When Justin Frenkel, an undergraduate in the University of Arizona, decided to create a small easy-to-use shareware application which would allow him and his friends to play MP3 (Mpeg Layer 3) audio files, he possibly had to idea that he was creating not just another novel product but a revolution. Frenkel dropped out of College shortly to float up Nullsoft, along with a few of his buddies and to this day, WinAmp remains the world’s #1 software MP3 player.
Decoding MP3 files was a tedious business in the past, but all that changed with WinAmp ( and subsequently MacAmp, the MacOS avatar). What lurches WinAmp far ahead from the competetion is it’s simple yet functional interface , which hasn’t changed much over the years. It still maintains it car stereo styled interface (the default skin i.e) What has changed over the years has been the features WinAmp has been incorporating.
One of Winamp’s trademark features has been the use of skins (They probably coined that now-familiar term). For the uninitiated, a skin is basically a 2nd aesthetic interface layered over the primary interface. Skins relating to vartious themes can be downloaded from the WinAmp website ( http://www.winamp.com) or can be created using a image manupulation package like Adobe Photoshop.
WinAmp itself still remains a small application, but some installations can occupy several megabytes because of it’s ability to configure and execute 3rd party plugins. A plugin is basically an external application which runs in collusion with the host application. They can range from pitch and tempo control, DJ mixing tools and amazing ’’trippy’’ visualisation plugins like G-Force. You have to see it to believe it folks.
Another extremely well defined feature has been the playlist editor. This has to be the most convinient editor I’ve ever set my eyes on. You can add files by selecting individual files or whole directories (with subdirectory recursing). Select the files, you deem unnecessary and click on the crop button, and voila! your desired playlist is ready in a matter of seconds. The ability to sort files on basis of name, ID tags and dates comes in handy as well.
Well so much for features, lets talk abt resources and sound quality. WinAmp scores immensely on this front as well with it’s min system requirements being a mere Pentium based PC, little hard disk space and it can even run off a CD or a Zip disk. WinAmp also performs consistently over ALL flavours of 32-bit Windows (95, 98, NT, 2K, ME)
As for the sound quality, it sounds great with any 16-bit run-of-the-mill sound card. The built in equaliser does make a hell of a difference when you apply the settings. Of course, I’m referring to a standard MP3 clip sampled at 44.4 KhZ at 128KBps (CD-quality). Anything below that wont sound so hot in WinAmp or any other player for that matter. It also pays to have good Ampli-speakers. I’ve stopped listening to anything other than MP3’s as my computer’s attached to my Pro-logic Hi-Fi system. Why bother with a plethora of CD’s when you can keep your entire collection in 5 CD’s; thats like 600 full length songs on an average.
Apart from mp3’s, WinAmp can be configured to play wav, midi, mov, s3m, mod, wma files. This means you just need to have ONE player for all your audio files.The ONLY feature which needs to be incorporated into WinAmp is MP3 encoding and CD-ripping. Anyhow as the saying goes....Nobody’s perfect. Do keep in mind that WinAmP is TOTALLY free. I guess it challenges the cliche ’’Nobody gives you a free lunch’’. WinAmp can be downloaded from various sites (winamp.com, download.com); and it always figures on the goodies CD of any self respecting computer magaine. I guess this explains WinAmp’s global penetration.
WinAmp also ushered in the world of rampant music piracy over the net, what with MP3 being a piracy-friendly, CD-quality hasslefree format. For the users of WinAmp however they really dont need to bother about the ethical issue as long they put on some groovy Floyd mp3’s, and G-Force along with it, for a surreal and sublime experience.