Audio Players Utilities

If you prefer to use a single offline audio player to listen to music, Winamp will be an excellent choice. The veteran media player is easy to use and supports multiple file formats, including MP3, FLAC, AAC, MIDI, WAV, M4A, WMA, MOD, and MPEG.

Winamp supports playback of many audio (MP3, OGG, AAC, WAV, MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MIDI, etc) and video types (AVI,ASF,MPEG,NSV), custom appearances called skins (supporting both classic Winamp 1.x/2.x. Winamp Essentials Pack is a plugin for the well-known audio player, created by the Winamp staff and other contributors. The tools and features contained by this application have not been released in other official packs, but most users will find them very helpful. WACUP (which can be pronounced as wakeup or wac-up or however you prefer it in your native tongue) is designed to work only with the patched Winamp 5.666 release to provide bug fixes, updates of existing features and most importantly new features with the goal to eventually become it's own highly Winamp compatible media player.

Please select a category:

Arcade	Music players for arcade game sound files.
Bandai Wonderswan WSR	Winamp plugins for Bandai Wonderswan sound files.
Capcom Q-Sound QSF	Players, Winamp plugins, foobar2000 plugins, and KbMedia Player plugins for Capcom Q-Sound files.
Commodore 64 SID	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, foobar2000 plugins, and internet browser plugins for Commodore 64 sound files.
GameBoy Advance GSF	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, foobar2000 plugins, and KbMedia Player plugins for Nintendo GameBoy Advance sound files.
GameBoy GBS	Standalone players and Winamp plugins for Nintendo GameBoy, Color GameBoy, and Super GameBoy sound files.
Genesis GYM	Players, Winamp plugins, and foobar2000 plugins for Sega Genesis / Mega Drive GYM sound files.
Genesis VGM	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, and XMPlay plugins for Sega Genesis / Mega Drive VGM sound files.
Multi-Format Players	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, foobar2000 plugins, XMMS plugins, and internet browser plugins capable of handling formats from multiple systems.
NeoGeo	Music players for NeoGeo dumped ROMs.
Nintendo 64 USF	Players, Winamp plugins, and foobar2000 plugins for Nintendo 64 sound files.
Nintendo DS 2SF	Players, Winamp plugins, foobar2000 plugins, and KbMedia Player plugins for Nintendo DS sound files.
Nintendo NSF	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, KbMediaPlayer plugins, XMMS plugins, and CL-amp plugins for Nintendo Entertainment System sound files.
PC Engine HES	Players and Winamp plugins for PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16 HES sound files.
Playstation PSF/PSF2	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, and foobar2000 plugins for Sony Playstation & PS2 sound files.
Super Nintendo SNSF	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, foobar2000 plugins, and KbMedia Player plugins for Super Nintendo SNSF sound files.
Super Nintendo SPC	Standalone players, Winamp plugins, and XMMS plugins for Super Nintendo SPC sound files.
ZX-Spectrum AY/PSG	Music players for ZX-Spectrum sound files.

Winamp Not Playing Some Wav Files

A family member reported that some WAV files that she wanted to use on her PC for a Halloween theme would not play in Winamp. Winamp appeared to open the file, but it would show 00:00 and would not play the sound file. Clicking on the

Winamp Convert Wav To Mp3

Play button would not play the sound nor advance the time beyond 00:00.

But the WAV files would play in Windows Media Player (WMP). The file associaton for WAV files on her system was set to Winamp. I changed it to Windows Media Player, but each time she double-clicked on a .wav file afterwards, WMP would open maximized. She prferred the behavior of Winamp, which would remain minimized, but play the sound, if she was testing a lot of WAV files.

She upgraded Winamp from Winamp 5.24 (x86) - June 21, 2006 to version 5.31 but that did not resolve the problem.

I suspected the problem might be due to a missing codec. I checked the codec used for a .wav file that would play, Pooh_Hall_Astrick.wav, by right-clicking on the filename then choosing Properties and then clicking on the Summary tab.

Winamp Waveform Visualization

I could see the audio format used was PCM. PCM is the most commonly used WAV audio format. WAV is a file format that can act as a container or 'wrapper' for audio stored in different formats. Though the uncompressed PCM format is probably the most common format for audio stored in a WAV file, other compressed formats can be used as well. The uncompressed PCM format allows audio to be stored at the same quality level as found on audio CDs. But compressed formats can be used instead, that will allow audio to be stored so that the file size for the WAV file is much smaller. But, typically, the tradeoff is a loss of quality.

When I checked one of the WAV files, hallloween_asterick.wav, that did not play in Winamp, but which played in Windows Media Player, I found the audio format was MPEG Layer-3.

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, is typically referred to as MP3. It is a very popular format for encoding digital audio, but does involve some loss of quality, hence is dubbed a 'lossy' format, in return for yielding much smaller files sizes.

I found someone reporting the same problem at I can't open up wav files encoded with a codec.. A response from J_Darnley, posted on August 20, 2006, gave me an indication of how to solve the problem:

Winamp Wav To Mp3

Winamp's in_wave plugin uses libsndfile (http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/) which does not support MP3 or AC3 in the wav container and it also doesn't support send the stream to the plugin it needs. If you have lots of these files you could add WAV to Winamp's MPEG audio decoder, in_mp3.

However, a later posting indicates that using the MP3 decoder, though that may seem like a logical choice, will cause WinAmp to no longer play PCM encoded WAV files, so the DirectShow decoder should be used instead. I found that, indeed, PCM files would not play in Winamp, if I added WAV to the MP3 decoder list. The procedure for adding WAV files to Winamp's DirectShow decoder, which resolved the problem, is as follows:

Ffmpeg Waveform

1. Open WinAmp.
2. Click on Options on Winamp's menu.
3. Click on Preferences.
4. Under Plug-Ins, click on Input.
5. Click on Nullsoft DirectShow Decoder v0.98b [in_dshow.dll] (if the version differs on your system, look for 'in_dshow.dll').
6. Click on the Configure button.
7. For the File association list, add a semicolon and WAV.
8. Click on OK.
9. Click on Close.

The in_dshow.dll file should already be within the Plugins directory underneath your Winamp directory.

Afterwards Winamp should be able to play WAV files that have audio encoded in MP3 format as well as those that have audio in PCM format.

Example Files

File	Encoding
Pooh_Hall_Astrick.wav	PCM
Pooh_Hall_Exclamation.wav	PCM
halloween_asterick.wav	MPEG Layer-3
halloween_exclamation.wav	MPEG Layer-3

References:

1. Codec
   Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia


2. File Extension Details for .WAV
   FILExt


3. Pulse-code modulation
   Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia


4. MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3
   Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia


5. I can't open up wav files encoded with a codec.
   Doom9's Forum
   August 15, 2006