Improvements tips for 5.9+

[PeterK.]

If it's a shoutcast stream, and the broadcaster provides it, u can see artwork.

Please provide some stream links so I can see the Album Cover. Because according to this post it is not possible.

If it isn't coming from a shoutcast source tho, hard to see how winamp could do this.

On the other side if Winamp is going to be the ultimate media playing machine and state-of-the-art app the ability of showing ALL album covers from Online Radios is paramount, do you not think? It cannot be that AIMP can show them and Winamp cannot.

[MrSinatra]

Please provide some stream links so I can see the Album Cover. Because according to this post it is not possible.

that post is from 2010.

i don't listen to many streams, but i did run one, and i worked with DrO on this feature, (i did testing and feedback).

http://wiki.winamp.com/wiki/SHOUTcast_XML_Metadata_Specification#APIC_-_Picture_Data

that ^ ...is bc the DSP itself, will grab the local artwork if the broadcaster has artwork to go with whatever files they are streaming out/broadcasting. thats what is meant by "in stream packet."

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=372044

3) This version includes artwork support but requires a v2.2.x or newer version of the v2.x SHOUTcast DNAS in order to be able to use it.

& note this in the winamp 5.64 release notes:

* Improved: [in_mp3] Shoutcast v2 in-stream artwork support (and other misc fixes)

On the other side if Winamp is going to be the ultimate media playing machine and state-of-the-art app the ability of showing ALL album covers from Online Radios is paramount, do you not think? It cannot be that AIMP can show them and Winamp cannot.

i don't use AIMP, what is the source of the streams?

i'm just saying that depending on who is using what to broadcast, (protocol, metadata provided, etc) winamp will have a hard time figuring out what is being played and getting the right art for it. as of right now, winamp has no metadata lookups AT ALL, so i would think that has a priority. if they figure out audio-fingerprinting, maybe they could apply that to any stream as well.

[PeterK.]

Please remember running a decent update on those internal icons. 70% of them are not bigger than 32x32 at 256 colors. It is 2019 in two months, Winamp desperately needs a nice series of modern icons in the range of 16x16 up to 512x512 pixel.

... i don't use AIMP, what is the source of the streams

This one for example: Radio Paradise. And a screenshot showing Album Cover while streaming. I got the picture from an ex-Winamp fan.

[MrSinatra]

Just linking:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=453790

[bgd]

My list is short:

Do not change/remove the Winamp Classic skin
Do not change the Winamp layout in any way
Refresh the icons and GUI only minimally so that they don't look blocky on 4K screens but don't change their look
Add the ability to change playback speed (e.g. something similar to the PaceMaker plugin)
Vastly improve the buit-in Winamp equalizer in terms of features and performance (iZotope Ozone for Winamp, released in 2001, is still the gold standard for me)

[Thermaltake]

It would be great to see again that autotag for unknown songs if that could be possible.

[thevan]

5.8 seems good to me. I'm just hoping Radionomy doesn't fuck it up.

Open-sourcing the thing would be ideal though.

[sage2020]

Since winamp will use windows media foundation now, it should take full advantage of all the encoders and decoders WMF has to offer. For example, we can still encode AAC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Foundation#Supported_media_formats

If encoding/decoding support varies by windows release (I don't know if vista has AAC encoding, and I don't think windows XP and below has much of anything at all) then I suppose winamp would have to detect the system and remove encoder/decoder support accordingly...

[MrSinatra]

My understanding is it does. Why do u think it can't?

[sage2020]

I'm on 5.8 right now and my encoding options are FLAC through libflac, MP3 (not sure what encoder is being used but I highly recommend LAME if winamp is using something else), vorbis using aoTuV (aoTuV or libvorbis is fine), and then WAV and WMA (which might be using windows media foundation encoders). However these are the only formats I see.

AAC m4a files play just fine, and winamp is apparently using the media foundation for decoding, but there's no way to encode files into AAC-LC even though it's supported by the media foundation.

[MrSinatra]

I'm on 5.8 right now and my encoding options are FLAC through libflac, MP3 (not sure what encoder is being used but I highly recommend LAME if winamp is using something else), vorbis using aoTuV (aoTuV or libvorbis is fine), and then WAV and WMA (which might be using windows media foundation encoders). However these are the only formats I see.

AAC m4a files play just fine, and winamp is apparently using the media foundation for decoding, but there's no way to encode files into AAC-LC even though it's supported by the media foundation.

http://forums.winamp.com/showpost.php?p=3166922&postcount=105

[sage2020]

http://forums.winamp.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=105

I understand that you can do this. I'm not talking about the fhg encoder here. In future versions of winamp, nobody is going to want to find an old version of winamp (5.666) and install that, then install a new version of winamp on top of the old version just to bring back features due to radionomy not having rights to portions of the software that AOL used (such as fhg aac).

Windows can encode AAC-LC by default using the media foundation. I understand it can't do HE-AAC, but this is mostly not an issue. HE-AAC has much more limited use cases, and if you're encoding music (such as ripping a CD to your music library in AAC format) you probably want AAC-LC 128 bitrate or higher.

It's better to have an AAC-LC only encoder included in winamp than no AAC encoder included at all, with the only way to get an AAC encoder by downloading an old version of the software. Most users would be totally fine with just a AAC-LC encoder, and to reiterate, it's better than nothing at all.

[Obi-Wan]

The developers forgot to mention in changelog, that they have switched mp3 decoding engine [in_mp3] from FhG IIS to libmpg123. It was a good decoder (mpg123), but probably not as good as THE decoder from Fraunhofer IIS. So:
1) It is worth mention to add this change in changelog
2) Maybe it could be switched back to FhG IIS decoder

[DJ Egg]

Hi Obi-Wan

5.8 changelog does have this line

* Replaced: MP3 Decoder now mpg123 based (instead of Fraunhofer)

iirc, AOL had a special deal with Thomson/FhG for the mp3 decoder and aac encoder.
Audiovalley/Radionomy doesn't have any such deal.

[TimbreWolf]

I still use v5.666 since it works perfectly for me, and considering how much I rely on it I need some good motivation to risk an update. Apart from Linux compatibility (which is I know is difficult), the biggest improvement for me would be better management of playlists so that they can be better organised than just having a big long list of them as at present. E.g. adding:

• Ability to organise playlists into sections/groups/folders.
• Ability to view playlists as tabs and simultaneously side by side.

EDIT: Another feature that comes to mind is the ability to search the preferences menu... I always have difficulty remembering where certain options are to be found there.