Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5!

An anonymous coward writes: Having been a loyal iTunes user for quite some time, after seeing the report on Ars Technica about the newly released Winamp 5 Final, I simply had to try it out. It's pretty amazing, rivaling iTunes in many ways on Windows (mainly, speed). Ripping, library, etc: They're all there. Plus it comes with a slew of of new scriptable features. Simply put, it's dead sexy. Get your copy now! Note, last link requires some other OS.

Link Broken

[Flounder]

Get your copy now! [nullsoft.com] Note, last link requires some other OS.

Also note, the link does appear to look at the referrer. Able to get to the file from WinAmp.com [winamp.com], but not from the direct link.

Ripping and Burning is Pro only

[hyperherod]

Looks like you have to pay $15 [winamp.com] to get MP3 encoding and CD burning functionality. Considering a lot of people want to rip and burn to save money (read: nicking songs!), this seems a pretty stupid idea if they want to go better than iTunes, and any other software which will do it for free.

Re:Link Broken

[admbws]

Seems to work well enough from here, but on a slightly offtopic note, should anyone actually honour the referer header anymore? It's a horrendous privacy flaw. Mozilla/Firebird users can add this to their user.js to disable it:

user_pref("network.http.sendRefererHeader", 0);

Re:2.0

[dschuetz]

Actually, from what I understand 5.0 is the 2.x engine with the interface controls of 3.x. So it's the best of both worlds.

I've been using a beta of 5.0 for about a month now, and it's very nice. Definitely worth checking out.

Re:2.0

[Bish.dk]

the newer versions, which have no additional features worth the speed decrease.

It took me about 0.5 nanosecond to fall utterly in love with "global hotkeys". Never again will I need to use mouse or ALT+TAB to find Winamp, just to change the song. Everything can be controlled from whatever program I'm currently using.

That's definately worth the increased startup-times (which, by the way, seems to only exist if you're using a "modern skin").

Re:2.0

[Down8]

You are the reason for WinAmp5!

I avoided 3.x like the plague, as well, b/c it was a resource hog. WA5 has taken the goodness from WA2 (speed), the goodness from WA3 (awesome skins), and maintained the general WinAmp greatness (play anything, cool vis, etc.), and brought them to WA5.

Seriously, unless you're only looking ot be 31337, WA5 is worth a try. I would caution you again installing both and not expecting problems between the two though.

-bZj

Re:Link Broken

[AntiOrganic]

I'd imagine they're using sessions of some kind to keep track of your IP address, since I visited the site before and the direct link from Slashdot works fine for me.

Re:Link to privacy policy returns 404

[Liselle]

I don't find them mutually exclusive. I use iTunes to organize portions of my music library... the portions that go on my iPod. I might be missing something, but I don't find iTunes terribly useful for listening to single one-shot tracks.

I use Winamp for playing files with weird extensions, because there are so many nifty plugins that let me listen to PSFs, NSFs, etc. There's no reason to have a one-size-fits-all music player. I have Winamp 2, Winamp 3, and I use them both. Downloading Winamp 5 now, and we'll see how I like it.

Installing..

[MikeDX]

Remember to untick "Add AOL shortcut to desktop"

Re:Link Broken

[admbws]

$ wget http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp5 0_full.exe
--14:00:00-- http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp5 0_full.exe
=> `winamp50_full.exe'
Resolving download.nullsoft.com... done.
Connecting to download.nullsoft.com[64.12.168.244]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 4,207,711 [application/octet-stream]

Blah blah blah (Lameness filter encountered)..

14:00:36 (114.79 KB/s) - `winamp50_full.exe' saved [4207711/4207711]

No problems for me!

Does it still

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

hijack your bookmarks and change your video preferences to open everything in Winamp regardless if you specifically denied it that right during setup?
After Winamp3 did that to me, that was it.

Re:No video support in winamp 2?!

[dotwaffle]

Video in Winamp 2.91 is quite cool actually, more over it's fast at loading, unlike Winblows Media PLayer. Yeah, I've stuck with 2.91 for months now, and I don't want to upgrade to do the same stuff, but with "modern skins". Sorry, but Justin leaving has corrupted Winamp. I can see why he left. AOL's presence can be felt. I mean why should I pay 10 ($14.95) for a media player? Come on! Chances are, Winamp 5 has DRM and everything too... And it probably abuses third world children... No wait, that's another well known media program!

Re:anyone else get this?

[Down8]

You know, when I heard WA5 dropped (this morning), I went to winamp.com and just figured the new build got leaked early. Then I later ended up at www.winamp.com and figured they had just updated it. Wouldn't have noticed had you not pointed it out. Weird. Guess they were saving the old in case the new site borked or soemthign.

-bZj

Re:Link Broken

[Anonymous Coward]

Or type about:config and change it there.

Mirror.

[themassiah]

Hopefully my local RoadRunner's NOC can handle this. I know they just laid a new buttload of fiber, we'll see if we can get them to light it up. *crosses fingers*

http://home.twcny.rr.com/scooper2/winamp50_full.ex e [rr.com]

Forget winamp, give Zinf a try.

[Anonymous Coward]

I discovered Zinf from one of the linked win32 open source CDs. It's much faster than winamp 2/3/5.

It runs on Linux and Windows and supports nifty themes.

http://www.zinf.org [zinf.org]
http://sourceforge.net/projects/zinf/ [sourceforge.net]

Re:Link to privacy policy returns 404

[drwav]

The Media Libary that was introduced in 3.0 and then made not to suck in 2.90+ (3.0's ML was god awful slow and insisted in scanning your entire HD everytime it loaded) does this.

More importantly, it does this in addition to the playlist based functionality that Winamp fans know and love. If you don't like the Media Libary feature you don't have to use it, but it's there and works great if you do.

Lite Version

[RussGarrett]

There is a lite version available here [nullsoft.com], which doesn't include freeform skinning, or video, and is basically "old school" winamp2. And it's only 650kB.

Re:2.0

[theLastPossibleName]

I didn't like 3.x for the reasons you described. I found a new player called quintessential [quinnware.com] that does a very nice job as a player without trying to do too much. We'll see if there's enough of a reason to go back.

Some mirrors:

[Vellmont]

Canada Mirror [ctech.ca]
mirror 2 [clubic.com]

Why You Have to Pay

[lotsofno]

taken from a stickied post [winamp.com] in their forums

Re:2.0

[MooCows]

*cough* We've seen all of that before [foobar2000.org] .. And it starts up in 0.5 nanoseconds too.
Although it doesn't look as sexy as winamp, it (imho) beats winamp in every aspect.

Re:No video support in winamp 2?!

[Naikrovek]

wow what an excellent bit of logic there.

its you who is missing out, and you have only that logic to blame. winamp 5 kicks ass (kicks the llama's ass) and don't just take my word for it, read the thousands of other e-pinions out there.

have fun in winamp2 land.

(for those of you that don't know, you can choose the classic skin and the behavior/performance of winamp is EXACTLY like the unreleased winamp 2.99. - there really is no reason not to upgrade)

Winamp 5 is a Good Thing(TM)

[angstorm]

I've used Winamp 5 pre-releases for a month, here's my observations:

* FAST: As snappy as 2.x even on old machines using the "classic" skin.
* STABLE: In a month of use, no crashes or uncouth behavior.
* 2.x FEATURES: "Jump" and "Physically Delete" have been re-introduced.
* SKINS: Works with version 2 and 3 skins. New default skin is user-friendly and purdy.
* RIPPING: Making good MP3s from your CDs is fast and easy.
* Global hotkeys: Control all program features through global hotkeys, e.g. press CTRL-ALT-5 to activate pause/play, even when Winamp is not focused as the active app.
* Media library: Quickly find songs based on title, album, and artist.

If you liked Winamp2 but not 3, you should give this a try.

Re:What happened to free?

[lotsofno]

I grabbed this from their forums and posted it in an earlier thread: "Why do I have to pay for MP3 encoding when it uses LAME which is free and open source? Even though LAME is open source, Nullsoft has to pay per copy to Thompson for a licence to encode MP3. Thompson only offer MP3 encoding licences on a per-copy basis, so unfortunatly it has to be only included in the Pro version." ripping and burning is still free, just not in an unlimited format.

Uninstall?

[AtariAmarok]

Uninstall? Welcome to the Windows world. Most applications that you "try, find out they are crap, and uninstall" leave pieces of themselves all over the system directory and registry.

wasabi

[nazh]

for those of you that prefere winamp3,
it will continue as wasabi-player. http://www.wasabidev.org/ [wasabidev.org],
with they call a mostly opensource licence [wasabidev.org]. but they do mention crossplatform :)

Re:I'll take care of it...

[m3rr]

If I remember correctly, there was a plugin available for Winamp 3 that allowed Ripping and I thought it worked quite well. Of course, it's not packaged with the software... You have to scour Winamp.com for a while to find it.

Idiots

[elohim]

Those idiots should have torrented this. Here's a working link though:
http://64.12.168.244/winamp/client/winamp 50_full.e xe

Re:Link Broken

[Earlybird]

The download pages do not work with Mozilla Firebird 0.7 -- I get the 404 after going to the pages and asking to download. It works fine with IE, so they're obviously checking the User-Agent header. Stupid, stupid admin (or is it AOL exec?) creatures!

DNS Entries

[Bios_Hakr]

I don't know how much you know about DNS, but here goes:

When you request a URL, you make a request to your ISPs DNS server. It, in turn, makes a request back to (eventually) the rood DNS servers. Those point you to the DNS server of the domain you are trying to reach.

ftp.winamp.com
www.winamp.com
mail.winamp.com
download.winamp.com

Are all resolved to IP addresses by the DNS server sitting in the winamp campus.

So, when someone made the entries in their DNS, www.winamp.com and winamp.com were pointed to different IP addresses. One should have been an a-record (I think) and the other should have been an alias (or cname) to the first. But that didn't happen.

At some point, someone changed the IP address of the http server and only one DNS entry was updated.

winamp.com resolves to 205.188.245.120
www.winamp.com resolves to 205.188.244.138

So it looks as if Winamp has two servers sitting on two seperate class C address spaces in their NOC.

In short, bad DNS management and oversight lead to two DNS entries for two webservers on seperate address spaces.

Re:I'll take care of it...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, well if you get CDex you can rip anything for free. I now use Winamp + Nero + CDex. Gives me all the functionality there is.

Re:Smart Playlists

[Monglord]

Oh crap, n00b alert. How do you delete posts here?

Let's try that again shall we.

QUOTE:
iTunes is slow as hell on my reasonably fast system but I deal with it because I love its song rating system and smart playlists. Syncing with my ipod comes in a close second behind any of these. A quick glance at winamp 5 seems like it has none of these


Look again my friend.
Winamp 5.0 has song ratings & smart playlists in the media library, and much much more, and there's also an iPod plugin available here:
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=104 1916#post1041916

To be truthful, in general, too many people have blindly posted here without at least even trying out Winamp 5 first. How can you knock something without actually trying it? Forget about any grievances you had with Winamp3, this is Winamp. The same old Winamp you all once knew and loved. This is Winamp 2.x updated with a few extra features (if you decide to install them) - yes, remember, Winamp is MODULAR - you decide which features you want - and this includes the option to not install support for freeform skins, video, media library, and any other optional feature/plugin. Heck, you can even install a Lite version to upgrade your 2.x version to the latest 2.x equivalent version - but with loads of bug fixes.


And, as for people moaning about paying for it - well you don't ever have to pay for it if you don't wish. There's no nag screen or anything. So, you don't need the ripper or burner, fine, download the Standard Free version instead, with all the features of Pro, except for ripping & burning.

But if you want Pro, then Nullsoft actually has to pay for the licence, on a per user basis, to Thomson/FhG for MP3 Encoding, to Dolby for AAC encoding, and to Veritas/Sonic Solutions for the ripping/burning engine.

So, you've got an app which does it for free, have you? Well, just do a bit more research first, and I think you'll be quite surprised at the results of your find. I won't go into too greater detail, because this post is long enough as it is - but hey, all I can say is this:

Please just give it a try first, just for a few days even, and then if you're not happy, sure, go ahead and uninstall it and then come back here with a valid criticism.


Thank you for your time. :)


Oh, and if anyone's having problems downloading it,
then try here (download.nullsoft.com direct ip link):
http://64.12.168.244/winamp/client/winamp50_full.e xe

Foobar 2000

[Mitchell Mebane]

I use Winamp for playing files with weird extensions, because there are so many nifty plugins that let me listen to PSFs, NSFs, etc.

I used to use Winamp for that, but now I use Foobar 2000 [foobar2000.org]. While not as polished as Winamp, it's an amazing piece of software.

Re:2.0

[neosake]

Check out this [winamp.com] plugin, it does what you describe on winamp 2.

Re:No video support in winamp 2?!

[Apreche]

to fix video problems in winamp install ffdshow

Some other OS

[ChrisMWage]

Incidentally, if you are running Linux, you may be interested to know that Winamp 5.0 seems to work great under CrossOver Office [codeweavers.com].

another link to download

[shireenrao]

I tried forever to download winamp5 from the main website, but failed. But I found a bunch of mirrors on filemirrors.com. here is a direct link [filemirrors.com]
Can't wait to try it out!!

Shireen

Re:When the duplicate story arrives...

[nsuttitinagul]

That's not Fibonacci. Fibonacci is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...

The series you mention is called the Lucas series, which is simply the Fibonacci series without the initial 1. Considering Winamp 1 wasn't released twice, I don't believe it's Fibonacci. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Winamp 5 on Wine

[arunkv]

What's interesting is that with minimal trouble Winamp 5 installs and runs on Wine! (I'm using Wine 20031212.) That should open up Winamp 5 to a lot of people. I haven't done much experimentation but the player works (including Shoutcast streams), so does the equalizer. The visualization plugins however cause Wine to crash.

Version history info

[siliconeyes]

Winamp 5.0:
* Support for classic Winamp 1.x/2.x/2.9x skins and Winamp 3 ("Modern") skins
* Fancy new modern skin:
- Integrated video, AVS, and Milkdrop support
- Many built-in colorthemes
* Same ol' classic skin for people who want the Winamp 2 feel
* Vastly more powerful media library:
- Automatic background directory scanning options
- Customizable views and columns, graphical view editor
- Internet Radio (SHOUTcast) and TV listings
- Context-sensitive item info viewer
* CD ripping support (AAC@2x in free version, MP3 at unlimited speeds in pro)
* CD burning support (limited to 2x in free version)
* Advanced title formatting logic for file types that support it
* Huge AVS updates:
- New effects, bundled some popular 3rd party APEs
- A much better selection of default presets
- Experimental SMP support
- Full AVS preset subdirectory support
- Extensions and optimizations to the AVS evaluation library
* Support for playback of AAC and VP6 in NSV files/streams
* Global hotkey support
* new Signal Processing Studio DSP plug-in
* Options to disable plugin exception handling for developers
* A ton of new plug-in API calls (SDK forthcoming)
* fixed changing-systray options while minimized bug
* new Winamp icon
* added XP Manifest.xml to winamp.exe
* made agent icon use configured winamp system tray icon
* optimized winamp's load titles on demand logic, made faster
* made winamp's internal submenu management more reliable
* added skin font override preferences
* added spacebar shows current playlist item in playlist editor
* fixed manual playlist advance w/ repeat
* made winamp's open directory recurse checkbox nicer looking
* big prefs overhaul to make steve happy
* huge thanks to Amir Szekely and the rest of the NSIS developers
for their help

Re:Link Broken

[Echnin]

And Opera users can do this by pressing "F12" and "f"...

Re:Link Broken [mirror that should always work]

[Neophytus]

Well, providing that freecache has a chance to cache it in the first place this link [freecache.org] should always work, without ip or referrer tracking :)

Re:Link Broken

[jasondlee]

This link (from download.com) works:

WinAmp 5.0 Full [com.com]

Re:Winamp 5 on Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

As for as i know you are right. However

1) WASABI may soon become fully openosurce. WASABI (WA3) is currently opensource since a few days (zlib license) except 1 dll. We'll see. There'a also an old Linux native port of WA3 though it is not very stable.

2) There' XMMS-Kjofol. A plugin which allows you to use Kjofol skins. I love it. apt-get install xmms-kjofol xmms-kjofol-skins it is at least there in Sid. Shouldn't be too hard to backport it. It's also on XMMS homepage.

Re:Will NullSoft honor...

[LNX Flocki]

A look at the FAQ [winamp.com] reveals this:

I guess there's not even the slightest chance that my old serial number from 1999 will still work, huh?
Hahahahahahahaha. Hahahaha. Haha. Hah. Ha. Sorry. It doesn't.

Or the quicker answer: No.

Re:Winamp 5 on Wine

[IamTheRealMike]

I just fixed this. The patch is available here:

http://bylands.dur.ac.uk/~mh/file.c.patch [dur.ac.uk]

Apply it in the root of the Wine source tree, like so:

patch -p0 </tmp/file.c.path

then do a make and make install in dlls/kernel. Run the installer - it should install fine apart from complaining about "Sonic Pro" or something.

Be warned. The "modern" skin does some funky stuff with window classes we don't yet support. Use the classic skin.

I'm going to take a look at the subclassing stuff now. As an aside, the NSIS code is awful. Great product, nasty as hell code :/

Re:I'll take care of it...

[ucblockhead]

Winamp 5 usings the Winamp 2 plugin architecture rather than the Winamp 3. Which is good for me, but crappy if you have a Winamp 3 plugin you like.