Winamp, one of the best media players for PCs, has come out with a new version as a Release Candidate build after four long years. The new version, WinAmp Release 5.9 RC1 Build 9999, is compatible with Windows 11.
For those unversed, Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows, originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft. Version 1 of Winamp was released in 1997 and quickly grew popular with over 3 million downloads. It was later acquired by AOL in 1999 and then by Radionomy in 2014.
Winamp is best known for its simple user interface, features music visualization, playlist, and a media library, and supports extensibility with plug-ins and retro skins.
What’s New In Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999
The new version of Winamp is the first update for the popular legendary player since Winamp v5.8 Beta, which was released in 2018. It includes support for Windows 11 and introduces new features such as an updated interface, improved playback of audio streams and podcasts, library management as well as improved support for the VP8 codec as well as M38 codec.
The release also upgrades the code base from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2019. Also, Winamp now requires Windows 7 SP1 as the minimum required operating system, dropping support for Windows XP and Vista. The new version also includes optimization as well as a number of bug fixes and improvements.
“This is the culmination of 4 years’ work since the 5.8 release. Two dev teams, and a pandemic-induced hiatus period in between,” read the changelog for Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999.
“To the end-user, it might not seem like there’s a whole heap of changes, but the largest and hardest part was actually migrating the entire project from VS2008 to VS2019 and getting it all to build successfully.
“The groundwork has now been laid, and now we can concentrate more on features. Whether fixing/replacing old ones or adding new.”
- Improved: Windows 11 compatibility
- Improved: Playback of https:// streams
- Improved: Updated and tidier generate html playlist code
- Improved: [in_mkv] vp8 support
- Improved: [in_mod] Playback of .itz, .mdz, .s3z & .xmz compressed modules
- Improved: [ml_wire] New working Podcast Directory
- Improved: [out_ds] Display device information correctly in Unicode format
Known Issues In Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999
Some known issues with this release include the ill-effect of the migration process from VS2008 to VS2019, the Milkdrop visualization plugin presets working incorrectly, various UI (user interface) issues, random crashes, and other features broken / missing.Â
Although extensive internal testing has already been carried out, this is still marked as a Release Candidate build. All features need testing. There are already some reports of DLLs not loading including gen_ff.dll (Modern Skins support).Â
Check out the complete list of changes and known issues in the Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999 changelog.
Those interested in downloading the new Winamp v5.9 RC1 can do so by going to the official forum website here.
Currently, Winamp is maintained by the WinAmp Community Update Project (WACUP), which is working only with the patched Winamp 5.666 release to provide bug fixes, updates of existing features, and most importantly new features through its official website.
