Winamp is closing up shop

Just a heads-up for all fellow winamp users: I just got notification of
an update being available, and when I went to their website there was a
big red banner that winamp will shut down as of December 20th.

Fortunately I found that the downloads are still up, but for how much
longer?
So if you haven't updated for a long time, get your Winamp 5666 and your
flac plugin now ....

-P.

 

Winamp lost its edge after AOL bought it
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/

 

Are they shutting down shoutcast too ?

 

Its worse than that.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/21/source-microsoft-in-talks-to-buy-shoutcast-and-winamp-from-aol/

 

AFAIK the announcement said "Winamp.com and associated web services".
The commentators are writing as if "associated web services" includes
Shoutcast, and as if the entire Nullsoft division is being shut down.

 

It's also a lot more complex
http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2013/12/19/saving-winamp-and-shoutcast-may-be-prohibitively-complex/

 

Thanks Peter. I just grabbed ver. 5.666, I'm currently using a much older
version with Stereo Tool (was it you who recemmended it?).

Which FLAC plugin do you use? My undervolted Pentium M laptop[*] (1.7Ghz
Dothan, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD) that's running XP as a dedicated music system
all the waking hours of the day, every day, has been fine - I'm not sure I
need to update. However I have disk space and I'd rather get what I can when
I can....

[*] An Acer Travelmate 2400 that came to me as a junk machine (it had a fan
that was O/C) that had been robbed of RAM, HDD and caddy, WiFi card and all
covers and junked. It has a few scuff marks on the [wide]screen but
otherwise, after a $30 fan / CPU cooler purchase from TM, works fine sitting
in the same place for ~3 years - with one of those ~$15 large (18cm dia.)
slow USB fans under it.

Hmmm, I guess I may have to update Stereo Tool too...

Currently I'm only using it to play 320 vbr mp3s but 90% of the HDD data
partition is free and I have most of my music as FLAC files on an eHDD and
have been thinking of using those files as my music library rather than the
mp3s I ripped from them / my CDs. I recently upgraded the sound system that
it feeds, now using a small 'Heath Robinson' system with Philips bi-pole
quasi-ribbon tweeters in an MTM speaker arrangement. It's great to be able
to hear lyrics clearly - even at moderate volumes - that have been eluding
me for decades. <g>

Cheers,
--
/Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
[Sent from my OrbitalT ocular implant interface]

 

Hi Shaun,
I use Soulseek to acquire digital versions of some of my
beloved Vinyl disks from time to time (not all that often actually -- my
wife loves Renaissance choral music, I prefer jazz and rock and punk and
symphonic music and never the twain shall meet) and I have noticed that
more and more .flac format files turn up. Until recently I wasn't even
able to play those until I got a converter utility, so the new .flac
plugin for Winamp will come in very handy indeed. Apparently it now has
one natively (not sure if it has to be downloaded separately, I haven't
got around to testing the latest version yet) but that plugin I did
download supposedly is the Winamp native one with some library
functionality added. Ok, fine, we shall see

I'm just using my good ole desktop machine, with the sound running
through an old Pioneer amp into a couple of mid-range speakers for music
these days, my serious audiophile days are over, hell, I'll be 60 next
month .... need I say more. I'm sure there are aspects of "Return to
Forever" or some of my old ECM favourites that I'll never be able to
hear properly in their full richness again {grins}. The Nakamichi has
died, the Revox has died ... c'est la vie.

happy Yuletide to you, too, b.t.w, and everybody else who still lurks in
nz.comp

-P.

 

It might interest you to know VLC plays flac files natively

 

Hi Peter. Thanks for the info. I shall have to install that latest version
on a machine and try it out.

My hearing suffered a set-back when I was in my early 20s - doing off-stage
soundmixing and stage lighting for a touring band for a couple of years. We
couldn't afford really long cables so I was always within ~8 metres of a
2,000 watt a side P.A. stack for three or four hours a night (wandering off
toward more centre stage now and then to get a better 'read' on the sound as
the room acoustics changed as it filled up).

However recently I've been able to pick up really awesome-sounding Philips
quasi-ribbon tweeters (buy buying cheap second-hand LX700 home theatre
systems from TM and using the tweets from them). Also recently I bought my
second Philips MCD708 'micro system' very cheaply from TM
http://www.trademe.co.nz/a.asp?id=671055398 which use very similar
quasi-ribbons to the dipole version used in the LX700 system - only they're
closed-backed.

I started building my own speakers as a teenager and, except for
half-a-decade when my business was taking off, have always listened to music
through my own boxes. As, since the dawn of this digital music age, 90% of
the sound quality is dictated by the speakers I've always been able to get
better sound for my limited money by building my own. (Even pre-digital the
speakers were the biggest weak-point in the chain.) It helped that, for a
large part of my younger years I had access to professional-quality speaker
drivers through the band.

It's ironic really that now, in my 50s and with less-than-perfect hearing,
I'm hearing more in very familiar recordings and hearing lyrics more clearly
than I ever have on a home system. Being able to pick up these ribbons for,
on average <$10 a driver, then running them through refurbished cross-overs
using (even cheap) film type capacitors rather than electrolytics on the
mids and tweets means that I'm getting more out of music that's been with my
since my salad years, for much less money than speakers have cost me than
ever before.

I was lucky to have grown up during a time when there was lots and lots of
great music being made (I haven't heard much in the last couple of decades
that has made it into my 'playlist'). Now I'm lucky again in that I am able
to keep hearing new things in that same music thanks to the fidelity of
drivers that are affordable (if you are prepared to hunt for them and
mix'n'match drivers). To buy a tweeter as clean as these Philips units as a
component from a speaker supply place would set you back at least $100 each.
Pair it with a decent 10 to 15cm mid to cover the three-octave 150Hz -
1.2kHz range and a single home-built acoustic suspension subwoofer per
system (which are easy to make, drivers are cheap, as are high-power single
channel MOSFET amps) to produce clean sub-150Hz music and, for well under
$500 (if you're canny) you can have a sublime system.

I too use an older Pioneer amp for the stereo channels. It's 10 year old
VSX-D512 unit. It's actually a 'chip-amp', capable of five 100w channels or
two sub 0.5% THD 120w channels. It has it's own built-in 96kHz / 24-bit DAC
with both SPDIF optical or co-ax inputs which is *sooo* clean (and can
handle stereo or Dolby Digital 5.1). LOL, they can often be had for <$100 so
I have two. I first read about them in a magazine round up of HT systems
and, even though it was in the sub-$500 class it had the lowest THD of all
units reviewed (including it's larger Pioneer brother and some other, very
expensive gear). I use one for my stereo and one for my small HT system and,
if I see another for sale when I have financial wiggle-room will buy that
too! I like that it also has a subwoofer output and an adjustable cross-over
point for main speakers / subwoofer frequency meaning my smallish mains
never get fed frequencies they can't reproduce cleanly.

Thanks Peter, I hope yours was enjoyable. All the best for the new year - to
you and all of nz.comp.
--
/Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
[Sent from my OrbitalT ocular implant interface]

 

In case you've not heard it, this news may be of interest to some people
here:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/01/aol-sells-winamp-and-shoutcast-music-
services-to-online-radio-aggregator-radionomy/

Winamp, Shoutcast, etc, have been acquired by Belgium company Radionomy.