Welcome to another Winamp plugin-in spotlight. In this post, we are featuring iZotope Vinyl, a 3rd-party Winamp plug-in that lets you make your mp3s sound like vinyl.

If the rise of CD's didn't kill vinyl, the birth of the mp3 generation definitely drove a stake through its heart. With music now available at the click of a button, so many music fans whose earliest exposure to the Beatles came in an intricately packaged record case are now yearning for those days when cover art actually mattered--and, more importantly, when music had that intangible grainy quality to it. While it's certainly great, in some respect, to be able to listen to digitally remastered, crystal clear renditions of classic songs, there's also something to be said for that nostalgic bit of imperfect sound quality that was so specific to records.

But before you go getting all misty on us, though, you should know that you can get that same vinyl sound out of all your mp3s on Winamp. It'll take a little plug-in sleight of hand, but within minutes, you can rewind the clock, and pretend like you're listening to your favorite tunes like they sounded (or would've sounded) during your teenage years.

Step 1:

The first thing you'll have to do is download the iZotope plug-in, which you can find here. All you have to do is click on the "Download" button.

Welcome to another addition of Llama Answers. Thanks again to everyone for all of your feedback. As promised, every-so-often we take your questions & post the answers on our blog. As always you can reference the help documentation and Winamp forums for further information or assistance.


No Sound

It's difficult to tell why users are no longer hearing any volume with their audio files, but below are a few troubleshooting ideas that may be able to help you out.

The most obvious thing to check would be that the volume slider in the main Winamp window is up high enough. Sometimes you can accidentally/unknowingly zero it with the mouse scroll wheel.

You should also verify that the Main & Wave levels are up high enough in Windows Volume Control Panel. And obviously check to see that your speakers are on and up high enough to be heard.

The next thing to check would be that the Direct Sound Output is the selected Output Plugin in Prefs -> Plugins -> Output. Sometimes, users switch to DiskWriter Output and forget to switch back after they are done.

It's also advisable to make sure your soundcard is selected in the Device drop-down menu in DirectSound Output config (as opposed to the default "Primary Sound Driver" option), and recommended to checkmark "Enable hardware acceleration" (which is checkmarked by default, on clean installs).

One other possible thing to check (although unlikely cause, but you never know)...

Check or Uncheck "Allow 24-bit playback" in Winamp -> Prefs -> Playback
(e.g. may cause problems with old 16-bit soundcards if checkmarked. If you don't have an old 16-bit soundcard, then you don't even need to try this suggestion)


Rip MP3s in Winamp Pro

Yes, you can only rip to mp3 with the Pro version. Winamp 5 comes with a Transcoding Tool for converting between MP3, WMA, M4A/AAC, OGG, FLAC and WAV formats (MP3 Encoding is available in Winamp Pro only). To use the Transcoder, right click the file(s) in the Media Library or Playlist window and select "Send To > Format Converter".

Select the MP3 Encoder from the drop down menu and adjust any other settings, if needed (e.g. destination folder, quality/bitrate, etc.) Then click OK.


Burning Audio CDs

Yes, but you can only burn Audio CD's with Winamp. The burning of MP3, Data CDs, and CD-Text writing is not yet supported.

Issues Converting to MP3s

It depends on what file format you are trying to convert to mp3? Winamp can natively convert m4a, mod, ogg, flac, wav, & wma to mp3.

If it's any other format (ape, spc, mpc, etc.), then it depends on whether the 3rd-party input supports the Winamp 5.x transcoder api or not. Many 3rd-party plugins do not.

If the source format is one of the natively supported formats, then there are a couple of exceptions... Winamp cannot convert any drm-protected formats to any other format (e.g. licensed drm-protected wma files of the type purchased from Napster or Walmart, or drm-protected m4p files of the type purchased from the iTunes Music Store).

You might also experience a problem converting very low quality WAV files (e.g. 11KHz, 8-bit, mono) into mp3 if the selected mp3 bitrate is too high (in which case, try selecting a lower bitrate in the Format Converter settings).

If you are still having issues, you should verify that the source files actually play properly in Winamp.


Change default location where Winamp stores files

Winamp -> Playlist Editor -> Add button (+) -> Add Files

Browse to the desired folder
Select some files
Click OK

This setting should now be the same for the Media Library -> "Add media to library" dialog.

If not, close Winamp & go to your Winamp settings folder
Go to: Start -> Run
Type/Paste the following and hit Enter:
%appdata%\winamp

Open winamp.ini in Notepad

Scroll down to the cwd= line and edit the value accordingly (path to your desired folder)
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If you are experiencing other general issues, check out our previous editions: Llama Answers 1, Llama Answers 2, and Llama Answers 3. Or check out the Winamp Support blog post for a list of general support related links.

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