It may take a while, but after four years there is a new version of Winamp

After more than four years of development, the rebirth of Winamp returns to media land with the release candidate of version 5.9. After version 5.666 (December 2013), no new version of the program was released, especially version 5.8 of 2018 was not an official update.

Version 5.9 RC1 Build 9999 is now available from Nullsoft, but still comes with a long list of known issues. No wonder, then, that a second release candidate will undoubtedly follow. Either way, an important step has now been taken towards a modern Winamp media player.

Winamp 5.9 Classic Skin

The project team is now officially leaving the beta phase, which according to initial plans should have happened much earlier. Too many obstacles, however, slowed things down. , but there were too many stumbling blocks holding the team back. The changelog says the following about this: “This is the culmination of four years of work since the release of 5.8. Two development teams and a pandemic break in between.”

Winamp 5.9

• Improved: Windows 11 compatibility
• Improved: Reading https:// streams
• Improved: Updated and neater html playlist code generation
• Improved: [in_mkv] vp8 support
• Improved: [in_mod] Reading compressed .itz, .mdz, .s3z and .xmz modules
• Improved: [ml_wire] New Working Podcast Directory
• Improved: [out_ds] Correctly displays device information in Unicode format
• Fixed: [in_midi/in_mkv/nu/pfc] memory leaks
• Fixed: [in_mp3] empty genre id3 displayed as Blues or Psychobilly
• Fixed: [jnetlib/ml_online/ml_wire] JSAPI2 JavaScript API
• Miscellaneous: lame_enc & libsndfile now static links instead of dynamic dlls
• Miscellaneous: libmpg123, libflac & zlib now static links instead of dynamic dlls
• Miscellaneous: added libalac.dll to shared folder as part of alac update
• Miscellaneous: major compiler overhaul
• Miscellaneous: many other general tweaks, improvements, fixes and optimizations
• Miscellaneous: Minimum operating system requirement is now Windows 7 SP1
• Miscellaneous: new online help section and new articles
• Miscellaneous: SDK now compatible with VS2017 and later
• Miscellaneous: Versioning syntax changed to v5.xx
• Miscellaneous: WinampMicrosoft.VC142.CRT runtimes are now installed on Win7/8
• Removed: Bento Browser tab – Goodbye and thanks for all the fishing!
• Updated: [alac/in_mp4] ALAC 2017-11-03-c38887c5
• Updated: [enc_lame] BLADE 3.100.1
• Updated: [freetype.wac] free type 2.12.1
• Updated: [gif] giflib 5.1.4
• Updated: [in_cdda] libdiscid 0.6.2
• Updated: [in_flac/enc_flac] libFLAC 1.3.4
• Updated: [in_mod] libopenmpt 0.7.0 & Portaudio 19.7.0
• Updated: [in_mp3] libmpg123 1.29.3
• Updated: [in_vorbis] libogg 1.3.5 & libvorbis 1.3.7
• Updated: [in_wave] libsndfile 1.1.0
• Updated: [OpenSSL] OpenSSL 3.0.3
• Updated: [png] libpng 1.6.37
• Updated: [vp8] WebM libvpx 1.11.0
• Updated: [zlib] zlib 1.2.12

Sources:
win the future, Winamp Forums