Winamp 5 Review

The most highly anticipated winamp 5 is finally out. After the major let down of version 3, the guys at winamp decided to take the fibonacci route, which meant that the next version would include the best of both worlds (2+ 3). After downloading it the first day it came out, and playing with it for a while it does meet up to the expetations. It combines with ease the stability of the winamp 2 core engine and the skinnabilibity of winamp 3. This long wait between updates has lead to some new competition from iTunes and other major players.

Installation was a breeze and even if you dont take the "customized" installation it is very easy to assign or take back file associations, incase you like to play certain files with a different player. I prefer that
people take the customized installation since this gives you the option of not adding all those painful AOL icons.

Start up time for the program is lightning fast which was one of the trademarks of the older versions. The default skin is the new blue look which kind of looks like music match, which is very easy to get used to. But I prefer the old school look and that is also their recommendation for slower computers.

First off we start with the good features:-

One of its main functions is playing music, and this it does very well. Users should have no trouble organizing
their music and tweaking the equalizer to achieve the perfect sound for your system. Like before it also comes pre
loaded with a number of presets.

With winamp 3 many people couldnt use their old plugins which was a big let down, but winamp 5 not only allows you
to use all your winamp 2 plugins, you can also use the old skins with no issues whatsoever. This gives users a huge
number of plugins, visualizations that can be used.

The video player can handle a plethora of formats, but in most cases users would stick to their default players as
far as video is concerned.

Here are some of the new features:-

The "more info" which gets biographical information of the artist and also an option to buy cd's online.

A better media library, which organizes all your media ( audio and video ), and has sub categories like "most-played", "top rated" etc. The "rescan files" and "remove duplicate files." options really stand out.

Now come some of the things which i found were not that great:-

Although it does support AAC files it doesnt play back songs that are recorded with Itunes or Nero.

Also if you want mp3 encoding and full speed burning you have to upgrade to the pro version which will set you back $14.95, this is an option that is available in iTunes for free!!

The video player is good, but doesnt pack enough control features like color adjustment etc.


Despite some minor setbacks, winamp 5 is a real breakthrough and without a doubt races ahead of winamp 3. This time it really does whip the llama's ass !!

You can get your copy from winamp.com