The long awaited alpha release of WinAMP 3 is finally upon us. Bow down to the llama god and praise link(www.nullsoft.com,Nullsoft) for all they have provided us with! Update: an updated alpha has just been released!

Remember that this IS alpha software and is definitely going to not work anywhere near as stable as WinAMP 2.xx does. Essentially, do not expect much!

After playing with it for a bit, I have to say that it is definitely UNSTABLE! The new default skin is a nifty update to the existing one. The playlist editor is nice, with the integrated playlist file management functions, albeit not completely working. This, as expected, is unstable, so dont go bitching and moaning to the link(www.nullsoft.com,Nullsoft) guys because it doesnt work. Just remember that a half finished car may start but doesnt mean that it will drive.

When you're done playing around with it, go link(www.deviantart.com/view.php?id=13412,kill) that evil llama!

Definately limited on what it can do now. it can only play MP3 and WAV files, can't read ID3 tags, can't change any preferences, no eq, and all other sort of stuff. Can definately tell it's an alpha release.

Haven't seen any bugs yet, but haven't really played with it quite yet. This definately will be the Winamp to have as soon as it's full release is out!!

Before the rants begin...

This is a technology demo. Nothing more. There's work ahead of us and we wanted to give you all something to play with. This is the result.

As for the hype, we tried to down play it as much as we could, but that's all we could do. Just stay tuned and you'll be seeing lots of wonderful changes in the weeks to come. Thanks for all the support.

-steve

Nic'ely put and I'll wait for the finished one

im happy with what i got..i dont use that damn eq anyway....i guess i'll go back to shooting that poor lama..

:: jier ::

Same thing, no eq, no id3 working, but nice look, hope the finale version comes soon!

i've been playing with it all night...no bugs no crashes just limited functionality.this is a MUCH better mp3 player than wa2x...and the boxor skin-it's freakin' animated!how cool is that!i take my hat off to nullsoft-if this is a sign of what's to come-i may rethink my stand on winamp as a good quality player....the sound quality is hella improved...i've had no problems so far with stability...i had wa3 with avs,mirc,aim,icq and 2 ie windows all open and no crash-and system resources at 40% free...not too shabby...

neat.

neatest.

[::The WiZaRd::]

One good thing on the old playlist was that the submenu "add files" was the first alternative, so one could easily add single files with a doubleclick

anyone checked out the skinning for it yet - it's xml and there's something like 300+ files for the boxor skin - there definately won't be as many skins coming out for winamp 3.x as there is for 2x.
On the up side it opens the door for imaginative designes

Visit me at - http://www.ratart.f2s.com/

its kind of slow in loading skins.

--------------
-=[ loki ]=-

Damn, alpha1 was 3.99meg, and alpha2 is 4.01meg. Guess I'm gonna give my poor 28.8 modem a workout for the next few days..hehe

Guess I spoke too soon on alpha1 with no bugs, had it crash numerous times. Currently downloading alpha2 now. I'm sure this one is a little better, but still bug ridden. It is nice to try these out as they are developed, but alteast I still have 2.72 for the time being.

For the skins, ratage is right, I've tried looking at them, first the old skins DO NOT WORK, second, there are no informations on how the xml structure works, now please, please, if anybody from Nullsoft reads this, could you post on NSDN a kind of tutorial.

I do have a few questions : do bmp files work? how do we use the placeholder files? what is the exact xml structure? etc. If anybody has other questions, post them!

Hmmm well. Winamp 3 is indeed a nice toy. However it has very stupid restrictions. But hey I didn't expect anything else in such an early stage. But what bothered me most is the memory usage of the program. DID ANYONE CHECK THAT OUT?!? It takes 18 mb and overall control if winamp is far slower then ever before. Surely this will be worked out. However I do think it will take some real time till this player is at least a bit usable ! I can see why they left the option open to also keep your old winamp 2.xx version . Winamp 3 is a nice toy to play with but is by far not worth taking a serious download hehe...

This is darksabers friend and i wasnt going 2 say anything but i decided to anyways.

Mangosquash
Darksabers friend

This release has alfa stamped all over it! Still very nice indeed.

The boxor skin is spectaclular! Anybody noticed the "Dock mode" a la K-Jofol style?? That is way cool
A shame they did not implement "always on top" yet.

This release made waiting for the final product somewhat easier for me.

rOn still rules!!!

Well, I was right. I was underwhelmed. I hope WinAmp 3.0 doesn't continue on the "let's start from scratch and build a platform" Netcape 5.0, err, Netscape 6.0 development path. I hope we've all learned from past mistakes.

Whoa, sad.

Given that it's alpha, NullSoft seems to be headed toward what Sonique is (even tho Winamp came first) and they're NOT sparing the filesize. The only reason I use WinAmp is because it's smaller/faster. If the download size for Winamp 3.x is 3+ megs, I'm not even gonna download it... simple as that =)

Their little "oddly shaped windows" interface is the same thing as Sonique is doing, EXACTLY the same, in fact, and Sonique is much easier on system resources + much smaller download (even tho I'm on 1.5 mBit DSL, I'm talking about 56kers and such).

Yes, it's too damn early to speak, but I don't have a good feeling about Winamp 3.x =/

..........SLiiK..........
........b*original.......

WRONG, they do have always on top.... use the systray icon to access winamp, thats the ONLY place where you can set it to "always on top"..

and I only used it for 15mins... sheeesh....

Yo Jier! - I got a screenshot for ya -> http://www.deviantart.com/view.php?id=13499

LOL

::: -X- :::
webmaster@xgeneration.net

ML Fucking Owns Me. Makes me want to fix up my id3 tags

Can't wait for stablity.

well i dont really see the point in upgrading winamp again. i mean except prettier skins and more memory usage what will the difference be?

The "thinger" will own us all - just watch

I read somewhere that the actuall realease of Winamp 3 will be much faster and still live up to W2's great low resources. Long live thinger! HOOOORAAAHHHHH!

-[::db::]-

here is my prediction, the new winamp is gonna kick ass (although its looking bad now), i think that they'll make it so that we can use both old and new skins, the thinger is gonna be increadable, unlimited possiblities with that, lets see, what else? uh... lets see.. they'll probably come up with a kick ass prog that makes it easyer to make the new skins, the xml er whatever ones, it probably most liekly will work faster and will be lower megs i dont know, its too early to tell but i think its gonna be a big step for winamp, i think its gonna be a good one. =Design

leech, by how it's lookin right now, it's possible that NONE of that comes true.

Of course, it's possible that all of that DOES come true, so I'll stop being pessimistik =)

..........SLiiK..........
........b*original.......

This was the big debate, do we wait longer and give you a more stable beta, or do we release a partially functioning (sometimes) alpha that you can all play with? We decided the latter. Just sit tight, get the new alphas, tell us wrong, and we'll fix it. Don't come bitching that it's not perfect. That's why it says ALPHA. NOT BETA. It will all be well, you're all up and arms for no reason at all.

-steve

xml skins 0wn j00! uhm... and for everyone who doesn't want cool shaped windows... there WILL be normal winamp shape skins. i can't wait for nullsoft to make this as stable as 2.x, the only reason winamp hasn't been my main player is because i have a large library... i need library functions... now that winamp will have that, i can't wait.

the twilight souls coming to us with inspiration and dreams, leaving us insomniacs...

How about throwing in a Media Library and new Playlist and calling it Winamp 2.8, instead of downloading this 4mb alpha beast.

My Winamp 3 crashed when I Right-Clicked on the Playlist Directory Window, thats all that has happened so far

I liked it.
skinning system was quite how i was expecting. still the boxy layout of some things will still be hard to disguise in a freeform look. i hope that in the future an extensive information can be given about changing modules within the same skinned main module via some button, like sonique can change between EQ and playlist.
I would like to see possible AVS integration within a freeform shape.
Media Library thing rocks on, i liked it much.

I hope that with this skin system i can make as many modules as i want, plus that winamp never loses its bitmap font support.

skinning aside, how about the playback quality?

What say u guys? I'm quite sure there are other players that sounds better? BTW, I'm not knocking wa, I use it too, just wanna hear from you guys whether u use other players.

media library is da bombader.

I like WinAmp 3.X But My computer doesn't like it as much that i do. This is my computer: 128Mb ram P2 300Mhz Geforce2 mx 32Mb DDR... And WA3 takes almost 25 seconds to load on it, I know the program is "buggy" but it doesn't crash on me, so im just gonna wait for the final version...

--== Nullsoft ==--
--== WinAmp ==--

I've had it for 5 minutes and I already love it, but of course it's buggy as hell... hope to get atleast a decent beta soon.

____________
Think about it.

I like 2xx better than this. The features r kool the thinger rox but it is buggy and i am not going to use it much until a betta version comes out.

o well something new

MangoSquash

i've been trying it....and it hasn't crashed... i still hate the box0r skin though..... i hate effects in a mp3 player
..::mGee::..........
lexicon verbalizer!

check out the hype at:

http://lexicon.deviantart.net

eek, "alpha" - not touching it with a ten-foot pole. i think i'll wait for v1 thank you very much. not that i can.

:: paroxysm ::

the winamp 3 is stupid

how about some positive comments instead of "eww i dont like its buggy" or "Wa3 sucks im waiting for a finale release" no offense, but come one, it IS an alpha, and those who downloaded knew that. how about commenting on whats wrong with it, and what its doing wrong so nullsoft can fix it.

1. work on skin changes
2. make it easier to skin
3. load time
4. menus need to me less flashy, take too much up.
5. bring back the properties box !!! i miss it so much.

theres my 2 cents
-AJ

el winamp3 es un software muy dificil de usar por que no lo hacen mas sencillo de usar??