Winamp is returning, beta testing now.

[bug]

CD's or digital stores that sold high bitrate. Google Music(RIP) was excellent for this. I have half my digital library from Google Music. 100% DRM free MP3's. Loved it!

Google Music was great indeed (Google lost me when they turned on YouTube Music). But it wasn't an option when I started my collection, back in the '90s.

I might be missing some context. Still, don't care. I always have access to my library because I can take my collection with me regardless of an internet connection and I don't have to pay a monthly fee to have access to it. 64GB & 128GB MicroSD cards are useful indeed. And they're inexpensive.

And that's what I expect many people will do. I was just saying, there's convenience in streaming service and I think it's worth the small fee. I'm not saying everybody must subscribe, I was just explaining how Spotify is worth the cost for me.

 

[lexluthermiester]

But it wasn't an option when I started my collection, back in the '90s.

That's fair. Back then, I was ripping all my CD's for playing on.... wait for it.... yup, WinAmp. I was still doing 192kbps & 256kbps back then. HDD were pricey so I was making MP3 CD's.

And that's what I expect many people will do. I was just saying, there's convenience in streaming service and I think it's worth the small fee. I'm not saying everybody must subscribe, I was just explaining how Spotify is worth the cost for me.

Fair enough.

 

[AusWolf]

Google Music was great indeed (Google lost me when they turned on YouTube Music). But it wasn't an option when I started my collection, back in the '90s.

That's fair. Back then, I was ripping all my CD's for playing on.... wait for it.... yup, WinAmp. I was still doing 192kbps & 256kbps back then. HDD were pricey so I was making MP3 CD's.

Those were the days! Without the internet, exchanging MP3 CDs with my friends was my only source of music. Crappy 96-128 mbps, mostly. But nowadays, everything can be obtained in good quality, especially in car boot sales (=flea market) and second-hand music stores. Vinyl records and cassettes are still in production as well as audio CDs. A low quality, outdated music collection is not a reason to not listen to music offline anymore - it's a reason to try to get stuff in better quality (in my opinion).

 

[bug]

Those were the days! Without the internet, exchanging MP3 CDs with my friends was my only source of music. Crappy 96-128 mbps, mostly. But nowadays, everything can be obtained in good quality, especially in car boot sales (=flea market) and second-hand music stores. Vinyl records and cassettes are still in production as well as audio CDs.

What about recording straight from radio? And swearing when the DJ started to talk before the song was over.

A low quality, outdated music collection is not a reason to not listen to music offline anymore - it's a reason to try to get stuff in better quality (in my opinion).

Tbh, those tunes aren't even about quality anymore. They're about memories at this point.

 

[AusWolf]

What about recording straight from radio? And swearing when the DJ started to talk before the song was over.

Oh yes, done that too!

Tbh, those tunes aren't even about quality anymore. They're about memories at this point.

To me, that's just one more reason to get those tunes in high quality offline. There was something magical about that time. Maybe the feeling of finally getting my hands on a PC game or music that I'd been hunting for months or years. Today, everything's just a click away, which is good, but also sad in a way. Sometimes it's the anticipation that gives stuff its value, which is something we don't feel anymore.

 

[The red spirit]

Nothing sounds better than a well-maintained vinyl record, or one ripped as lossless audio.

That's objectively not true. Lossless digital files will always be better than vinyl, unless you specifically enjoy analog format flaws.

 

[bug]

That's objectively not true. Lossless digital files will always be better than vinyl, unless you specifically enjoy analog format flaws.

Very few things wrt audio are objective

 

[Ferather]

I don't know any lossless analogue direct that doesn't lose audio in the process, If it switch to analogue direct I get an instant -4db and signal degradation.
Its enough degradation (and THD) to make all lossless audio, lossy, in fact DTS Surround (transcoding PCM) is less lossy than analogue.

 

[The red spirit]

Very few things wrt audio are objective

Not at all, audio quality is very objective measure. If it's accurate to the sources, then it's good audio and if it's not, then it's poor audio. It's very measurable. It's just that people often don't care.

 

[londiste]

That's obvious. They have no real strategy, so why the hype? All their website says is that they are looking for ideas and that they will hire people. They have no idea what they will do and their only asset is Winamp name which some nerds still remember and general public doesn't.

They have strategy. AudioValley seems to be the one behind it this time around: https://www.audiovalley.com/
I bet this becomes the deal of whole platform, store, streaming and anything else you could throw at it.

We can only hope this revival will bring along a decent enough player of Winamp fame - plugins, configurable (minimal!) installation, light on resources etc. Not counting on this part though.

Either way I don't expect anything good out of this and I don't understand why Winamp even became somewhat popular at their peak. It looks like one of the hundred music players that did exactly the same thing.

You are too young or had no interest in digital audio until much later.
Winamp was THE music player back then for playing MP3. There were no hundred players. You could count the competition on one hand for quite a while. This was the days of early Pentiums and playing MP3 was not exactly an easy task to do, even less so in the background. Winamp added a good (and pretty enough at the time) UI to it, with support for skins and plugins. If you want to gauge the impact of Winamp consider the fact that a lot of players support Winamp plugins to this day.

Edit:
Also, nullsoft created Shoutcast and added it to Winamp which also had a significant role in making it the de facto standard player.

 

[bug]

Not at all, audio quality is very objective measure. If it's accurate to the sources, then it's good audio and if it's not, then it's poor audio. It's very measurable. It's just that people often don't care.

Except that the source is the artist's voice/instrument and you can't directly measure that. Even if you could, it would be an analogue measurement (errors and whatnot). For all practical intents, the source is not available in the audio world.
And then, regardless of how good your material is, you still listen to it over an analogue speaker or headphone that imprints its own signature to the output signal.

For video, it's easy, you pull up a CIE diagram and compare to that. But there's no CIE diagram equivalent for sound. It's all relative.

 

[Ferather]

I would worry about the input quality more, once you have the hardware that is. FLAC is more todays standard than MP3.
You could have the latest and best equipment, but bad audio input = bad audio output.

Restoration enhancers can only do so much.

----

Edit: DTS, Dolby and FLAC can be directly streamed to the audio device, or decoded like MP3 to PCM.

 

[Jose Jeswin]

Eagerly waiting for winamp...winamp was my go to audio player....jetaudio was for video playback....from 2002 to 2008....Then switched to AIMP for audio and MPC-Black Edition with madvr for video...I
wonder if new winamp will support ASIO and WasAPI?...

 

[The red spirit]

They have strategy. AudioValley seems to be the one behind it this time around: https://www.audiovalley.com/
I bet this becomes the deal of whole platform, store, streaming and anything else you could throw at it.

We can only hope this revival will bring along a decent enough player of Winamp fame - plugins, configurable (minimal!) installation, light on resources etc. Not counting on this part though.

And I don't. They have no real strategy, other than claiming it will be all in one player for everything. I don't think that they can pull that off. Even big players like Apple, Spotify and etc. can't, why would some company from 20 years ago would actually pull that off?

You are too young or had no interest in digital audio until much later.
Winamp was THE music player back then for playing MP3. There were no hundred players. You could count the competition on one hand for quite a while. This was the days of early Pentiums and playing MP3 was not exactly an easy task to do, even less so in the background. Winamp added a good (and pretty enough at the time) UI to it, with support for skins and plugins. If you want to gauge the impact of Winamp consider the fact that a lot of players support Winamp plugins to this day.

But that's just skins. As for technical achievement that sounds pretty good, but also remember that back then people also played tracker music too and that it took few years for computer power to literally double or triple, so Winamp quickly lost unique selling point. It may have been lighter, but if all computers 2-3 years later can do that task without problems, then that lightness argument just lost a ton of value. That was back then, this argument today along with customization argument mean nothing, when basically all competition is now light and customizable. And you are are right, I'm more of WMP 7 person.

Edit:
Also, nullsoft created Shoutcast and added it to Winamp which also had a significant role in making it the de facto standard player.

What is shoutcast?

Except that the source is the artist's voice/instrument and you can't directly measure that. Even if you could, it would be an analogue measurement (errors and whatnot). For all practical intents, the source is not available in the audio world.

That's why you use professional measuring equipment for objective measures with small margin of error. You are making it sound as if it is not possible to get really close to perfect measurement. Meanwhile in reality it's probably more accurate than uncompressed WAV file.

And then, regardless of how good your material is, you still listen to it over an analogue speaker or headphone that imprints its own signature to the output signal.

That has nothing to do with source.

For video, it's easy, you pull up a CIE diagram and compare to that. But there's no CIE diagram equivalent for sound. It's all relative.

There is, loudness of each frequency.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Winamp added a good (and pretty enough at the time) UI to it, with support for skins and plugins.

A lot of times plugins didnt play nice with others, even skins didnt like some plugins. I scoured the skins/plugins for hours trying to find something that worked with this or that, installing and reinstalling. Not like there much else to do back then. Download porn or watch paint dry, if you werent gaming. I seem to recall m$ doing the mad dash to support other formats and players, ahead of Apple, which is why you dont hear much of Quicktime anymore, I'm sure some form of it is floating around, but the codec didnt play nice at all.

 

[RadeonProVega]

Who really stopped using winamp? I haven't. After winamp kinda shut down or whatever, i stayed using version 5.0 from old version .com Nice to see it coming back. But i chuckle at the part about "remastered" everyone is remastering things now haha.

 

[bug]

That's why you use professional measuring equipment for objective measures with small margin of error. You are making it sound as if it is not possible to get really close to perfect measurement. Meanwhile in reality it's probably more accurate than uncompressed WAV file.

That has nothing to do with source.

The most accurate measurement in the world is meaningless in the absence of a reference

There is, loudness of each frequency.

Would you mind linking this reference for audio?

 

[The red spirit]

Would you mind linking this reference for audio?

There's nothing to link. I just think that it's a decent reference.

 

[Chrispy_]

I still use one of these, and I love it. Fun fact that I've lost it during my travels about 3 times, but I just keep buying it again.

Oh I didn't mean hardware players, I meant software players like Winamp. My phone has always been a plenty capable enough MP3 player that I never felt the need to carry around an additional piece of hardware, though I have to admit I was tempted to buy one before Android phones became a thing as the Nokias had limited playlist management abilities.

 

[Ferather]

@bug, @The red spirit, I believe you want to look into audio THD (ignore the power formulas, focus on Sine tests) and SPL (sound pressure level). Total harmonic distortion - Wikipedia

Edit: Prepare to get confused as you read more and more into THD, you want data that includes Sine, SPL and ideally dB measurements.
As far as I understand, there is a amount of amplification that can be done before THD is audible, is different per device.

----

I will use my Z906 as an example here, because they give the info in the manual.

Subwoofer: 165 watts RMS (6 ohms, at 52 Hz, at 10% THD)
Satellites: 335 watts RMS (4 ohms at 3.85kHz, at 10% THD)
SPL: > 110 dBC

This should be 99.x audio, 11 THD. However at 100 dBC or lower they may be no audible THD (lower than human audible range, >0 dB).
Also note, audible THD (1 dB or more) can be masked if the pure audio is a higher level, example 99 dB.

 

[bug]

@bug, @The red spirit, I believe you want to look into audio THD (ignore the power formulas, focus on Sine tests) and SPL (sound pressure level). Total harmonic distortion - Wikipedia

Edit: Prepare to get confused as you read more and more into THD, you want data that includes Sine, SPL and ideally dB measurements.
As far as I understand, there is a amount of amplification that can be done before THD is audible, is different per device.

----

I will use my Z906 as an example here, because they give the info in the manual.

Subwoofer: 165 watts RMS (6 ohms, at 52 Hz, at 10% THD)
Satellites: 335 watts RMS (4 ohms at 3.85kHz, at 10% THD)
SPL: > 110 dBC

This should be 99.x audio, 11 THD. However at 100 dBC or lower they may be no audible THD (lower than human audible range, >0 dB).
Also note, audible THD (1 dB or more) can be masked if the pure audio is a higher level, example 99 dB.

That's besides the point.

The point is, when it comes to video, content will target a predefined, standard, color space and you can always calibrate your display to see exactly what the video maker wants you to see.
When it comes to audio, you can measure sound all day, you still have no idea whether you're close to what the creator intended.

 

[Ferather]

I was talking audio, but the question was asked, how would you measure, well that's in general how you do it. A sine test compares the input to output.
If your input is 100% accurate, with sounds (piano, guitar, so on), then it will be an accurate test when testing the output measurement.

If you had 100% accurate output, then its 100% of the input, which is as the creator made it (even with THD, other in it).
Lets say my recording equipment is not 100% accurate and only 90%, then you get 10% inaccuracy with input.

Edit: I forgot synthesised sound, which technically has no IRL reference.

Edit 2: If I recorded some music, with 100% accuracy, and then added +2 dB of bass to the whole track, are the instruments now accurate?

 

[AusWolf]

Oh I didn't mean hardware players, I meant software players like Winamp. My phone has always been a plenty capable enough MP3 player that I never felt the need to carry around an additional piece of hardware, though I have to admit I was tempted to buy one before Android phones became a thing as the Nokias had limited playlist management abilities.

Oh I see. I still use Winamp up to this day, although VLC has been a friend of mine too.

As for phones, I find them cumbersome in terms of handling playlists, and controlling music player software in the background. Not to mention the lack of an equalizer in most.
A purpose-built MP3 player is much easier to use.

 

[lexluthermiester]

As for phones, I find them cumbersome in terms of handling playlists

That depends greatly on the music app you use. I love Android as a base for a music player because of the versatility.

 

[bug]

I was talking audio, but the question was asked, how would you measure, well that's in general how you do it. A sine test compares the input to output.
If your input is 100% accurate, with sounds (piano, guitar, so on), then it will be an accurate test when testing the output measurement.

If you had 100% accurate output, then its 100% of the input, which is as the creator made it (even with THD, other in it).
Lets say my recording equipment is not 100% accurate and only 90%, then you get 10% inaccuracy with input.

Edit: I forgot synthesised sound, which technically has no IRL reference.

Edit 2: If I recorded some music, with 100% accuracy, and then added +2 dB of bass to the whole track, are the instruments now accurate?

I didn't dispute any of that. I was just saying, video has a way of telling whether or not you're seeing what the creator wanted you to see, audio doesn't. That what makes almost everything about audio subjective. (And I haven't even touched on people's ears or age.)