A new version of Winamp has arrived, with an initial RC1 (Release Candidate 1) installer for the classic media player now available for download.
You may (or may not) remember Winamp fondly, but it certainly represents a great nostalgic trip for many people who used the media player to listen to their MP3 music many years ago (the app was first released in 1997), complete with costumes, views, interface skins, and the like.
And now, a revamped version has arrived in the form of Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999, which follows a 5.8 release that happened in 2018.
as seen by hacks (opens in new tab) (through computer beeping (opens in new tab)), the release grades (opens in new tab) tell us that: “This is the culmination of 4 years of work since version 5.8. Two development teams and a pandemic-induced hiatus period in between.
“To the end user it might not seem like there are a lot of changes, but the biggest and hardest part was migrating the entire project from VS2008 to VS2019 and getting everything to build successfully.”
Apparently, with this RC1 app, the ‘base’ is all out, and the developer says they will now focus on adding more features. One big benefit offered here, though, is better compatibility with Windows 11, which will no doubt be music to the ears of those who made the leap from Windows 10.
Analysis: Moderate your expectations right now
While this is a brand new version, it’s clear that there’s still a lot of work to be done on Winamp – not just in terms of features, but in solving problems. The release notes also state that while “extensive internal testing has already taken place”, there is still more to be done on that front and indeed “all features need testing” (on a broader basis).
That’s why the current incarnation is a Release Candidate, which basically means it’s a working preview version of the final product, but it still has a lot of bugs to work out. So keep that in mind if you want to get on board with Winamp at this point – it’s still a long way from the final version (which will come eventually, of course, although there may be a second RC2 released before).
Naturally, there are a bunch of known bugs flagged by the developer, and Ghacks points to issues with the Winamp installer being labeled a threat by some antivirus apps (including Bitdefender, according to user reports); but these are false positives that guarantee us the dev.
For now, then, this appears to be a working base version, as noted, with some major improvements – like better compatibility with Windows 11, as mentioned, and some work on playback support – and the meat of the features set to differentiate this. new app remastered from the old Winamp is yet to come.
We were previously promised that Winamp will be a platform that will give fans and artists the opportunity to connect – a rather vague statement, let’s face it. Of course, the new incarnation of the show is supposed to do something different, and presumably will aim to connect to streaming music services in some way, to boot. These are very different times from 25 years ago, and the world of MP3s, of course.
What makes us nervous is that it’s not yet clear exactly what Winamp will do differently, and we won’t be too excited – beyond a spark of simple nostalgia – until we actually see these new features being released and what they’ll deliver for. modern music lovers.
Time will tell, as always, and we suspect there’s a good chance there will be a good wait before more happens in terms of revealing Winamp’s new angle. And by all accounts, there’s still a lot of bug fixing and polishing to be done, even before that.