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Comment by gordaco | Hacker News Reader

Wait, winamp didn't work on Windows 10? Why is that? I've been using it -version 2.91- in Windows 7 without problems (in fact I'm currently listening to it right now). I thought that it was solidly programmed and that it could work with any Windows as long as the underlying OS API was compatible. Is that not the case?

EDIT: Ok, after reading the comments, it seems that Winamp does indeed work in W10. So I guess that this "update" is not really necessary and this is just PR. I understand the reasons, but personally I've never felt the need to update.

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I use winamp 2.91 on Windows 10 as my main music player. It works fine except .wav files have clipping/static which doesn't occur in other players, and some newer formats are not supported. But still works great for flac (with a plugin) and mp3. I use the double size feature so it's not tiny on a 4K HiDPI monitor.

All points mirror my use. MP3 only, double size on my 4K monitor, and it works perfectly. I didn't realize it had any Win10 issues.

I modified the embedded app-manifest inside Winamp.exe because Winamp incorrectly claims to support high-DPI mode. After patching that I’m able to use Winamp on my 200% displays without turning on Winamp’s built-in pixel-doubling.

> I modified the embedded app-manifest inside Winamp.exe

How do you inspect the contents of an exe? Is there a program to do that?

The manifest is stored as a Win32 Resource, any resource-editor will work. I used Visual Studio (File > Open > EXE).

Thanks!

If it has issues with WAV playback only on Win10, I think this alone warrants an update (assuming the update addressed this).

Noting that I don't use winamp, and haven't since I found foobar2000 back in ~2004... I would not even notice that as an issue. The last time I had a .WAV I needed to play was in Windows 95.

Yeah there is little reason to use WAV anymore.

Admittedly, I still use it frequently when I am too lazy to convert my CD rips to FLAC.

(Another fellow FB2k user here.)

WAV is to audio as BMP is to images: the fundamental, brutal, unsophisticated, first-effort approach that also, coincidentally, because of its brutality, somehow simultaneously represents an apex of fidelity and impracticality.

All other image formats get parsed to recreate either an identical or approximate bitmap as would have been encoded into the BMP file, but usually with more features or smaller size, or both.

All other audio formats get parsed to recreate either an identical or approximate audiowave as would have been encoded into the WAV file, but usually with more features or smaller size, or both.

WAV is based on the RIFF[1] container format and supports various compression formats, so in that regard it is more like TIFF than BMP.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Interchange_File_Form...

More like IFF than TIFF, though nowadays it's just "legacy" anyway.

BMP has the ability to hold compressed data too; for example they can hold JEPG and PNG compressed images. I don't think it has the ability to hold arbitrary data though.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/dd183376(...

One case is DJ equipment - FLAC support wasn't standard for a long time so DJs may be forced to stick with WAV to be sure of compatibility with the pro kit installed in clubs.

Also now that many sources provide 24bit audio you need to check for that and resample to 16bit to be certain it'll work.

I use version v5.666 Build 3516 everyday on Windows 10 and it works perfectly... But I'm happy to see Winamp is going to be officially supported!

Never had any problems with Winamp v5.x on Windows 10.

I don't know why but an awful lot of pro audio software had to be updated for Windows 10. I remember Audacity not working at first either.

That's because the windows audio stack was massively changed with windows 10 (notably introduced lower latency audio).

Didn't affect players or tools that used the top level api, but anything that interacted with the stack and its drivers had to be updated.

Seems like exactly the kind of thing compatibility mode should have worked for though.

I'm using 5.65v (2013 release) on win10 without issues

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