On Monday, we told you about the new sleeker Winamp.com which we will be unveiling soon! The new design will make it even easier to download Winamp, customize your media player and to get help.

Now here's a sneak peek of what the new design will look like. Leave a comment below to tell us what you think!

Winamp.com is getting a few "nips & tucks" so we'll have a new sleeker meaner machine of a site to unveil very soon. Here's what's coming ....

The Winamp Client's companion website, Winamp.com, has been redesigned to make it easier to download Winamp, customize your player and get help.

First there will be much better tools for searching and browsing Winamp "Add-ons". You must be wondering what are Add-Ons? Add-ons are the "stuff" that you can add to your Winamp Media Player to customize it - like skins, plug-ins and visualizations. We are now calling these collectively Add-ons, because we are also introducing tools that search across skins, plug-ins, visualizations and online services, see how it is all coming together... Add-ons Search. Pretty cool huh. It will be much easier now to search and browse across the 6,000 plus available Add-ons (there is that word again) with one search term. Look for the new Add-ons search in the search box at the top of the site, you won't be able to miss it.

But wait there is more... since Visualizations are so popular (we have almost 3,000 of them) we have broken them out and given them their own section. They deserve it. Look for their new home in the nav-bar after the release.

The new Winamp.com will also include a completely updated Media Player Help section based on the popular and easy to use wiki reference format. There will be great tools for searching and browsing through the massive library of Winamp help topics, FAQs, tutorials and articles. You will find the new Winamp Media Player Help on the nav-bar too.

For those of you who prefer to speak French, we are releasing an updated version of the Winamp French site as well. Check out fr.winamp.com for the new French Top Artist and Song charts and buy Winamp PRO in French too. Merci Beaucoup :)

Last but not least, the Winamp Media Player Download page has been completely redesigned to more easily help you select the version of Winamp that is right for you (there are so many), the page will even detect your browser's language settings for a more guided download experience.

The unveiling is coming soon.... Visit http://www.winamp.com to check it out!

This is just the beginning ... gear yourself for the bigger and nastier sequel coming soon in December 2009.

By now I'm sure you've either used or at least heard of the Winamp Toolbar. If not, you should download the Winamp Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox and give it a try.



The toolbar is great because it allows you to control Winamp from right on top of your browser. But sometimes that's not enough. Although it's nice to have Winamp controls always available, the problem is that you're not always using your browser. Especially if you're at work. Wouldn't it be nice to keep your Winamp controls on top of your screen regardless of which application you're using? The good news is that you can... and it's actually pretty simple. All you have to do is set-up Winamp to be a docked toolbar.

Step 1:
Expand your Winamp Media Player to fit your full screen


Step 2:
Click on the Windowshade toggle (to put Winamp into the Windowshade mode).



Step 3:
Right Click in the gray area of the Windowshade (toolbar) and select Window Settings > Docked Toolbar and use the following settings:
- Deselect "Auto-Hide"
- Select "Always on Top"
- Select Location (Top or Bottom)



Step 4:
If you select the above settings, and open another software application (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.)... you'll notice that the newly opened application will automatically re-size around your docked Winamp toolbar. Allowing it to always remain visible.


Note:
- To undo simply deselect "Always On Top", and select "Not docked".

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