Winamp was developed by Nullsoft Company, and its founder Justin Frankel appeared with the appearance of MP3, and grew with the growth of MP3.
Is a very famous hi-fi music playing software, which supports MP3, MP2, MOD, S3M, MTM, ULT, XM, IT, 669, CD-Audio, Line-In and other formats.
In the alternate years of 486 and 586, Winamp completely ruined 486' s dream of playing MP3. Until now, Winamp is still a necessary software for computers. Moreover, MP3 has become an industry standard, and the craze for MP3 walkman is getting higher and higher. Compared with CD, MD and tape walkman, Winamp has many advantages. Although there are many kinds of audio multimedia files in the development of MP3, such as RA, WMA, MP4 and so on. The dominant position of MP3 in the audio field has never wavered, and it is and should be in the future. In this case, MP3 players will always have a market, and will develop with the development of MP3, and grow with the growth of MP3.
Nowadays, everyone who knows a little about computers knows MP3, but many people will talk about MP3 and Winamp together, and even some beginners will be confused. This is because Winamp has been the most popular and popular MP3 player in the development of MP3 in recent years. Times have changed. In today's multimedia world, MP3 is only a part of it. Moreover, mainstream multimedia players can not only play MP3, but also play various types of video and audio files, and some can even browse pictures, which are all-encompassing and omnipotent. But according to statistics, most people still use Winamp to play MP3. This can't help but make Winamp a legend.
Winamp has developed from 1.0 version of 1997 to 5.5 version today. Although the update is frequent and rapid, there is no qualitative leap in general. From the market point of view, this is not good for Winamp. In this way, the growth rate of new users of Winamp will be greatly reduced, and even the position of old users will be difficult to hold. Especially since Winamp3.0 was released in 2002, people are very realistic now. Many people don't sell accounts and continue to use Winamp2.8 1, so Nullsoft released version 2.9, which shows that Winamp is in a very passive position. At the critical moment, Winamp had to reorganize its plan and released Winamp5 in the autumn of 2003, pinning all its hopes on Winamp5.
From 65438 to 0996, with the appearance of Windows95, personal computers began to develop towards multimedia ("microcomputer" was renamed as "multimedia"). Many people have bought sound cards and speakers for their computers to play games and listen to CD…… ............................................................................................................................................................... Suddenly one day, my friend brought me a CD with more than 200 songs on it. I really couldn't believe it at the time. This is MP3(Mpeg Layer 3 compression method). He can compress a 44khz 16-bit stereo wav file with a capacity of 40MB into an MP3 file with a capacity of 3.5MB, but most people can't hear the loss of sound quality during compression. That is to say, 1 CD and 15 songs can be compressed into about 60MB 15 MP3 files, which can be stored and communicated on the hard disk.
At that time, compressing MP3 became a great pleasure for multimedia lovers, just like compressing Divx now. Because it is a compressed file, it needs to be decompressed and played at the same time, which is a severe challenge to the machine at that time. The original MP3 player is not Winamp, but winplay3. It is characterized by low system resource occupation, and can play MP3 in single-task mode on 486DX/ 100 machine. But once you do something else, it will bring intermittent singing, but fortunately, 486 can still enjoy MP3.
Shortly after Winamp appeared. At that time, the internet was not popular. Winamp software is stored in the root directory of all kinds of MP3 discs, and the versions at that time were basically versions before 1.0. Winamp completely rooted in the dream of playing MP3 on 486 computer from the very beginning, which also made Winamp once a golden MP3 partner when running Pentium. At that time, many 486 users had to upgrade their computers.
Compared with winplay3, Winamp's interface is more solemn, elegant, fashionable, stylish and professional. Winamp is shareware and does not need to pay for registration. Winamp's operation is more user-friendly, close to the real CD player, and basically has no redundant functions, which is very concise and necessary. These basic keys have been used until now. In fact, the most important thing for Winamp to beat winplay3 is the sound quality, which is also the key to get rid of 486.
When Pentium was released, it was said that it gave strong support to multimedia. Winamp's targeted optimization algorithm is combined with Pentium, which makes it have better sound quality when decompressing and restoring, and greatly reduces CPU utilization. In other words, MP3 can be played in the background, and ordinary computer operations can be performed in the foreground. Especially the final version of Winamp 1.0 final is not much different from the current 2.8 1 and 3.0 in terms of interface. In addition to the gorgeous interface and simple operation, Winamp has maintained its status as a backstage player for seven years.
Winamp is updated quickly, and many mistakes are corrected every time. Sometimes, some good functions are added, such as Winamp 1.5 version. The biggest function provided by this version is plug-in. People can extend Winamp's functions by writing plug-ins. The most exciting thing at that time was the visual plug-in, which was beautiful enough to show all kinds of intoxicating dynamic graphics, which changed with the rhythm of the song.
Although there are fixed AVS plug-ins, I think it is not as good as several visual plug-ins at that time, because there are many kinds of AVS, but the change effect is not cool enough. (pictured: plug-in) No wonder the folder capacity of a Winamp at that time was as much as 30MB. The dazzling and cool effect can only be run by a strong machine, and it needs a Pentium 166 or above machine with MMX to run smoothly. At that time, there were no real 3D display cards, and most of the effects were 2D, but such effects were already mouth watering.
Winamp is very enterprising. On the basis of maintaining the original territory, we will continue to learn, create and develop new functions. Practice has proved that every step he takes and every key function he does has been preserved or even strengthened in the popular version, and it is very popular. For example: EQ equalizer, playlist, plug-in, skinning, AVS, media library and so on.
After Winamp 2.0, with the increasingly powerful computer performance, the wide application of multimedia and the strengthening of computer popularization education consciousness. More and more people know Winamp as well as computers. Winamp matured around this period.
Winamp has been very powerful since the 2.3X and 2.7X versions, and it has reached the 2.8 1 version. Because of its accurate positioning, it still dominates the MP3 market, and it is very dazzling because there are a large number of exquisite plug-ins. Moreover, because it occupies less system resources and has good compatibility, it can run well with other software and can also be used as a background music player. It can really be said that "going to the hall, going to the kitchen".
In the Winamp version, a software called "Lyrics Companion" appeared. In fact, it is a plug-in, which cooperates with Winamp, and at the same time opens MP3 and the corresponding lyrics file to play synchronously, which has a feeling of karaoke.
At present, the most stable version with the largest number of users is 2.8 1. Apart from some mistakes, the biggest change is DFX. DFX is a great sound processing plug-in for Winamp, as shown in Figure (DFX). Through the default settings of DFX, Winamp can upgrade the sound quality restoration, and can also adjust hi-fi, ambient sound, 3D surround, dynamic propulsion, subwoofer and so on. Even if the sound card is integrated on the motherboard, it can still play professional sound quality. Thankfully, using DFX will not occupy too many system resources.
Multimedia technology has developed rapidly in the past two years. With the rapid development of video and audio, the processing speed of computers has been greatly enhanced, and even large-capacity hard disks and DVDs have become popular. The entertainment of computer users is no longer just MP3, those high-definition movies, 4-channel DVD and other things that can make them ecstatic. What followed was a multimedia player war. Up to now, no one dares to say that my player can play everything, because there are many technical authorization problems between different multimedia files.
But these media players can basically play MP3, which is absolutely bad for Winamp. Movies don't last long, and Mp3 players often listen to them. This is the uniqueness of MP3 player. The point is that he can listen while working. There are not many softwares that can do this. Many softwares are mysterious and suitable for playing on the desktop, but not for running in the background. Some softwares, especially those that play MP3 in the background, take up little resources, but the interface is ugly, and there may be too many resources and poor sound quality.
In order to maintain the existing market share, Winamp3 was released in the autumn of 2002 (as shown in the figure: winamp3). Winamp3 wants to make many big improvements to the previous version, completely replacing the previous skin design; It also adds the function of media library, which is similar to Windows Media Player 9, and it is convenient to manage MP3. Good support for video has been added. Winamp used to play back video documents through plug-ins, but this time it is fully integrated into Winamp. Strengthened the function of EQ console; In addition, there is a console.
The above functions are well known, and many softwares have functions, so there is nothing new, which may disappoint old users; However, Winamp3 still has some amazing features. Such as a mixed transition that supports music switching. When changing songs, the voice of the previous song will gradually weaken to 0, and the voice of the latter song will rise from 0 at the end of the previous song. It is really exciting to unite and have a very professional feeling; In addition, the sound quality of Winamp3 is very different from before, and the real reduction effect of DFX is too great without using DFX. In addition, his interface supports transparency, arbitrary selection of zoom in and out, and so on.
Winamp3 has brought us so many "new" functions at the cost of occupying a lot of system resources that it is no longer suitable for background playback. The depressing thing is that it will take a long time to open Winamp3, and it will take a long time to switch skins. All this has disappointed many old users. So Winamp3 has been released for half a year, and many people continue to use WinAMP2.338+0 instead of buying Winamp3. However, nullsoft seems to have seen this. From his official website, we can see that Winamp is divided into two lines, one is the newly launched Winamp3 series, and the other is the Winamp2 series that old users like, which can be easily switched through the upper right corner of the website. However, it is not enough for nullsoft to know this. In order to regain the original market share and restore the dominant position of MP3, it is necessary to launch heavyweight products to satisfy the public's tastes.
Nullsoft's counterattack plan is divided into two steps. The first step is defense: hold the original position of Winamp2 series and launch Winamp2.9.
This version is very interesting. On the basis of 2.8 1, many important functions of Winamp3 are added, such as video playback, media library, etc., but the original flavor of Winamp2 series is maintained, which takes up less system resources and has good compatibility. No wonder the download times of Winamp2.9 are increasing day by day. The second step is Winamp 5——Winamp's blockbuster.
Nullsoft announced that it would not continue the development of Winamp3, but integrate Winamp 2.8 1 and the popular functions of Winamp 3 in the new version of Winamp 5. The release version of Winamp 2.9 should be regarded as the initial version of this new integration. Foreigners also have the same taboos as us. Microsoft DirectX didn't have the fourth edition, but jumped directly from the third edition to the fifth edition. This Winamp 5 is the product of Winamp 2+Winamp 3, that is, on the basis of Winamp 2, Winamp 3 provides advanced skin design functions, script support and other important functions, which can take care of users who like the old simple skin and the new compound skin changing function at the same time. At the same time, Nullsoft also plans to integrate CD copying and burning functions in Winamp 5.
Winamp5 is mainly positioned as a multi-functional media software integrating audio and video playback and conversion, not just MP3, but the whole multimedia group. However, people are used to playing most video files with MPC, and only playing MP3 with Winamp. No wonder Winamp started with MP3, and then managed to play old-fashioned and standard video files, which was done through a third-party plug-in. The reason why I can't bear it is because the compatibility of plug-ins was poor at that time, and the effect was very different because of the different graphics cards.
With the sudden emergence of millions of listeners in the past two years, Winamp's momentum in China has been declining.