Winamp 5 Final Out (if You Know Where To Get It)
Marik_Steele
To rule in hell... Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9466Members
To rule in hell... Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9466Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Better than WA3, so it's worth the d/l</div> <a href='http://www.majorgeeks.com' target='_blank'>MajorGeeks</a> is the first place I see that has both the <a href='http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2490.html' target='_blank'>full</a> and <a href='http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3514.html' target='_blank'>lite</a> versions of Winamp 5 (there was no 4, kinda like the Liesure Suit Larry series). This is the <i>final</i> version, meaning it's not some beta disguised with a name like "Release Candidate 10."
Personally I didn't like Winamp 3 at all. Wasn't fully backwards compatible with my plugins, was unstable with or without the new "modern" skins, the new video playback was no good, you get the idea.
From about an hour casually using Winamp 5 (meaning no extensive testing of different video codecs, haven't actively tried to break it) I actually like it. The new features have more or less made most of my old plugins unnecessary, and the ones I do still want are still fully compatible as if it was plain old Winamp 2.91. The only time it's crashed is when I downloaded a new "modern" skin to try, and double-clicked on the file while Winamp was still open. Just a normal program crash, nothing fatal to Windows itself.
Other than that, I haven't seen any major problems. I did see quite a bit of extra CPU usage in the stats until I found the "enable hardware acceleration" checkbox, but since that I haven't gotten enough slowdown to notice it in other programs.
I give it a 4 out of 5 -- still room for improvement, but fixes a heck of a lot of the faults, drawbacks, and complaints for previous versions while still keeping (relatively) trimmed down.
Personally I didn't like Winamp 3 at all. Wasn't fully backwards compatible with my plugins, was unstable with or without the new "modern" skins, the new video playback was no good, you get the idea.
From about an hour casually using Winamp 5 (meaning no extensive testing of different video codecs, haven't actively tried to break it) I actually like it. The new features have more or less made most of my old plugins unnecessary, and the ones I do still want are still fully compatible as if it was plain old Winamp 2.91. The only time it's crashed is when I downloaded a new "modern" skin to try, and double-clicked on the file while Winamp was still open. Just a normal program crash, nothing fatal to Windows itself.
Other than that, I haven't seen any major problems. I did see quite a bit of extra CPU usage in the stats until I found the "enable hardware acceleration" checkbox, but since that I haven't gotten enough slowdown to notice it in other programs.
I give it a 4 out of 5 -- still room for improvement, but fixes a heck of a lot of the faults, drawbacks, and complaints for previous versions while still keeping (relatively) trimmed down.
Comments
The version that most people have at the moment was built on December 12th and as it makes no reference to being a beta alot of people think that this is the version that will be posted on the official Winamp site a little later on.
However, this is not true. Another build was made on the 14th of December and that is the version that I have posted here:
<a href='http://www.ntfs.org/index.php?action=news&catid=2#ntfsnewsitem9334' target='_blank'>http://www.ntfs.org/index.php?action=news&...tfsnewsitem9334</a>
(I'm Electronic Punk but was having a nitemare of a time registering, getting all these database errors and I can't remember the e-mail or password I used when i signed up a year ago... can anyone help remove the old "Electronic Punk" and rename this account to that? I just became a constellation member so want to get myself in order -- cheers <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> )
[edit]As for plugins, I was using LucidAmp and the <a href='http://www.bluecave.net/products/slider/' target='_blank'>Bluecave Winamp Slider</a> for its transparency and hotkey effects, now rendered useless by the built in hotkeys and alpha transparency in WA5. I'm still able to use my DSP plugin, <a href='http://www.oss3d.com/usite/' target='_blank'>OSS/3D</a>; I don't use the sound "enhancers" because I find it sounds better normally, but I do use the so-called "brainwave synthesizer." I'm pretty sure that the whole better sleeping at night thing is just from the placebo effect, but whatever works, works...[/edit]
[edit2]One more: for my vis plugin, I use <a href='http://www.geisswerks.com/' target='_blank'>MilkDrop.</a> Since it's made by one of the guys on Nullsoft's team of coders, WA5 full now has it built in to the installer, and has rather nice support for it directly built in to the Winamp Modern official skin.
Personally, I use windows media player for movies, but it's too large and clunky of a program for simple playback of CDs, mp3 playlists, or especially streaming audio from internet radio stations. Up until now WMP was the only major program my sound card supported directly through hardware -- meaning supposedly less CPU usage, but that benefit was practically taken away by the higher CPU usage of WMP in general.
Winamp 5 seems to use about the same system resources if you use a fancy "modern" skin, and MUCH less if you use an older, Winamp 2.xx style skin. I also prefer it for its OGG file playback and the fact that I can listen to radio stations such as <a href='http://www.digitallyImported.com' target='_blank'>Digitally Imported</a>, <a href='http://www.ets-global.org/' target='_blank'>ETS Global</a>, and Tag's Trance Trip (also a fave of Flayra's, though the site seems down for now). WMP uses its own format for internet radio that can mean higher quality, but not nearly as many stations seem to support it as they do for Winamp.
And if you haven't tried internet radio, you should. The sound quality is just as good as the average illegally pirated mp3, but it takes up no space on your hard drive and is <i>legally</i> free. Find yourself a commercial-free channel/stream, and it doesn't get much better than that -- I haven't had any need or desire to pirate a song ever since I started.
I thought it was a hoax when I saw it on a torrent listing site.
Gotta love the bullfrog color set.
Hehe, I'll give Winamp5 a try (duh, course I will, I'm a big fan of theirs.)
And for those who don't know what Geiss is....<a href='http://classic.winamp.com/plugins/detail.jhtml?componentId=134393' target='_blank'>here</a>
It's worth at least a try to see if turning on all the fancy features you want will cause a dent in your computer performance. I imagine it would with much older machines, but I guess the magic question is "how much older?"
[edit]And Javert, Geiss is good, but you probably already realized that Ryan Geiss made both Milkdrop and Geiss (among other good ones). I just stuck with Milkdrop because eventually people made presets that mimic geiss 1 & 2 to begin with.
I think I'll just leave it at that.
Two Days, 58 minutes, and 26 seconds.
I can kind of sort of see why the RIAA is getting ****.
sidebar.exe: 66megs...
that's what plays my music, heh -- it uses winamp or windows media (WMP currently as you might have guessed)...
Preferences>skins>classic skins>"oldschool playlist button behavior" checkbox. Click and be happy.
Preferences>skins>classic skins>"oldschool playlist button behavior" checkbox. Click and be happy. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Less than three
TIP: The installer would install over your old ...\program files\winamp directory. It is highly (You dont have to) recommended that u uninstall your old winamp (2.9x etc, 3.0) before installing wa5.
:edit: Download from Nullsoft's <a href='http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp50_full.exe' target='_blank'> own</a>
:edit2: How to check you have the latest version <a href='http://www.public.asu.edu/~abarber2/wa/latest.png' target='_blank'> here</a>
I was a confirmed Winamp 2.X boy, Winamp 5 has shown me the light.
Death to 3.X!
ye, but the classic skin still rocks <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
you can make it smaller or larger at a whim, and i <3 the superfast media library search feature. type a word and it shows all of my songs with that word in the id3 tag right away!
Wha? No... it's great. Especially the Winshade version. I really dislike tiny tiny main window screens. I want to be able to see where the buttons are! Perhaps that makes it bigger than others, but I don't think it's that bad. MD3, which is one of the most popular skins, is bigger than the modern. I dunno, I don't mind it.