There are two versions of Winamp available when you visit their site: Free, and Pro. The "free" version is indeed freeware.
Winamp is good, but you might want to check XMMS. It's free too, and it plays M4A's which is good if you have an ipod but hate Itunes
Quintessential Player 4.51 from Quinnware(www.quinnware.com) is a free and great mediaplayer for Win32. Also check out The Core Media Player (www.corecoded.com). Also free.
foobar2000 is completly free and very powerful audio player. "Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint and native support for several popular audio formats."
During Installation Winamp will ask for permission to report anonymous usage statistics. In older versions this option defaulted to yes. In newer versions it defaults to no. You really have to trust AOL about the anonumous part, if you enable this feature.
Quintessential CD Player is a great package that is also freeware and spyware-free.
During the install process Winamp installs WildTangent, which some people feel (and several AdWare programs agree) is AdWare/SpyWare. I personally use foobar2000 for my music playback and Windows Media Player for video playback.
Under Windows I always use the videolan-client (VLC media player) from www.videolan.org for all my video- and audio- activities. It's GPL Software and available for all important platforms. It's really fast but also quite complete and one of the best pieces of multimedia-software, even if you don't need the superb streaming-capabilities.
winamp also supports flac files with the flac plug-in
It still can't connect to freedb.org!!!
Honestly I haven't used Winamp since they were bought by AOL but I can definitely say that VLC works very well.
The last time I installed Winamp it installed Gain which is of course Adware? I would remove Winamp unless I am wrong? Has it changed? The site creator said ,"This week I launched CleanSoftware.org, a resource site with a unique goal: listing free, daily-use software that is free from spyware, adware, and other malicious/intrusive components. "
the current version of Winamp is clean other recomendations are: (already mentioned) foobar http://www.foobar2000.org/ Media Player Classic: http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
Watch out for the WinAmp agent. It is enabled by default, but can be disabled by right clicking on the icon in the system tray and clicking "Disable WinAmp Agent" (or something along that line).
Are you sure you people who are getting WildTangent and Gain with Winamp getting it from Winamp.com? The Free and Pro versions avalible there are spyware-free, the only things you really have to worry about are the Winamp Agent and the eMusic links included in 5.08, both of which you can choose not to install. Sounds like you got Winamp from a place that packs spyware with the download.
The latest version installs some free icons and smileys by default. Watch out for those.
After some testing on my pc, i noticed that foobar uses about 6,500kb of memory to run while winamp used 15,650kb. According to me, foobar is the lighter and the best player.
IMHO Winamp: too resource intensive, really bloatware in some ways, otherwise ok. No spyware/adware afaik, just watch out for the agent (as mentioned earlier).and don't try using it for video.. I still recommend 2.x to friends, that's just awesome for regular mp3 listening. Free or Paid. VLC: actually the perfect player in many ways.. doesn't depend on DirectShow, handles everything under the sun (all video as well), streams and everything. Only, configuring can be tough (doesn't need much, mostly) and the playlist is very very basic. If you don't need much by way of playlisting, then perfect. Free. Foobar: great player. Configuration is, again, slightly icky.. but feature and power packed. Decent plalist management. Free. And it burns audio cds, and gets mp3 tags automatically from freedb (for whole albums). Awesome! Mplayer: another great s/w transported from linux. Plays anything (video and audio) pretty well. but no playlists, no gui even. Ok as a backup music player.
Winamp is great, but you can improve the sound-quality if you install some plugins. I recommend Enhancer 0.17, DFX (Too bad the free version dos not provide surround) and Jammix. After installing you'll find them all under Options|preferences|plugins|DSP/Effect. If you also install Muchfx2 you can use all these plugins together, instead of just the one: Open the Muchfx2 window and press "+" to add a plugin. After that, it's just a matter of getting the settings right. It should keep you busy for a while... DFX: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=143646 Enhancer: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=81361 Jammix: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=144753 Muchfx2: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=775
If you have Comodo personal firewall installed you will discover that even with all information sharing devices disabled in Winamp, if you have been running Winamp on your current session, as soon as you open iexplore Comodo will report that Winamp is utilizing iexplore through a dll to connect to the net, hidden behind iexplore. If you do not allow it to do so as iexplore attempts to load your page, you will be unable to load your webpage, wherever you are going. If that isn't the definition of spyware, I don't know what is. It makes me kind of angry. Try to post anything regarding this on Winamp's website and you will find that your are henceforth censured and barred from leaving comments in Winamp's forums. H K Kitty
I have WinAmp installed, and bought my copy last year - and have upgraded every upgrade, used the player for broadcasting my eRadio show, and everything else pretty much - Windows Media Plyer and I are NOT friends. I'm worried about this WinAgent and want to clean it off my system (and feel a bit betrayed by WinAmp). How do I do this? I just bought a copy of Pro for my old Mum, so she can watch vids and rip CD's, and during install I let "WinAmp Agent" [deselect] by default, and also [deselect] "System Tray Icon/Agent" under a parent heading during install 9not default). Looks like if you disable Winagent as a parent option, they still get you with the WinAgent as a child preference. How do I clean this off my system and hers...if she even has the problem? I DONT want WinAgent, WildTangent, Gain or anything else. Call me paranoid...they've already ruined one 2,000 dollar PC of mine, I don't want them to ruin my laptop too. Any advice is so appreciated. dj kiriaka aka tamatahead aka hot brain
The only reason I use Winamp -- Milkdrop visualization. As far as I know its not available for any other player? Also have never got any spyware reports, using the free version downloaded from winamp.com.
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