Winamp is one of the oldest media players around. In spite of its age – or perhaps even because of it – it is still going strong. Winamp supports numerous audio and video formats including MIDI, MOD, MPEG-1 audio layers 1 and 2, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV, OGG Vorbis, and Windows Media Audio. It supports gapless playback for MP3 and AAC, and Replay Gain for volume leveling across tracks.
Winamp was released in 1997 originally developed by Justin Frankel, later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy for an undisclosed sum from AOL, back in 2014. Now, almost 4 years later and ahead of an expected official company announcement, a beta version for the upcoming Winamp 5.8 (winamp58_3653_beta_full_en-us.exe) bearing a build date of October 26, 2016 has apparently been leaked on the web after being uploaded to the public by an anonymous user on a selection of filesharing sites.
In terms of changes, the latest update brings a bunch of new features and improvements. The new version of the popular music player offer improved Windows 10 compatibility, removes the Pro version (Winamp is now 100% freeware) other tweaks, improvements, fixes and optimizations.
Check out the full changelog below:
- New: Windows Audio (WASAPI) Output plug-in (w.i.p.)
- Improved: Added an option to completely disable Winamp"s video support
- Improved: Added an auto-fullscreen option to video prefs
- Improved: Added /ENUMPLAYLISTS to the command-line support
- Improved: Windows 8.1 and 10 compatibility
- Improved: [in_mod] OpenMPT-based Module Player (replaces old MikMod player)
- Improved: [ml_playlists] Added browse path & edit title functions in Ctrl+E editor
- Improved: [Bento] Updated scrollbars and buttons and other tweaks (thanks Martin)
- Improved: [Bento & Modern skins] Added a Playlist Search feature (thanks Victor)
- Fixed: New URLs not being remembered after using Reset history in Open URL dialog
- Fixed: Various memory leaks
- Fixed: [gen_tray] Not showing correct current icon pack in preferences
- Fixed: [in_avi] Divide-by-zero crash with badly formed files (thanks ITDefensor)
- Fixed: [in_mp3] Crashing with some ID3v2 tags
- Fixed: [ml_wire] Slow loading issue
- Fixed: [ssdp] Crash on load if jnetlib was not correctly initialized
- Misc: Minimum required OS is now Win XP sp3 (Windows 7 or higher recommended)
- Misc: More general tweaks, improvements, fixes and optimizations
- Misc: Moved shared DLLs to Winamp\Shared folder
- Misc: MP3 Encoder must now be downloaded manually (to Shared folder)
- Removed: All former "Pro" licensed functions (Winamp is now 100% freeware again)
- Removed: gen_jumpex & UnicodeTaskbarFix (making way for native implementations)
- Removed: [in_wm] DRM support
- Replaced: CD playback and ripping now using native Windows API (instead of Sonic)
- Replaced: MP3 Decoder now mpg123 based (instead of Fraunhofer)
- Replaced: AAC Decoder now using Media Foundation (Vista and higher)
- Replaced: H.264 Decoder now using Media Foundation (Vista and higher)
- Replaced: MPEG-4 Pt.2 Decoder now using Media Foundation (Vista and higher)
- Updated: [in_vorbis] libogg 1.3.2 & libvorbis 1.3.5 (aoTuV b6.03)
- Updated: [libyajl] libyajl v2.1.0
- Updated: [OpenSSL] OpenSSL v1.0.1i
- Updated: [png] libpng v1.5.24
Disclaimer:
Keep in mind that Winamp 5.8 is an official release but not actually stable and as such is not supported by Radionomy, thus, it is riddled with numerous bugs and may lead to unforeseen software crashes. If you choose to install it, do so at your own risk.
This is a leak. While Neowin does not encourage piracy and does not directly host any of these files, the existence of this material simply cannot be ignored, as it constitutes a vital source for behind-the-scenes information about Winamp past and future development.
You can grab the latest Winamp 5.8 beta build from the news source. The VirusTotal scan result can be checked online here.
View: Winamp Home page | Winamp Forums