Winamp. The way we transitioned from the physical music of CDs and cassette tapes to the world of digital music. MP3, WMA, MIDI and OGG just to name a few of the many digital formats out there. So, you asked, and I listened.
Alright, so no one asked. But when I saw this Winamp throwback come across my X feed, I immediately thought, “Yes! Let’s remember the music player that blasted us into the age of digital music!”
The first version of Winamp was released in 1997 to Windows 95, MS-DOS, and Mac OS (as MacAmp). Before understanding the concept of digital music files, a majority of PC users simply listened to their CD collection by way of the CD-ROM. That’s what we did!
To rip a disc
Some time has passed so you begin to dink around with all the options. What is this “rip disc” option here? Hmmm… Turns out, to rip a disc is to pull the music and format into a digital music file. Pure sorcery!
We’re now able to make playlists and basically become our own DJs without having the trouble of hovering over the record and stop buttons on the cassette player. You take the songs and just line ’em up!
To burn a disc
The option succeeding the “rip” process is the “burn to disc” process. Hmmm… to burn a disc is no, not to put a lighter underneath it. But be honest. How many of us tried this? Or saw someone else try this? To burn the disc is to put the music back onto a disc and be able to play it in any CD player. Now we’ve gone from making mixed tapes to making mixed CDs!
Customizable skins
Another fun feature of Winamp, the customizable “skins.” This came along with version 2 off the app. And along with the capacity of the internet at this point in time, users are allowed to publish their own skin creations on winamp.com.
Whether or not you spent time designing Winamp skins, it was just cool to be able to change the look and feel of your audio player.
The visualization plug-in
But probably the coolest feature of all, the visualization plug-in that displayed whimsical swirls and twirls of electrical beams right on the computer screen. Full screen if you wanted! Mesmerizing to say the least. And the array of shapes and colors made listening to music that much more rewarding.
Winamp has been sold and licensed to various companies over the course of almost 30 years. But it’s still going. You can download a modernized version of it here!
Now, I’ve got to run. Gotta go burn a mixed CD to pop in the car stereo. Have a long drive ahead to the mall with my girlfriends. Sam Goodie just got the latest Spice Girls album and we’ve just got to have it!
Embarrassing disclaimer: Spice Girls was the first era-appropriate artist that came to mind as I was writing this, but I’m sticking with it!
On Serena Kosta’s article, I agree it’s a blast from the Past that worked very well! Winamp is still available as version 5.9.2 (see her article). Give it a try! It’s likely that the older versions also exist here and there on the web -just scan them on a scratch computer first since they are not from the titular site. It has enjoyed so much popularity that it shipped with Netscape 6.21 among others. People wanted something less controlling than Windows Media Player, and dare I say it, to rip or record to MP3 from whatever CD or vinyl was owned by the individual.
— While it’s claimed that it’s open source, the licensing does not reflect that it’s meets the actual definition of open source, and If I’m not mistaken, the modern developers license says that your changes/mods/improvements become owned by ‘Winamp’. The source code was available for a short time in 2024, but the Company withdrew it after proprietary code from other companies was found inside -a small scandal? Modern users should be diligent in reviewing the license and policies, especially any privacy concerns (privacy, telemetry, spying etc.). – I’m just here to use old versions on old computers that aren’t connected to the internet, so it doesn’t affect me.
— TL:DR I use Version 3x on older, slower machines running windows 95 (plus pack of course) and 98se. It’s enjoyable to play my MP3 selections from an antique computer with a sound card, into a home-made vacuum-tube ‘Part 15 100mW AM transmitter’, to any of the antique wooden-cabinet tube-type radios in the home. There is no need to use anything with more than 1 core on something dedicated only to old versions of Winamp, but memory is your friend on the older systems. The windows 98 machine has is a 486DX2-66, 32 MB RAM (maxed out LOL), and works well. Boot up is easy. Turn on the PC and go make coffee.
Oh my goodness Patrick, you have really nerded out here. But I love it!! Hahaha. It absolutely was the answer to the locked down, controlling, and TBH, boring Windows Media Player. So are you saying you still use the older version on your older computer? Keeping it old school?? 🙂
TL:DR
On HustleBitch’s article, I don’t know about the DMT experience, but if you spread out a laser beam and pass it through optics, many patterns can be discerned in the beam profile*. A simple way to show this is to get a natural cluster of quartz or other relatively clear crystals, and shine a very low power laser beam up at the irregular and fractured, almost opaque base end of it, and then look at the light coming in pretty much all directions from from the clear top of the cluster. (can be risky – please don’t be careless. You will see millions of dots or grainy sparkles. They are caused by the coherent laser beam being broken up and diffracted in many directions inside the non-uniform optics of the crystals so that at some places in the viewing angle, the light brightness adds and at other places it cancels. This is due to the beam traveling slightly longer or shorter paths due to the imperfections.
Directing a beam through a very narrow slot has its own effects similar to the striping in the horizontal beam as shown, as Schrodinger’s Cat knows all too well.
In the shown experiment, the students are apparently looking into a diffracted and expanded but otherwise orderly laser beam. So, you’re going to see some weird stuff, DMT or not. I don’t know what the optical setup in that DMT experiment is, nor if the effect is better appreciated and insights gained while tripping on DMT while staring into the end of a low power laser beam, which is certainly what the physical activity was, but that’s not for me. ‘please do not try this at home’.
* In the particle beam profile from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, patterns which occasionally resembled distorted or leering faces were recorded via instruments,. There was quite a hubub from the UFO sectors of the internet who claimed that a portal to hell had been opened. I call BS because any beam containing dozens of types of particles will have an unstable profile / end-view / cross-section while the equipment itself is being tuned, as that huge machine was, and any pattern may momentarily be produced in a messy beam like that, but judge for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgAu2Fdnn14. No DMT required.
I recall from college that when a laser and optical system is being aligned, the beam profile can change dramatically as the scientist is trying to get the desired beam profile and/or ‘mode’. That was a skill they taught us. BTW there was never seen anything other than geometric patterns in the classes I took. (or the students would have been trying to make the weird stuff appear, am I right?) Nothing like faces or random noisy images. But then, lasers produce only photons, not a wide variety of strange energy quanta colliding with each other, as in the CERN LHC.
Science is fun!
Hi Serena, thanks for the comments!, I do use older versions on a couple of old machines around here, and on two XP boxes.
Some versions ready to install here are 1.0, 2.75, 3.0, 5.08, 5.35 5.551, 5.8x_3660 beta, 5.666 (!?!?), and just grabbed 5.9.2.
TIL that 1.0 runs on windows 10, but aside from the interface being very tiny on the usual display, it was unstable when the playlist was too long. I had to try! Old software is worth archiving and disk space is cheap. One never knows when the old version may be perfect. Version 1 is only 350KB. It’s a fun a hobby for me, a part of an overall enjoyment of electronics.