Winamp 5.531

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 5.531 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

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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 5.51 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 5.51 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 1099 votes
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  Winamp

  I like winamp the best!

  by: on 25-Apr-2008 03:29:07 AM

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  Winamp

  This is a very good Multimedia Player program.

  by: BERTOLOFCARBRING1962 on 19-Apr-2008 08:02:56 AM

  Pros: when I am useing Winamp for all my applications such as to listen to all those Webradio stations with a perfect sound quality of course, and even to use it when I am watching all those Webcast when they have been "taped" and are broadcasting again like from Microsoft for example. I can even use it to watch some streaming media like all those files who I have downloaded to see directly and have never been saved after this have been done. So I can only recommend all other user to download this program so they can use it for everything and even do this for free.

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  Winamp

  Still buggy

  by: Mr Dandee on 16-Apr-2008 06:17:07 PM

  Pros: Love the design, and most of the functions.

  Cons: It doesn't start in windowshade mode even when that was the last one used. This upgrades are making me think twice about still using winamp as my do it all player.

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  Winamp

  Beats the h3ll outa m$ windows media player !

  by: bobfox321 on 19-Apr-2008 07:59:45 AM

  Pros: My ratings are relative. I still don't know what m$ media player is trying to do. Use it only if Winamp wont play it. Have had Winamp for many years. It is intuitive, easy, smart and in constant use. With m$ anti-intuitive philosophy and sales oriented software I still cannot do simple things like find ...ABOUT... among other things. It is a total waste of my time and resources on the PC.

  Cons: Nuttin. Nothing at all. It is clean, intuitive, uses few resources, excellent stations to pick from for all my music types.

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  Winamp

  Still buggy for an old program

  by: jabberwockgee on 27-Apr-2008 08:49:44 PM

  Pros: It seems to open quickly, and works fast when it's open.

  Cons: Would always play the songs I told it to play in a random order, not in the order I added them. Enough to make me stop using it.

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