Check out the new "Winamp Add-ons" Online Service. It allows you to browse, search, and download new Skins, Plug-ins, and Visualizations from right inside your Winamp Media Player. It uses the same galleries that you can find on Winamp.com.

Skins - http://www.winamp.com/skins
Plug-ins - http://www.winamp.com/plugins

Winamp Add-ons should come as a default Online Service, but if you don't already see it listed under Online Services in your Media Library tab:

1) Click on "Online Services" in the left nav
2) Search for "Winamp Add-ons"
3) Click on the +Add button

Sick of manually adjusting volume between different tracks? If you've ever listened to a playlist or used the shuffle feature, you've definitely noticed that various albums and tracks playback at extreme levels... undoubtedly causing you to frantically adjust your volume.

To fix the problem Winamp supports Replay Gain (or ReplayGain), which is a "proposed standard to normalize the perceived loudness of computer audio formats" (check-out the Wikipedia article for more info). Not getting into the details, basically what happens when you use the Replay Gain feature is that Winamp will do an analysis on all selected tracks in an effort to automatically level the volume between those tracks. When you turn on Replay Gain, you'll have two options: track-gain or album-gain.

Track-gain is performed on all selected tracks so that they will be at equal volume on playback. Whereas with album-gain analysis, an additional value is measured to take into account the intended volume differences for tracks on the same album. When you calculate Replay Gain, you should ALWAYS select "Save as Album". This will save BOTH album gain and track gain. The only reason you'd ever want to do "Save Track Data" is if you had an incomplete album (such as only having one track from a particular album).

There are two important things to note before you calculate replay gain. The first is that once you've calculated the Replay Gain it adds metadata to the audio files WITHOUT actually altering the original audio data. Winamp writes the Replay Gain info to the file tags (for mp3, wma, ogg, flac, m4a, & aac files), so that Winamp (or other app/player which supports RG) can read it. The second thing to note is that Replay Gain tends to turn down the overall volume. Since a quieter overall music listening experience might throw people for a spin, we thought we'd mention it ahead of time. The idea is that the "target" loudness level was chosen so that certain music (such as classical music) didn't have to be cranked up to the point where the songs start to clip or distort.

How to apply RG to your music files:

1) Select the files you would like adjusted (DO NOT try to calculate your entire library at once)
2) Right click and choose Send To -> Calculate Replay Gain




3) Once the files are analyzed, choose "Save As Album".
- only choose "Save Track data" if you just have one (or a few) tracks from a particular album.




4) Once you've scanned your library, you'll still need to set your Preferences to turn on Replay Gain. Put a check-mark next to the Preferences to turn it on. (Ctrl+P) Playback -> Replay Gain tab -> Select "use Replay Gain". Under "Preferred source", you can freely toggle between the album & track playback options w/o rescanning. The only time you'll need to rescan is when you add new songs to your library.

- Select "Track" if you are going to listen to your library on shuffle or if listening to a playlist
- Select "Album" if you are going to listen to complete albums




Replay Gain Settings:

Amplification Mode: 'Apply Gain/Prevent Clipping' is default & recommended. It will level out the volume & prevent distortion.

Preferred Source: Choose between 'Track' (default) or 'Album' modes.

Disable if preferred source not available: Disables RG is e.g. 'Album' mode is selected but only 'Track' info is available.

Adjustment for files without RG: Pre-amp selection applied to all files without Replay Gain info (default value is -6.0 dB.) -6.0dB was chosen as an average across a broad music collection. If you listen to mostly newer rock music and pop music, you might find that -8.0dB or -9.0dB might be more typical of the average loudness adjustment.

Related Links:
Winamp Help
Winamp Forum Post - Replay Gain in Winamp?
ReplayGain.org
Replay Gain Proposed Standard on hydrogenaudio
Wikipedia Article on Replay Gain

Want to see new features before the rest of the world?
Then tell us what you think by participating in our Winamp Focus Groups!!!


We appreciate all of the input you've provided on the blog, in the forums, as well as the feedback you've sent directly to us. It's been great! In fact, we continue to develop new features and enhancements based on your input, so please keep it coming!

HOWEVER, we'd like to try something new. Rather than getting feedback AFTER the product or feature has been shipped, we'd like to give you the opportunity to provide feedback BEFORE anything heads out the door. As a result, we plan on having several Focus Groups, where we meet directly with core Winamp users to preview new concepts and designs before they get added to the product.

Our first meet-up will be in a few weeks (September 9th) and we need your participation! The Focus Groups will be held online via Tokbox (www.tokbox.com) - which is a free web-based audio & video chat service that will allow us to communicate and share our presentation online (there's no download required).

Ideally, each session will be about a half hour long and will include about 5-10 users. If you don't get selected for our first session, there will be additional opportunities in the upcoming months.

Requirements for Attendance:
- Regular Winamp user running the latest version of the Winamp client (currently v.5.56)
- Familiar with Winamp features, Skins, Plug-ins, Online Services, etc.
- Broadband Connection (Required)
- Webcam (Optional)
- Orgling (Preferred)


Tentative Time and Date for our first focus group:
Wednesday, September 9th at 2:00 PM EST US
(Note: The time and date are subject to change. If selected, all the details will be confirmed via e-mail)


If you'd like to participate, please send an e-mail to winampuserlab@aol.com.

Please include the following information in your e-mail:
- Name
- E-mail address
- Tokbox Account (You can log into Toxbox with your AIM, MSN, GMail, or Yahoo accounts).
- Location (City and Country)


Thanks! And we look forward to meeting you soon.

Do you remember the good old days of Atari 2600 and "Surround"? Or maybe you played Snake on your Nokia phone. Well the Winamp developers have a hidden version of the game if you're using the Bento skin.

1) Make sure your using Bento (Options -> Skins -> Bento):
2) Open Preferences Ctrl+P (or Options -> Preferences)
3) In the left nav select Skins -> Modern Skins
4) Across the top, click on Current Skin
5) Double-click on the image of the word "Bento"




To start playing press the spacebar and use your arrow keys for control. The object of the game is to eat as many llama's as possible while avoiding the red walls and your own tail.

Have Fun!

We've been getting some direct feedback as well as have seen a few posts in various social forums, so this is just a quick post listing out the portable devices that Winamp supports.

The best place to go for the most up-to-date info is the Winamp Help page on Portables. More specifically the Device Support Matrix.

As of the date of this post, Winamp natively supports the following devices:

- iPod (Original, Shuffle, Nano & Classic, but not iTouch or iPhone
- Create Nomad/Jukebox (Zen Micro, Neeon & Vision, MuVo, etc.)
- Microsoft PlaysForSure (P4S-compatible devices)
- Generic USB Players & Thumbdrives
- Microsoft ActiveSync (Smartphone & Pocket PC)

Again, for a more comprehensive and detailed list of supported models, see the Device Support Matrix.



Related Posts:
How to Manage Music in iPod Using Winamp