post #40
benboughton1 wrote: post #39

Winamp is great, ah the memories. But just like my gripe with video media, is there anywhere to buy plain mp3s for all artists, store them on my hdd and manage them in winamp? Is that still an option in 2020 without a subscription to something?

Of course. 7digital comes to mind, HDTracks - and, of course, Amazon. The files are all yours to keep. In fact, I find it easier to get non-drm music files than movies.

I would also bandcamp to this list!

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#43

Post by MrGilbert »

lazyjeff wrote: post #14
ktzar wrote: post #11

There's is a website that's keeping versions of Winamp, including the one I consider the best 2.95 https://winampheritage.com/download-winamp-player

Winamp 2 has been my music player for 20 years and it's still my main player that I use with the flac plugin. I never upgraded to Winamp 3 or 5, and Winamp 2.95 is still fully functional on Windows 10. Selecting "Double Size" makes it mostly fine on a HiDPI monitor, except some controls are a bit pixelated. Winamp 2.95 didn't need to connect to the internet, there is no background service, no application manager bloa…

> What happened?

Expectations, I guess? You need to have a shiny UI, smooth animations and cross-platform.

I wrote a small media player back in 2009 called "SmallTune", using Delphi and only Win32 calls. It didn't have the VCL and SysUtils and all that stuff. It utilized BASS.dll and the exe was 230kb in size. It used ~3 MB of RAM. Some screenshots can be found using archive.org [1][2]. It featured a simple library and internet radio.

But boy, was that one hell of maintenance. I dropped the project some months later, because of my girlfriend (I was another person back then). Recently, when I found the source by accident, I started building a Win32 application using .NET Core 3.1 and CoreRT out of curiousity. To my surprise, it worked quite well. I don't know, maybe I'll revive Smalltune some day. I miss it sometimes.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20110827113809im_/http://smalltu...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20110827113915im_/http://smalltu...

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#44

Post by Karuma »

sandoooo wrote: post #21
mrweasel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that WinAmp and XMMS where the last good audio players. Why is it that modern music players think that the need to do library management, why are they fullscreen applications? We need to start maintaining winamp and the clones again.

For pure mp3 playing, foobar2000 is like winamp except still getting updated, with less ugly (more OS-conforming) UI. For even more simplicity, there's no reason you should need a separate app for mp3s and movies, and mpc-hc is the best no-nonsense media player.

The author of foobar2000 even made another music player that is much simpler, great for people like mrweasel, I think: https://perkele.cc/software/boom

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#45

Post by rolandog »

mirimir wrote: post #15
LisaAR wrote: post #2

Thanks for sharing this useful information! See, Winamp wasn't "just another player" for some of us. It was the first thing we fired up when we turned on the computer. So, seeing it go down the drain for the last 10 years or so, really hurt . Bloath, bloath and more bloath... damn, I would've opted for RealPlayer if it wasn't for the terrible UI. On the other hand, important features, like plugin playback compatibili…

Indeed. And removing all traces of Windows Media Player was one of the first steps after installing Windows.

Ha! I had forgotten the crucial first steps of setting up new computers from back then.

A more recent habit, until recently (if I had to use Windows), I would also try to install most apps through Chocolatey to help keeping up to date.

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#46

Post by taneq »

rlv-dan wrote: post #18
lazyjeff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winamp 2 has been my music player for 20 years and it's still my main player that I use with the flac plugin. I never upgraded to Winamp 3 or 5, and Winamp 2.95 is still fully functional on Windows 10. Selecting "Double Size" makes it mostly fine on a HiDPI monitor, except some controls are a bit pixelated. Winamp 2.95 didn't need to connect to the internet, there is no background service, no application manager bloa…

My only problem with Winamp 2 is that people laugh at me when they pass my computer and see it.

I’ve had nothing but positive, nostalgic comments for at least 5 years now.

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#47

Post by mxmilkb »

Is there anything for Linux that has similar functionality to the Jump To File mechanism for finding and enqueuing songs to play next within in a playlist without altering the playlist itself? It was so good that it was integrated into (IIRC) Winamp 3.

https://winampplugins.co.uk/jtfe.html

https://old.reddit.com/r/winamp/comments/9rw9fb/winamp_58_se...

(Bonus points of anyone knows of an MPD client that can make it appear like MPD has this feature? ;)

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#48

Post by severine »

mxmilkb wrote: post #47

Is there anything for Linux that has similar functionality to the Jump To File mechanism for finding and enqueuing songs to play next within in a playlist without altering the playlist itself? It was so good that it was integrated into (IIRC) Winamp 3. https://winampplugins.co.uk/jtfe.html https://old.reddit.com/r/winamp/comments/9rw9fb/winamp_58_se... (Bonus points of anyone knows of an MPD client that can make it a…

> Is there anything for Linux that has similar functionality to the Jump To File mechanism for finding and enqueuing songs to play next within in a playlist without altering the playlist itself?

In Clementine, that's Ctrl+D.

https://www.clementine-player.org/

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#49

Post by SyneRyder »

kaoD wrote: post #29
lazyjeff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winamp 2 has been my music player for 20 years and it's still my main player that I use with the flac plugin. I never upgraded to Winamp 3 or 5, and Winamp 2.95 is still fully functional on Windows 10. Selecting "Double Size" makes it mostly fine on a HiDPI monitor, except some controls are a bit pixelated. Winamp 2.95 didn't need to connect to the internet, there is no background service, no application manager bloa…

> What happened? Capitalism. You can't make money out of shareware, so now everything is SaaS. This makes software way harder to write since now you're responsible for a distributed platform, including devops. Competition is fierce now. There are very low barriers to entry, which made hobbyist projects (which is what Winamp would be considered now) mostly free. If there's any money left in those low-barrier markets m…

> You can't make money out of shareware, so now everything is SaaS.

Do we know how sales of Reaper are doing? That's Justin Frankel's latest project, and it's shareware in the truest sense (downloadable, 5 second nag screen & no other limitations - "you are on day 329 of your 30 day trial period").

Of course, Justin probably doesn't need the income because he has Winamp/AOL money, but I was under the impression that Reaper was at least providing a full time income. And it's certainly supported by most of the music hardware/software industry.

Re: Unofficial Winamp Web Site

#50

Post by gonesilent »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #16

Early Winamp was truly revolutionary in terms of UX and quality. Highly intuitive, beautiful and always "just working", with an elegant plugin system. It is no coincidence that the authors went on to create Gnutella, which could be considered the starting point of decentralized networking.

Justin has done the same for DAWS see https:/reaper.fm and gone full circle to making music.
Post reply on HN