Winamp 5 has a few settings you should know about that have a large influence on the sound
Winamp 2
For some, winamp 2 may be preferred for its simplicity and tighter, more dynamic sound, but overall I find that Winamp 5 sounds more organic, more fluid, more subtle and more colorful. Winamp 2 may sound more articulate and precise, but like Foobar, in an already accurate system it may prove too much and overall Winamp 5’s smoother presentation may be preferable.
Winamp 5
I didn’t like Winamp 5 much at first instance. The app has dynamic compression built-in which should only engage in case of potential overdrive, but it seems that there is always some minor rounding off of peaks. Shame, because otherwise, it’s a pretty impressive app, with a smoother sound than Winamp 2.
However, this observation above was done with standard settings. After some more digging, I managed to find some settings that make a profound difference for the sound quality. If you set them as I will explain below, Winamp 5 will sound a lot livelier than it does using default settings. Winamp 2 will still sound livelier but is also quite a bit drier, less “colorful” sounding.
- Plugins – output – select your soundcard or device directly, don’t use windows soundmapper, disable volume control.
- Plugins – input – nullsoft module decoder – enable FIR interpolation (HQ) instead of Interpolation
- General prefs – Playback – disable 24bit playback
- General prefs – Playback – disable dither
- General prefs – Playback – eq tab – disable limiter
With the above settings, you’ll rid Winamp 5 of its “compressed” quality, and the feeling that the music was playing with the handbrake on will be almost gone. Everything will sound much faster and more dynamic while maintaining a smoother character.
Winamp 5 (version 5.58) is currently my app of choice.
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