[HN Gopher] WinAmp Community Update Project
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       WinAmp Community Update Project
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2022-02-09 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (getwacup.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (getwacup.com)
        
       | darig wrote:
        
       | RedShift1 wrote:
       | I could only find the changelog for the previous March 2021
       | release, what's changed in this release?
        
         | jaywalk wrote:
         | Did you try clicking the "Changelogs" link in the header?
         | https://getwacup.com/changelog/
        
       | poisonborz wrote:
       | If you look for a more modern Winamp-like audio player - down to
       | supporting a lot of Winamp plugins - I really recommend AIMP.
        
         | thedoctor_o wrote:
         | AIMP misses the boat on the sort of Winamp plug-ins I still
         | want to have supported whilst not using an actual Winamp itself
         | (as is now the aim for WACUP). Sure it's an option but a
         | limited sub-set of Winamp 2.x era plug-ins isn't great :)
         | 
         | -dro
        
       | jraph wrote:
       | For long, I wished Winamp would be open sourced. I don't
       | understand the benefit of keeping it closed.
       | 
       | I'm not sure I would be back to using it though. I'm used to my
       | current player, which already does everything I would expect from
       | Winamp, with a (arguably) worse look but much better UX.
       | 
       | Audacious with the Winamp classic interface is also a great
       | Winamp for those who (still) fancy this look and feel.
        
         | richardfey wrote:
         | The benefit of keeping it closed: squeeze some money from
         | people googling winamp.
         | 
         | Why would you give up that revenue stream? It might also have
         | some residual allure to attract investment capital.
        
           | bennyp101 wrote:
           | It must be there somewhere, a friend recently told me it's in
           | AUR - and I replied with "I don't have mp3s anymore" he sent
           | a screenshot of just under a TB of music.
           | 
           | I guess some people just moved to streaming (me) and others
           | stuck true to their roots
        
             | brimble wrote:
             | All of the music I listen to is local files or YouTube
             | videos (great for sampling new stuff). The only time I've
             | ever used any of the online streaming services was in an
             | office that had one set up on speakers--and by "used" I
             | mean "listened to what others played", I took one look at
             | the UI and wanted nothing to do with it.
        
             | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
             | I've also got about a terabyte of music.
             | 
             | Streaming is useful for me for discovery, not consumption.
             | If I read an online or magazine article that means an
             | artist I want to check out, the fastest way is usually
             | searching for them on Spotify or YouTube Music.
             | 
             | But if I like what I hear and think I'll listen to it again
             | in the future, my next step is to see if the artist is
             | available on Bandcamp with high-quality MP3s/FLACs, or
             | Amazon with AutoRips available. Failing that, I'll purchase
             | the physical album and do the rips myself.
        
             | selfhoster11 wrote:
             | Spotify pretty doesn't have any of kind of music that I
             | want, which is pretty surreal given their marketing. I
             | subsist on YouTube playlists and a Bandcamp account.
        
         | thedoctor_o wrote:
         | You've already got an open source Winamp if you're using the
         | likes of xmms, qmmp, Audacious or anything else that
         | effectively loads classic style skins (not that they tend to
         | get it spot in) so does it really matter what the state of
         | Winamp vs it's source code is...? I'd say no.
         | 
         | As you've clearly got something that fits your needs as do I by
         | slowly making my own Winamp compatible player to run my old
         | Winamp plug-ins (which were always closed source nor am I for
         | or against OSS but it needs to be the dev that decides not
         | external pressure) because I don't trust nor like what's
         | happened with those that now own the brand.
         | 
         | Also source code is pointless without dev(s) & unless we're
         | looking for AI to do all of the coding, whether the code is
         | open or closed, the fleshy meat bag bashing the keyboard is
         | still needed for the time being :)
         | 
         | Use what makes you happy & I'll keep making & using what makes
         | me happy too :)
         | 
         | -dro
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | What player do you have that has better UX? Winamp was
         | lightning fast, could do anything in a few keystrokes
         | (especially that "jump to" dialog was magical) and got out of
         | the way. It was perfect.
        
         | alternatetwo wrote:
         | The source code leaked a while ago, but IIRC not the final
         | version. And it's not like one could really use it.
        
           | thedoctor_o wrote:
           | It pre-dates the 5.666 release & is of no use to any project
           | trying to do things correctly i.e. whoever did (I have my
           | suspicions) basically shafted a load of projects that could
           | have made legitimate benefit.
           | 
           | -dro
        
         | tomjen3 wrote:
         | I have winamp on my old windows machine. I love the program,
         | but it is so much XP are that it hurts.
         | 
         | Let me explain: if you want to use your computer ofline, with a
         | local store of MP3 files that you play on limited hardware
         | without any impact on your computer, it is great. Go download
         | it.
         | 
         | However in practice you almost certainly won't want to do that.
         | What you want is to be constantly connected to the internet,
         | you want the ability to listen to whatever track you want at
         | whatever time you want.
         | 
         | And for that, Winamp won't serve your needs.
         | 
         | I get the nostalgia and I am not really sure if the XP time
         | wasn't better than our current one, but do keep in mind what
         | you are trading of.
        
           | selfhoster11 wrote:
           | The problem of storing all the music in the world locally had
           | been solved for a long time. Just get a bigger hard drive.
        
         | agildehaus wrote:
         | If I knew the secret to llama ass-whooping, I wouldn't share
         | it.
        
       | ahmed_ds wrote:
       | Few weeks ago I actually installed WinAmp because I needed that
       | nostalgia dopamine hit of Milkdrop visualizer and those sweet
       | skins. I downloaded some mp3 files from a YouTube playlist using
       | FFMPEG. Unfortunately none of the mp3 worked. I think it was an
       | encoding issue. Then I remembered the last time I faced a media
       | file encoding problem was close to a decade ago.
       | 
       | We take granted how good VLC or MPC-HC as software are.
        
         | erinaceousjones wrote:
         | For the visualizations - Milkdrop is alive and well as projectM
         | (which sometimes comes bundled with VLC, sometimes not?):
         | https://github.com/projectM-visualizer/projectm
         | 
         | Which has a ridiculous level of cross-platform compatibility. I
         | can throw up 3 copies of projectM-pulseaudio on my big
         | 3-monitor work machine and have it listen to any audio sink,
         | I've got it installed on my Android TV and it happily responds
         | to whatever audio's being played, so works with streaming apps
         | and whatnot.
         | 
         | There's also thousands and thousands of presets you can add
         | which the community has been adding to since way back when it
         | was still milkdrop, and people have made curated lists like
         | this person's NestDrop:
         | https://thefulldomeblog.com/2020/02/21/nestdrop-presets-coll...
        
           | vmception wrote:
           | My issue now is that there is no way to stream my music and
           | make these visualizations come up on people's screens
           | 
           | I want something as simple as spotify over chromecast, that
           | shows these visualizations on the fly
           | 
           | The metric is: can I do this in a hotel room that happens to
           | have a smart tv?
           | 
           | Because it has to pass that bar, not the bar of plugging in a
           | computer to my own tv's hdmi port
        
         | captbaritone wrote:
         | For anyone wanting to dip back into the nostalgia of Winamp and
         | Milkdrop without installing any software, I made
         | https://webamp.org for that exact purpose.
         | 
         | It can render real Milkdrop presets and real classic winamp
         | skins directly in the browser.
         | 
         | Also, it's open source: https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp
        
           | emerged wrote:
           | That's awesome!
           | 
           | I actually still use Winamp 2 on a daily basis. The
           | visualizations were my favorite part and is one of the major
           | avenues which drove me get into software optimization. It
           | would be fair to say my entire life might be very different
           | if it weren't for that influence.
        
           | silisili wrote:
           | Cool site!
           | 
           | One note: On Brave mobile, the seek slider doesn't actually
           | work. It moves and says 'seek to:' but doesn't.
        
         | na85 wrote:
         | >We take granted how good VLC or MPC-HC as software are.
         | 
         | Yeah but neither VLC nor MPC-HC really whips the llama's ass.
        
         | brimble wrote:
         | VLC was the reason I stopped caring about "codec packs". If I
         | ever hit a problem along those lines, or some media format that
         | won't play for any other reason, instead of installing codecs
         | or whatever, I install VLC.
        
         | alamortsubite wrote:
         | I don't know about the visualizer, but Audacious lets you
         | install Winamp skins. Source: rocking Bento Classified
         | uninterrupted since 1999.
        
           | ancientsofmumu wrote:
           | Audacious makes a great minimal streaming (icecast/shoutcast)
           | desktop player once you futz with the UI a little to get it
           | how you like for that purpose. Like you, years of trying out
           | a lot of gui players but I go back to Audacious every time.
        
       | kenchan wrote:
       | That feeling when you thought the llama finally escaped abuse..
        
         | jarrettcoggin wrote:
         | It was a great branding step though!
        
           | bennyp101 wrote:
           | 25? Years later and people still know exactly what part got
           | whipped!
        
             | jraph wrote:
             | I'll die before I forget how this 5 second long demo mp3
             | sounds.
        
         | willis936 wrote:
         | Maybe the llama has grown to like it.
        
       | taubek wrote:
       | WinAmp was my favorite music player. Skins, EQ, visualization,...
       | It had all. I also like the fact that you could listen to
       | Internet radio stations with it.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-09 23:01 UTC)