Winamp is one of the best know and widely used media players out there. Winamp5 is a combination of winamp2 plus winamp3's skinning engine. 2 + 3 = 5 Winamp3 has actually been officially abandoned. Meanwhile, massive upgrades have been made to Winamp2, taking it from an audio player to a media player.

The winamp5 betas, and story behind the name, are widely known. It seems the that the beta stage is almost over. In the last few days 9 release candidates (from 0 to 8) have been created. Each mainly with a variety of bug fixes aimed toward stability and functionality. The total list of changes is massive, especially for the betas and early release candidates, though they have shortened as the program matured.

Reports from blizzle.com say that "According to Justin Frankel's .plan, a final release will be out *soon*." Though I was not able to confirm this, judging by the aggressive release barrage, it seem accurate. A link to the .plan is included below, and to the original article.

Winamp 5.0rc8 11/19/03:
* modern skin updates
- fixed config menu radiobuttons turning off when clicked again
- fixed unreadable selected list item text color in 2 gamma groups
- fixed theme list using slightly different colors than ml lists
- fixed taskbar move syscommand bringing up wa2 main window
* updated avs, faster evallib. makes eval heavy presets superfaster.
* made cd ripping unlock drive and cleanup on exit in middle of rip

Winamp 5.0rc7 11/18/03:
* fixed metrics dialog parenting
* fixed avs Nbuffer stuff, exposed Nbuffers via API (woo hope no more crashy)
* fixed avs memory leak

Winamp 5.0rc6 11/18/03:
* fixed gen_ml view restoring when "do not load library at startup" checked
* fixed another avs dmove bug

Winamp 5.0rc5 11/18/03:
* made reginfo stored in the registry instead of winamp.ini
* added Ctrl+H to keyboard shortcut list in about

Winamp 5.0rc4 11/18/03:
* fixed drag&drop to main window when AVS is docked
* more advanced title logic tweaks
* fixed error in keyboard shortcuts list in about box

Winamp 5.0rc3 11/18/03:
* updated hotkeys to be tabable
* updated advanced title logic to fix a few issues
* fixed issue when modern skin or gen_ff not found
* fixed modern skin about box when in classic skins
* updated to latest AOD (complete with good uninstall support)

Winamp 5.0rc2:
* fixed playlist editor status bug
* fixed seh options not being saved
* made installer check for gen_peercast and prompt user

Winamp 5.0rc1
* updated credits
* updated to newer NSIS
* made gen_hotkeys, gen_ml, and gen_ff all use msg registration api to avoid msg collisions
* updated installer to prompt for reboot in certain instances on < win2k
* fixed typo in installer
* modern skin updates
- fixed options/skins menu issue
- changed some colorthemes names
- fixed lack of shift/ctrl + eject
- fixed shutdown problem with text objects

Winamp 5.0rc0 11/16/03
* fixed crash when subtitles but no video
* added SEH options to avs and winamp for plug-ins
* fixed bug in gracenote TUID and "Now Playing" tab
* added CD locking when ripping
* christophe optimized some in_dshow stuff (not sure if he wanted this shit in here, heh)
* gen_ml recent items limiting fix
* gen_ml info viewer fixes
* SHUT YOUR MOUTH: http://www.firehose.net/~deadbeef/media/music/031115-shutyourmouth.mp3
* modern skin updates
- final skin drop
- fixed player taking focus when notifier goes away (again, yeah, i just forgot to check it in :-))
- fixed resizing / snapadjust issues opening the drawer without showing its content (hole in player) in some cases
- disabled notifier fade sliders when running on w95/98
- fixed component editwnd colors (colortheme editor)
- fixed shade songticker alternate font color not matching bitmap font color group
- fixed lack of shift/ctrl + next/play/stop/prev
- fixed system.floattostring ignoring its ndigits param
- fixed potential crash in text widgets that change display param dynamically
- fixed locked windows going offscreen (like nonstep avs) made then ignore offscreen since they are locked to a layout that checks its own position
- added nooffscreencheck="1" for layouts in case offscreen check needs to be disabled for a window
- fixed assert in region
- fixed crash color extraction from undefined container
- fixed crash when not specifying a band parameter to an eqband object
- fixed buttons onleavearea detection with nonstandard scales
- fixed notifier not showing minimized when "show in windowshade and when minimized" is on
- fixed freeform dropdownlists not closing
- fixed crash when a window is destroyed while moving all windows docked
- fixed system.playfile (base dir changed, has to be relative to skin in wa5, so filename is tweaked if it starts with "skin\nameofskin")

Winamp: http://www.winamp.com
Download: http://66.54.81.21/winamp50rc8_full.exe
ScreenShot: http://www.skinnables.org/cuttheredwire/winamp.jpg
Justin's .plan: http://winamp.com/team/finger.jhtml?who=Justin
Blizzle Source: http://blizzle.com/releases.php?id=922
BetaNews Source: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1066336873

[http://www.winamp.com>Winamp| href=http://66.54.81.21/winamp50rc8_full.exe>Download| href=http://www.skinnables.org/cuttheredwire/winamp.jpg>ScreenShot| href="http://winamp.com/team/finger.jhtml?who=Justin">Justin's .plan|Blizzle Source|BetaNews Source]

I may check this out. I'm getting tired of my ultra player. sometimes locks my system up. been looking for a good alternitive to play all types of media on.

I recall reading somewhere recently, that WinAmp had been sold, and that there were security concerns with Version 5.

If I recall corrrectly the reviewer suggested it might be wise to pass on this version of WinAmp.

thanks madmax

I recall reading somewhere recently, that WinAmp had been sold, and that there were security concerns with Version 5.

If I recall corrrectly the reviewer suggested it might be wise to pass on this version of WinAmp.

I'm using Winamp 5rc8 now, and so far so good. I was using beta2 for a while, but rc8 definatly whips the llama's ass

Winamp 5 is really bad at playing back DiVX/XviD. Jerky as hell.

Sorry about the double post (slip of the finger. Heres the address for the article I referenced earlier

www.gnutellanews.com/article/8592 - 20k -

A Google search reveals the article is already (or was) available on this site, (see below)

www.boycottriaa.com/article/8592

this is conspiracy theory nonsense. there has never been even anicdotal evidence that winamp 3/5 contains any spyware of any kind - one random guy on a gnu message board frothing at the mouth about a half-brained unsubstantiated 'conspiracy' is hardly a reason for concern.

if you're really paranoid, sonique 2 is going in to beta, stable, reasonably fast, has a better skinning engine than WA5, and is owned by a non-American (non-cartel) company with ties to the MP3 community dating back to the 90's.

i still say this is nuts tho'.

well it's time for me to get WinAMP5 then, WA3 is starting to piss me off.

Who uses Winamp 3? Ugh...

I still use Winamp 2.9 with the all-important right-click "Enqueue in Winamp" integration. This is such a killer feature for me, but for whatever reason *no other* mp3 players bother using it. Any player without it is third-rate IMO...

ok um why did we skip the number 4???

Winamp 2.9x is the best version. Winamp 3 is lame, they went from it's simple purpose (playing mp3s, CDs, wavs, midis, etc.), to Divx playback and a bunch of other crap that makes it load slower.

"ok um why did we skip the number 4???"

read the first paragraph of this article, homie.

Sweet I love the beta version, can't wait for the final release!

Too bad the porn channels are always full

WinAMP 5 is ready for DOWNLOAD