Obituary: Nullsoft Winamp (21 Apr 1997 – 20 Dec 2013, 16 y.o.)

Around a month ago, the news stories already started making the rounds. I first saw it on Slashdot, proclaiming that Winamp was to be shut down on the 20th December 2013.

The banner on Winamp’s website definitely said that it would be no longer available. Since that time, many people have poured out their tributes to the “great” media player, one which fell quite severely from grace after AOL’s acquisition. Today, is the 20th of December in Australia, and although it has not reached the 20th of December in the US, I felt this is probably the better time to muster up my tribute to Winamp, and what it meant to me.

Why I loved Winamp

Winamp was a media player software from a company called Nullsoft Inc. Their name was a cheeky play upon the Microsoft name, and Winamp was their flagship product. The media players at the time tended to be monolithic software which was unsophisticated with very narrow format support – playlists, EQs, and fancy displays were not part of the mix.

The first true release of Winamp 1.0 was a shareware software, which was a commonly told fairytale about how shareware could become too successful. It was said that the $10 registration fee was sufficient enough funding that the next version of Winamp was made freeware! I didn’t use Winamp 1.0, as by that time, I had not yet discovered MP3s or the need for a media player (having no dial-up internet on a regular basis).

The Winamp 2.0 series was the one I remember best – it was free, it was small and fast to download over dialup, it was capable of playlists, EQ, visualization (if your computer could handle it) and it was modular with a plug-in interface so you could extend the capabilities of the media player itself. It was also immensely popular – it was the version which lured AOL to purchase Nullsoft itself. One of the most memorable sounds was the demo.mp3 file provided, which proudly states “Winamp. It really whips the llama’s ass!” It seems that its ass-whipping days are drawing to a close.

In fact, I liked the Winamp 2 series so much, that even on modern installations of Winamp, I refuse to use anything BUT the Classic Skin.

Its contribution might not be entirely apparent, but let me list some:

• It was one of the main reasons for the existence of the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) which is a lightweight installer/uninstaller, an alternative to the formerly clunky Installshield Wizard, or the newer Microsoft Installer.
• It popularized the MP3 format, and bought a familiar interface which resembled the stereos of the day.
• It also showed that extensible plug-in architecture can be valuable and indeed possible, which ensured that the player itself could support more formats with additional plugins (e.g. Musepack).
• It had good decode versatility with adjustable buffering which was vital in trying to decode MP3 on older 80486DX2’s which barely had enough grunt for Windows 95 alone.
• Winamp was the primary source and client for the “high quality” MP3 internet radio boom of Shoutcast (which has since died down a little), and also tried to pioneer internet video in their Nullsoft Video format.
• It was very robust against VBR files, improperly coded/damaged files, and provided comprehensive information on files.

It was also the favoured media player for DJ’s at parties (at that time) because of it’s more sophisticated queuing, fading and visualization capabilities. In fact, the Advanced Visualization Studio, Tiny Fullscreen and also Milkdrop2 (of later releases) still make many other visualization effects look childish!

It was after AOL’s acquisition that problems began to appear in Winamp, much of it blamed on mismanagement – the release of Winamp 3 would prove to be a low point of the history of Winamp. They had tried to incorporate many few features, and had a new default skin, but it was buggy, bloated and slow. It was if they had lost their heritage entirely.

There was no Winamp 4, instead, they chose to release Winamp 5 with the reasoning that it was the best from Winamp 2 and Winamp 3 (2+3=5). They had returned to a level of stability and sanity but not without losing many users to alternative players (iTunes, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, foobar2000). They also re-introduced a bit of a payment, but not for the core features. The additional features such as watching MP4 video, transcoding, ripping at full speed, burning at full speed were limited to those with a Winamp Pro license. The story ends with version 5.666, the last version currently on offer for download (but possibly not for long).

It was ironic, because less than a year ago, I was trying to convince one of my friends that it was “worth” installing Winamp as a music player. It seems the world has largely moved on and forgotten about it, but I will still continue to use it.

Quick Tour

Installing the latest version of Winamp is a cinch. Just follow the dialogues – this is much modernized compared to the earlier versions of NSIS which presented a smaller window with many tickboxes instead.

I think the main window (illustrated earlier) is pretty self-explanatory. The standard deck-controls are present, with volume and balance sliders. The best part was that the deck buttons were mapped to keyboard keys zxcvb so you could control that quickly, along with volume on the up/down keys. The side buttons (letters) next to the graphical frequency plot allow you to get info, open visualizations, enable double-size mode, etc.

There is an equalizer below, which (in the early days) took up surprisingly little CPU to implement unlike some others of the time. And underneath was a playlist, which saved and loaded in .m3u format.

One of the biggest features in later versions of Winamp (which was actually a plug-in) was the Jump to File hotkey. Pressing j would bring up this window, where you can key in part of a song name to see matches in your current playlist (which you could add directories recursively to, so obviating the need to make a media library at all) and enqueue them next or play them now.

The extensive use of the plug-in based architecture is visible when one opens the Preferences panel.

The whole input, output, visualization, DSP and general purpose trees are formed by installed plugins in the form of dll files. Newer distributions of Winamp bundled more plugins, and are capable of playing almost anything as a result.

MP3 decoding was very configurable, allowing you to tweak the decoder for less CPU usage at the expense of quality – important for older machines.

There was also provision to change the streaming buffer, for Shoutcast services, which were originally MP3 (now also AAC) encoded internet radio stations.

A vast amount of information was provided as well about your sound card by the output modules. There was also an output module which allowed you to dump the output audio to disk (so you COULD use Winamp as a file converter too!).

Extensive buffer preferences really made it one of my favourite players on older machines, as they could get distracted by other roles, and “catch up” on decoding later.

Winamp also had frills – fading on stop for example. At first it seemed weird, but then I got used to it and didn’t mind.

The most fun was in the Visualizations menu where you had the choice of several visualization modules. Originally, I remember there was a Tiny Fullscreen module, which seems not to be included anymore.

Milkdrop2 is a “nearly no configuration” (to get started, but resolutions, frame rates, caps can be configured if you wish) visualization plugin that gives visualizations which are hard to rival. It also has desktop mode, which consumes much graphics resources, but allows you to replace your wallpaper with the visualizations instead of running in a window or running full-screen.

Of course, Advanced Visualization Studio needs a bit more thought to use properly, and it allows you to define your own styles of visualization by configuring elements. But it’s a bit complex for your average user – so I’ve always used either Milkdrop or Tiny Fullscreen and I’ve always been happy with them!

People looking to run their own Shoutcast MP3 radio station would have no doubt used Winamp solely as a source, as it hosts the Shoutcast Source Plugin, although the input can be taken from line and sent to an Icecast server instead.

Conclusion

I think that modern software may have much to learn from the design of Winamp. It was lean, simple, and relatively reliable at what it did. It was extensible which made it resistant to being unseated and obsoleted. People liked it, and people paid for it.

When the interests of AOL were impressed upon it, and unreasonable development expectations abounded, the code faultered and that opened up the chance for rivals. I think it illustrates how critical management can be to the success of a project. Reasonable expectations are important.

It also shows a little of how a small nimble team, unburdened by a large overbearing company, can have the energy and agility to make something great. I would still continue to use Winamp until it’s pried out of my dead hands, as it still does what I want, and it does it simply, and brilliantly.