| Winamp |
Website Links For Winamp |
Information AboutWinamp |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT WINAMP | |
| freeware | |
| streaming software | |
| windows media players | |
| windows-only software | |
| windows cd ripping software | |
| windows cd---dvd writing software | |
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name = Winamp
Winamp is a Multimedia Player made by Nullsoft and eventually acquired by America Online . It is Skin nable, multi-format Freeware / Shareware . Winamp was first released by Justin Frankel in 1997 . It also now plays streamed video content, both live and recorded, authored worldwide. Originally, MP3 playback was based on the AMP® decoding engine by Tomislav Uzelac (later PlayMedia Systems ). In later versions this was replaced with Nitrane, a proprietary decoder created by Nullsoft and disputed by PlayMedia. A lawsuit was filed by PlayMedia resulting in an out-of-court settlement, licensing and confidentiality agreement. Shortly after, Nullsoft switched to an ISO decoder from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft , the developers of the MP3 format. Current Winamp development is credited to Stephen Tag Loomis, Taber Buhl, Ben Allison and Maksim Tyrtyshny. Winamp has grown in the past year (2005) from 33 million monthly users to over 52 million monthly users, making it by some counts now the third most actively used media player globally. Winamp's strength comes from a very active user community who continue to develop both new features, visualizers and "skins" (a skin allows someone to give Winamp a vastly different visual appearance). Winamp has focused on four primary design tenets that drive its success: Continued focus on the size and performance of the player itself, support for the widest range of audio and video formats of the major players, unique features for the audiophile looking for the highest quality output from a digital media player, and a design architecture that allows as much community-driven extensibility as possible. HISTORY Winamp 1 and Winamp 2 Although Winamp 1 (first version released in May 1997 ) was used among early adopters of the MP1 , MP2 , and MP3 formats, it wasn't until Winamp 2 was released that it became widely used, and was one of the most Download ed pieces of Software for Windows operating system {Link without Title} . Winamp3 The next major Winamp release, Winamp3 (spelled condensed in this way both to include ''mp3'' in the name, as in Winamp3 and to mark its separation from the Winamp 2 codebase), surfaced on August 9 , 2002 . This was a complete rewrite of version 2 and was based on the Wasabi application framework, which offered additional functionality and flexibility. Winamp3 was developed in parallel to Winamp 2. However, many users found this version consumed too many system resources and was unstable (or even lacked some valued functionality, such as the ability to Numerically and Chronologically find the sum of all of the Track s in a Playlist ). Additionally, Winamp3's new framework did not include Backward Compatibility with Winamp 2 skins and plugins. A big complaint was that the SHOUTcast sourcing plugin was not supported, and no Winamp3 version of SHOUTcast was ever released. As a result, many Winamp users reverted back to Winamp 2. Nullsoft listened to its user base and returned focus to the previous, more stable program. They continued Winamp 2 to include versions 2.9 and 2.91. The unreleased versions 2.92 and 2.95 showed up online shortly after with the inclusion of some later Winamp 5 functionality. Winamp 5 The Winamp 2 and Winamp3 branches were later fused into Winamp 5 — Nullsoft justified their non-sequential christening by quipping that 2 + 3 = 5 — taking the best parts from both applications. Developers also joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin" . Winamp 5 was based on the Winamp 2 codebase, with several Winamp3 features (e.g. modern skins) incorporated. Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003. Most of the Wasabi framework built for creating Winamp3 and its components was released as Open Source , and As Of 2005 an active development effort has succeeded in making a standalone version of Wasabi, minus the skinning and scripting modules which were never released. Winamp 5 comes in three versions, Lite, Full and Pro. The Lite and Full versions are freeware, Lite having far less functionality while replicating most of Winamp 2's feature set in a far smaller installer. The Pro version (currently selling for US$ 19.95) offers a slightly richer feature set, primarily with regard to music Ripping and CD burning. The Winamp 5.2 has been criticized for introducing the new Portable feature, which does not work correctly when the extremely popular ml_ipod plugin is installed. ml_ipod has been the plugin that allowed iPod owners to use Winamp (instead of iTunes) to upload music and playlists to the iPod. Many users had to revert to version 5.13 and reformat their iPod's because their database was corrupted when Winamp recognized the iPod. CONCEPTS Skins Winamp also has many of Winamp. Many skins are currently available, such as the popular MMD3 (pictured) by Sven Kistner . Winamp 5.0 has brought many new options for potential skin designers, including alpha channels and docked toolbar. Plug-ins Winamp has a comprehensive software development kit, which allows software developers to extend Winamp's functionality through the use of plug-ins. These plug-ins are categorized into the following seven types:
Historically, one of the reasons Winamp has been popular is because of the large number of Input plug-ins available on the Internet. This provides Winamp with the ability to support many formats unsupported by regular mainstream media players. As an example, some of the plug-ins enable Winamp to play sound formats associated with Console Emulator s, such as NSF , VGM , GBS , SID , GYM , SPC , PSF And PSF2 (see also Video Game Music ). Many different plug-ins can be found on the Winamp web site {Link without Title} . FEATURES The following are features of Winamp 5:
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