Winamp 5.54

Publisher's description of Winamp

Winamp is a free multimedia player made by Nullsoft. It supports numerous audio and video formats. It also plays streamed video and audio content, both live and recorded, authored worldwide. It has an extremely customizable media library, and allows you to rip and burn your favorite music CDs. Winamp has thousands of skins and plug-ins that allow you to change the look-and-feel of the player, as well as add new features. The player also has access to thousands of free songs, videos and online radio stations from SHOUTcast Radio and AOL Radio with XM.

Version 5.54 enhances dynamic Song Recommendations, discovers artist Songs, Videos, Radio and Photos, OL Radio Powered by CBS Radio.

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Editor's review of Winamp

WinAmp 5.3 took some long-needed steps to improve the old-school media player, with support for AAC encoding, CD burning, and a robust file-management system. WinAmp 5.54 ups the ante with strong support for portable devices, including iPods, the ability to sync non-DRMed files to your PC from your device, an optional new interface layout and a built-in browser for media discovery.

We liked that clicking on an artist's name will get you related headlines and Web sites in a separate pane. There's also Podcast support, device synchronization that lets you tweak the sync list while in progress, and continued support for AOL's excellent Shoutcast. The new Bento layout is worth mentioning, too, because it gets the venerable llama away from the old modular format. The joined panes for the browser, media player, artist list, album list and more make WinAmp instantly more visually appealing. There's also an Auto-Tag feature, which will download metatags from the Gracenote database.

If you want MP3 encoding and full-speed CD burning, you have to shell out $19.95 for the Pro version. However, there are other problems. Automatic album art download support is spotty at best. More importantly, there are some stability issues when playing videos, and occasional program crashes were far more common than they should be.

WinAmp 5.54 is no iTunes killer--not yet. It has become, however, a strong alternative and should be of interest to those looking for something with more meat on its bones. Llama meat, that is.

User reviews of Winamp

• Average user rating: out of 1157 votes
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  Winamp

  Good, lean and clean player

  by: Tanrazak on 28-Jul-2008 12:11:17 AM

  Pros: Use up not as much memory as others

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  Winamp

  It works great.

  by: shipinn27 on 21-Jul-2008 07:12:47 AM

  Pros: Ease of use

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  Winamp

  Winamp kicks more than llama .. backside

  by: GSoM on 25-Jul-2008 04:06:49 PM

  Pros: works.

  well..thats too basic

  on www (dot) winamp (dot) com can be found millions of skins, useful plugins and cool visual effects, ranging from Tray Control and Title bar control, to making music from tapes sound like CD's and vice-versa.

  the skins tha can be found are ALL made by winamp users. I have used winamp for at least 3 years and its never failed me. what I personally like most about it is if i am downloading a movie or an mp3 or somthing at more than 2x playing speed (basicaly if it is 1 hr movie, it downloads in 30mins), winamp can play the movie while it is still downloading without problems, unless the download stops and winamp runs out of file to play.

  Also, i use a plugin for winamp, so i can plug my tape deck into my pc both ways (sound into tapedeck from pc and from pc to tapedeck) and mute the line in so i do not get feedback, and winamp can play the line in sound while a tape is playing and the sound from the pc goes directly into the soundsystem which is also plugged into my pc via jack-splitters.

  Plugins have been (and are still being) written for winamp to play game audio tracks in foreign format, for example, winamp + a certain plugin which i will not name = listen to Unreal Tournament soundtracks.

  the best thing about this player is it is easy to use. i installed this on a friends pc, told them nothing about it and the next week, i got an email saying "Thanks for installing winamp, i can use it fullly without problems".

  Fast, effecient Media Library, playlist, Equaliser and Internet Browsing features.

  has excessive support for Plug and Play devices such as IPod (sorry for swearing), Pendrives, CD's, I think there is plugins for DVD's, CD+G's, Creative media players, USB harddrives, etc.

  I have the media library set up on a network computer (little p3 slot processor with touchscreen and Onscreen Keyboard so the machine can be used as a Free network jukebox. winamp is so low-resource hungry that i also have a SETI@Home set running on it as a screensaver.

  Cons: None of these are really worth writing down but i have nothing better to do, so:

  I cannot get global hotkeys to work..but I think thats my error

  its not popular enough

  people who badmouth winamp should be shot!

  doesnt come with windows as a package extention

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  Winamp

  Great

  by: thestonegodsrock on 06-Aug-2008 01:30:37 AM

  Pros: dosent use much ram i pod support which is awsome as itunes and quicktime together are about 160 mb and all you need is this program and its 24mb i really recomend it!

  Cons: nothing!

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  Winamp

  Very Nice Player

  by: furnilover21 on 10-Aug-2008 05:38:48 PM

  Pros: It's a very nice player.

  Cons: But when it comes to playing DVDs, etc. I'd rather use Windows Media Player.

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