Hi there.
Winamp actually has some good things in it - and it's not plagued by that well known disease that plagues most programs -- "Feature-itus" where you take a basic well running program and stuff it so full of "extras" that nobody really wants and complicates the whole thing.
These days you only need for Audio for these 3 codecs - FLAC, WAV and MP3 ==> all of which are handled by winamp. It can also handle some weird ones like APE but CUE TOOLS can convert single file APE/FLAC Cue files to the original tracks in FLAC / WAV / MP3 anyway. (Video such as Mp4 / Mkv etc are handled easily enough by multi-media players such as VLC). I prefer playing music with a pure AUDIO application anyway and Winamp has (and still does) fit the bill perfectly.
The Pro version of Monkey Media (the only other possible alternative with built in ripping etc) is quite a large 50 USD (expensive for essentially an AUDIO player) and it doesn't do ANYTHING for me that WINAMP doesn't -- also it uses FREEDB for music retrieval --for me GRACENOTE is STREETS better - especially for Classical Music. I don't also like the APE format -- I stick now to well known formats like mp3 or open like WAV and FLAC - although media monkey does handle these I will admit.
As well as handling PLAYLISTS WINAMP can play by FOLDERS which for a lot of people is also a very useful facility - especially if you can't be bothered with playlists and there's no limit on the folder size if you want to play a whole slew of music without having to create an enormous playlist.
The built in CD ripper is fast and fine and unlike a lot of audio players it uses GRACENOTE for its track / CD info. For Classical music this is far superior to the various other music info services out there like FREEDB.
The Mixer is decent too -- I hate a lot of those "pre-set" or canned settings which are modelled on usually grossly over emphasizing the bass or designed for people using relatively poor (in serious AUDIO music rather than for gaming / movies) speakers.
All in all I think Dec 20 will be a sad day for a lot of people - although Winamp will still work indefinitely.
I even have an old Minidisc application - simple burner which rips from CD to Minidisc - which works fine on my W2003 Virtual machine and the CD info can still be obtained from GRACENOTE so I don't think getting CD / music info from Gracenote via WINAMP will suddenly stop either.
@Monkey Media developers - any reading this thread -- you should be able to ADD Gracenote to your music retrieval search -- it has a PUBLIC API - for a 50 USD product allow the users to CHOOSE which music retrieval service to use. Here's a link to the developers API
https://developer.gracenote.com/web-api
Cheers
jimbo
that could be announced by December 20, the date when Winamp is set to go dark
has nothing to share on this, which is not at all surprising given the fact that the tech giant usually remains tight-lipped on future acquisitions.
