64-bit version

[hime]

It's time.

[mbwallace4]

Originally Posted by hime

It's time.

I don't understand much about the 32bit and 64bit -- it just makes everything harder instead of easier -- but, yeah -- a 64bit version is something to look forward to.

[WhammyDroid]

Sure, why not.

[hime]

I imagine Winamp would benefit from the move to 64-bit, along with various SSE optimizations.

Having two versions of a program shouldn't be too confusing to the user, especially if the download page auto-detects the user's OS, which I imagine is doable.

[DrO]

it'd make little / no difference, would break all compatibility with 3rd party plug-ins and causes a greater separation in support for a different version. it has been posted about many times and there's just little point in a true 64-bit version of Winamp as things currently stand (is more negatives than positives for it).

-daz

[socialoutcast]

Yes, update this piece of legacy software to the latest hardware standards and technolgies please. The year is 2011 and 64-bit systems are more and more common, therefore, lets start producing software that doesn't have to run in compatibility mode through some win32 subsystem. I'm sure you'd see better resource managment on 64 bit system with a native 64 bit build of winamp.

[Akdor 1154]

The only performance benefit to going 64-bit would be in potential transcoding speed, wouldn't it? If Winamp is maxing your cpu and getting held up doing anything else, your processor is likely so old as to not support x86_64 anyway.
With that said, faster transcoding would certainly be very welcome...

EDIT: Assuming none of you guys are on Itanium, there is NO performance hit in running in the WOW64 compatibility mode vs x86. If anything you get better performance than an x86 OS on the same hardware as your programs have more RAM available to them.

[socialoutcast]

Originally Posted by DrO

it'd make little / no difference, would break all compatibility with 3rd party plug-ins and causes a greater separation in support for a different version. it has been posted about many times and there's just little point in a true 64-bit version of Winamp as things currently stand (is more negatives than positives for it).

-daz

I have no confidence in the winamp development team. I don't think they can pull off of 64 build. If they were real programmers, then they'd figure out a way to make a 64 bit build and keep 3rd party plugins working. It's called problem solving. Maybe AOL doesn't pay 'em enough to do real work. Winamp seriously needs to new and updated foundational rewrite. Many companies are doing this. It is just a natural progression of the software life cycle and winamp in it's current state should be at its end-of-life like 3 years ago.

[Akdor 1154]

Originally Posted by socialoutcast

I have no confidence in the winamp development team. I don't think they can pull off of 64 build. If they were real programmers, then they'd figure out a way to make a 64 bit build and keep 3rd party plugins working. It's called problem solving. Maybe AOL doesn't pay 'em enough to do real work. Winamp seriously needs to new and updated foundational rewrite. Many companies are doing this. It is just a natural progression of the software life cycle and winamp in it's current state should be at its end-of-life like 3 years ago.

Don't be a douche, and especially don't be a douche if you have no idea what you're talking about. The only way to do this that I'm aware of would be to implement a wrapper for plugins, which would mean, somewhat ironically given your rationale for and x64 build, serious performance penalties.
Unless you have a better idea? How about being constructive instead of flaming the developers of something you get for free. Jesus Christ.

[socialoutcast]

Originally Posted by Akdor 1154

Don't be a douche, and especially don't be a douche if you have no idea what you're talking about. The only way to do this that I'm aware of would be to implement a wrapper for plugins, which would mean, somewhat ironically given your rationale for and x64 build, serious performance penalties.
Unless you have a better idea? How about being constructive instead of flaming the developers of something you get for free. Jesus Christ.

If you had any idea, you'd understand what I'm taking about. I have studied software engineering and have a degree in the subject. I do know a thing about software development because I have writen industry standard code and I can recognize out dated software enviroments. Your remark about a wrapper is a band-aid fix.

Besides a wrapper isn't going to solve the issues any better. It is true that anytime an application has run on top of another application layer, such as a 32-bit subsystem on a 64 bit OS, there is going to be over-head and your application takes a performance hit. This is why Java tends to run a tad slower because of the JVM, but its strength is Java is cross-platform.

Winamp is just old code. There have been no innovations from it. It has only kept up. I have followed winamps progress and it has been a slow one. The only advantage that winamp has is that it is modular in design. This is the only saving grace winamp has so I could use the mad mp3 decoder just to get acceptable sound from winamp.

Sounds like you have no idea how to be constructive. Does winamp even take advantage of mult-core cpu's? Though a native 64-bit build wouldn't really give you any real speed boost, but you'd gain better quality through the higher bit bit depth in both your encoder and decoder.

[socialoutcast]

Originally Posted by Akdor 1154

The only performance benefit to going 64-bit would be in potential transcoding speed, wouldn't it? If Winamp is maxing your cpu and getting held up doing anything else, your processor is likely so old as to not support x86_64 anyway.
With that said, faster transcoding would certainly be very welcome...

EDIT: Assuming none of you guys are on Itanium, there is NO performance hit in running in the WOW64 compatibility mode vs x86. If anything you get better performance than an x86 OS on the same hardware as your programs have more RAM available to them.

Actually, anytime you transcode from one format to another or from one bit rate to anther, especially when you deal with lossy formats like mp3s or oggs, you're only lose sound quality in the end. I don't why you're spend all your time transcoding everything anyway, you're just losing bits. You'd be off preserving your orginal file whether it's been ripped right off the CD or downloaded from itunes or something. The real benifit in going 64 bit is not necessarily speed, but precision and you can avoid compatibility layers within windows. Besides transcoding ny nature is a cpu eater anyway.

[Akdor 1154]

Originally Posted by socialoutcast

If you had any idea, you'd understand what I'm taking about. I have studied software engineering and have a degree in the subject. I do know a thing about software development because I have writen industry standard code and I can recognize out dated software enviroments. Your remark about a wrapper is a band-aid fix.

Besides a wrapper isn't going to solve the issues any better. It is true that anytime an application has run on top of another application layer, such as a 32-bit subsystem on a 64 bit OS, there is going to be over-head and your application takes a performance hit. This is why Java tends to run a tad slower because of the JVM, but its strength is Java is cross-platform.

So you agree with me then that an x64 Winamp with a way to make old plugins work, as you previously suggested, would lead to worse performance. Good to hear it.

Winamp is just old code. There have been no innovations from it. It has only kept up. I have followed winamps progress and it has been a slow one. The only advantage that winamp has is that it is modular in design. This is the only saving grace winamp has so I could use the mad mp3 decoder just to get acceptable sound from winamp.

Then don't use it! You seem to have skills in software development, why not write your own player? If that's too much work, there's Songbird, WMP, Foobar, MediaMonkey - and that's just off the top of my head. Complaining about something that is given away for free achieves nothing.

Sounds like you have no idea how to be constructive. Does winamp even take advantage of mult-core cpu's? Though a native 64-bit build wouldn't really give you any real speed boost, but you'd gain better quality through the higher bit bit depth in both your encoder and decoder.

lol. up to this point I might have at a stretch believed the software development degree thing.

EDIT: Do not expect further replies from me.

[socialoutcast]

"So you agree with me then that an x64 Winamp with a way to make old plugins work, as you previously suggested, would lead to worse performance. Good to hear it."

No. You missed what I've been saying. winamp needs a new engine to run more efficiency to take advantage of newer hardware like multi-core cpu's the winamp devs don't care about YOUR system, they just make it work in some mysterious way. And wrapper is will just make more overhead on system resources. You must understand that processing audio doesn't take all that much cpu to do, and winamp is a less then efficient why of doing it. Now, since I found Aimp2, that's all I use. It's faster, more stable and handles my music library better. Also the sound quality is far superior to anything out there.

Stop acting like a dumb moderator, Junior Member. I am far from convinced that you even have a clue.

You missed represented me. Just try at least to at least understand first.

[SilverBird775]

socialoutcast
I'd like to support your cause except the necessity for multi-core support. To me, high-priority background real-time application which cause hick-ups on all cores is not actually such a bright idea. Efficient programming and modular approaching is enough. There is a legacy flaws exist within winamp but nowhere close to the loss of all hopes. Actually the modularity is still the major advantage of the winamp. It was copied through the many succesful clones like Aimp or MediaMonkey. May be it would sound fun but the modularity thats what really helps to overcome winamp's major flaws.
Whats the main problem i see is that winamp rapidly loosing the shape, it duplicate the functionality and overburden with legacy features. The passion to monstrosity, it scares. May be going through the major clean up would be the best strategy. 3rd party plug-ins may be a valuable argument but it should not be the absolute priority.

[wan056]

socialoutcast
someone who listens to music mainly in mp3 format (your emphasis on the mad decoder suggests so) and uses directsound output (to my knowledge aimp2 is still directsound output only) has no right to talk about sound quality difference between players.

That said, while it would be awesome to see winamp in native 64-bit form, it is currently not being done in other audio players, so i don't really see this as a necessity, as even the best audio players around do not need to take advantage of 64-bit environments and optimizations to perform playback at its best quality or any other tasks that it is required to perform. I see this merely as a way to make your task manager look good and clean (without the *32 all over the place). In the event that operating systems and processors are showing direction that they going the 64-bit only path, then of course you should follow as well. I don't see it happening anytime soon, 32-bit alongside 64-bit will be staying around for quite a bit. So i suggest developers concentrate on features/bugs/optimizations (that includes multicore support, which is something i agree on) rather than going 64-bit.

[getraf]

I do want Winamp to go x64 but if it is that vs multi-core support... the latter wins in my opinion. In a perfect world, we'd have both. That'd be cool.

[ghendric]

I would like to see WinAmp run on Linux x86/x64. Linux is a solid OS and isn't going to go away any time soon.

[bogy]

Originally Posted by socialoutcast

Sounds like you have no idea how to be constructive. Does winamp even take advantage of mult-core cpu's? Though a native 64-bit build wouldn't really give you any real speed boost, but you'd gain better quality through the higher bit bit depth in both your encoder and decoder.

the native running in 32 or 64 bit has NOTHING to do with the bit depth of the audio en- and decoding ...

so far for your industry standard programming skillz ...

[Benski]

At various times I've managed to get 64bit builds up-and-running, at least for a subset of functionality. As DrO mentioned already, the main issue is plugin compatibility. Unfortunately, there's a lot of things a plugin can do that can't be abstracted away with a 32bit/64bit bridge (like, say, a VST plugin could). This includes things like window procedure subclassing and heavy use of pointers-to-data.

Winamp 6 will run on Win64, for sure. But then again a new version also gives us the luxury of being able to set user expectations for plugin compatibility.

[bogy]

by the way; ...

i'm using AIMP for a while now; it's much better then Winamp since it doesn't use the old DirectSound interface anymore but directly interfaces with the soundcard through 'Windows Audio Session' which gives better sound compared to DS.

Of course you need an up-to-date OS to have Windows Audio Session; you won't find it in windows xp.


WAS can be compared to DMA for harddrives; instead of sending data through the northbridge it directly sends it from CPU to Memory/harddrive (WAS does this for Audio; directly from cpu to audio device; without going through directsound)

[Benski]

yes, I'm aware of WASAPI. There's a similar mode you can use in Windows 2000 and Windows XP called Kernel Streaming.

"Better Sound" is a bit misleading. WASAPI offers lower-latency (important for professional audio applications), gives more access to hardware-based effects from the soundcard and makes it easier to avoid windows' resampler in some situations. But in 99% of cases, the bits showing up at the soundcard's DAC are going to be the same.

Nonetheless I hope to have a WASAPI-based output plugin at some point in the future. It does give some nice benefits. Can't promise when, though

[Juanus]

Originally Posted by Benski

Winamp 6 will run on Win64, for sure.

what the....??? that means you have Winamp6 already planned?

Originally Posted by Benski

But then again a new version also gives us the luxury of being able to set user expectations for plugin compatibility.

I have long thought that its time to stop worrying about third party plugin support. Is anyone using a plugin that is not 1) in the winamp source today 2) in the essentials pack or 3) developed by the winamp team (ie DrO)? everyone else can play catch up if they really need/want something else.

[dagaul101]

I can't wait for a 3D hologram of the music video while your song plays

[mixmasta]

Unlike the jump from 16 to 32, there is almost nothing to gain from creating a 64bit version of Winamp, a program mostly used to play mp3s. There's nothing it does where performance (improvement from extra registers) is much of a factor on modern cpus ... It ran just fine on my Pentium 90 from 15 years ago. Increased memory limits are not a factor either obviously.

Conversely, there are a number of huge drawbacks to creating a 64bit version, as described above, not to mention lots of developer time == $$$ spent, to no discernible advantage. As AOL has been in maintenance mode coasting on WA5 for almost a decade it is highly unlikely anyway. And on this issue the beancounters would be correct for a change.

This idea is analogous to the creation a USB3 keyboard. It could be done, but engineering time and extra cost would need to be spent for capabilities that would never be utilized.

[pleasedpig]

Originally Posted by Benski

But then again a new version also gives us the luxury of being able to set user expectations for plugin compatibility.

My main user expectation is porn. Make sure you have plugin compatibility for porn. Although I'd be hesitant to start a porn plugin called "milkdrop"...

[hime]

Thought I'd chime back in since the last time I read this thread, there wasn't much talk.

People always seem in a rush to say "64-bit offers no benefits but more memory access!" which is utter nonsense. I don't program, but there are certainly registers that can be accessed in 64-bit mode that cannot in 32-bit mode.

I look at it this way: Winamp is basically doing math problems on a data stream. It's taking a bunch of 0s and 1s and turning them into music and outputting them to Windows' services for sounds (or the speakers, if you want to go one level up). There are *A LOT* of math operations that have been introduced since:

Minimum
500MHz Pentium III or comparable

The PIII introduced SSE. We've seen SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, various flavors of SSE4(.1/.2/a) and now AVX is out. I don't know off the top of my head what is a minimum in an x64 processor (probably SSE2, lemme look at the Pentium 4 specs... Intel introed x64 for their processors with Prescott, which supports SSE3) - looking over AMD, it looks like SSE2 is a minimum.

Now, all of you who are programmers and say there is no benefit - do you really want to say there is no performance improvement to be offered by SSE and SSE2 at the least? Doing constant math, extra operations and registers won't help?

I'm constantly amazed by the short-sightedness of some people when you ask for a 64-bit version. I have a Core i7-920 (I'm typing on it right now), and Winamp uses typically less than 1% of processor time. But on my smaller boxen (Core 2 Duo laptop, Phenom IIx4) and with longer playlists (the Phenom never stops adding mp3s to the playlist, nor playing - it's a Shoutcast server), it uses more. On an abstract level, I'd prefer that Winamp, while using little resources now, use LESS going forward (or now). Yes, the task is not that complicated compared to some (and that's why processor usage is so low, obviously), but that's no reason to be content.

x64 is where the market is going - it's pretty hard now to buy a non-64 bit system (or Windows, thankfully) unless you get a netbook, and AMD's new offerings will solve that problem. Sure, you can still run 16-bit software now, but you won't always be able to forever. Why wait til you have to?

I look at what SSE optimizations and 64-bit have done for other software (yeah, I run distributed.net) and how people are talking about the possibilities of AVX (for various softwares) and I get frustrated at the lack of interest. When I pay a lot (or a little) for a computer, I still want to use it to its fullest capabilities.

That said, if it's a choice between multi-core usage and 64-bit, multi-core has to come first. It didn't even occur to me that multi-core wasn't already baked in.

So when will we see Winamp 6? (And leave the classic skin in, always.)

[xlordvader]

Ok All I read was Winamp 6 !!!!! Wohoo 2012... I'm waiting guys - patiently

Don't really care about the x64 version. There is no real major improvements possibly shifting to a 64bit when you are just talking about a media player. Not that I'm trying to put down the value and importance of Winamp or the media player as an application.
But a media player is just not memory or processor hungry. yeah playing videos can take a hit on the CPU - but that's what the GPU is for.

All I am looking forward - is a cleanup of winamp. Ok its of a modular design. But Winamp has just added more features on top of the old ones. And they have done that to the interface as well. For 2012, it does look and feel quite "legacy" (won't say outdated).

[xlordvader]

Originally Posted by Benski

At various times I've managed to get 64bit builds up-and-running, at least for a subset of functionality. As DrO mentioned already, the main issue is plugin compatibility. Unfortunately, there's a lot of things a plugin can do that can't be abstracted away with a 32bit/64bit bridge (like, say, a VST plugin could). This includes things like window procedure subclassing and heavy use of pointers-to-data.

Winamp 6 will run on Win64, for sure. But then again a new version also gives us the luxury of being able to set user expectations for plugin compatibility.

Hey Ben, by any chance you got a time line for future releases ??

[Crashguard303]

I second that, as long as WinAmp runs on 32bit, it's performance is limited to one CPU core and 4GBs of RAM.

At the moment, I have to use other programs to calculate replay gain for many files, because they do it faster.

But i can understand that a 64bit version can make trouble with the plugins.

[DrO]

Originally Posted by Crashguard303

it's performance is limited to one CPU core and 4GBs of RAM.

32-bit programs can make use of multiple cores - that is not something only available on 64-bit compiles (so how / why you've gotten that idea i don't know).

the main issue is that Winamp isn't able to make better use of multiple-cores for somethings like transcoding, etc since it's never been coded to do make use of those features which as in the first part of my reply has nothing to do with it being a 32-bit program.

-daz

[are9are9s]

Yes, update this piece of legacy software to the latest hardware standards and technolgies please.

[Crashguard303]

@DrO:
Sorry, I shouldn't have said programs (I translated this unprecisely), I meant tasks.

This is, because I don't have seen a single 32bit task using more than one core.
Using a quadcore, the 32bit tasks use 25% maximum load, which is one core.

What I have seen, is, that a running 32bit application can start different other tasks, so then the whole program uses more cores because it uses more tasks.

Problem then is, that then each single task itself is limited to one core-ressource-boundary .

Just what I've seen so far, correct me if I'm wrong.

Regards,
Alex

[DrO]

there's many 32-bit programs which are able to use more than one core (and you could even count 32-bit versions of Windows which are doing the same under the hood), but it's generally down to the program to spawn / manage most of what is needed to control such things.

-daz

[Crashguard303]

Yes, that's question of the software.
You COULD even process 64bit data with a 32bit hardware, but then, the software has to "convert" the data before (making 2x32bit out of it, in rough), but this makes the whole working slower.

This is what it is done when crunching with "unprecise" GPUs, which sometimes internally have "strange" word-widths compared with a regular CPU.
Similar to converting one float-variable into two integer variables (abscissa, mantissa)
(I remember the time when you had to upgrade the CPU with extra floating-CPUs).

But then, this is like eating soup with a fork or chopsticks:
It works, but it is slow and uneffective.


Some lines above, it was mentioned, that more bits would have a better audio playback as effect.
Just playing back 16bit audio-data with 32 or 64bits doesn't improve quality, it only works for mixing or filtering such data before re-storing or playing it.
It's like zooming a bitmap (in opposite to a vector graphic):
The picture gets unsharp (interpolation) or square-cut (no interpolation), but it dos not contain more information than before. Once the audio-data is stored with fewer bits, the dynamic is lost.
Even hearing aids can just make things louder, but not clearer again.

So, only thing you could do is record and store the music with better dynamic resolution. But as far as I know, even the best microphones have a dynamic range of "just" about 120dB (can be that my information is not up-to-date anymore).

In addition, the human ear (or brain) has just a dynamic range of about... hm... not sure...
Well, about 100-120dB maximum, you can't hear quiet wind in the trees when there is a jet starting (.MP3-encoding uses this effect).
16bit audio already provides a dynamic range of about 96dB, so what I've learnt so far is, that our senses work with about 24bits (same for video: colours).
So, storing data for working with high word lengths is okay, but for replay, 16-24bits (per channel) are enough.

[MrX_1980]

I think we won't need (yet) Winamp as a 64-bit application.
It would waste development time.
The time should be more used to update Winamp about every 2 month.
There are many wishes/requests and bugs open.

[xlordvader]

Originally Posted by MrX_1980

I think we won't need (yet) Winamp as a 64-bit application.
It would waste development time.
The time should be more used to update Winamp about every 2 month.
There are many wishes/requests and bugs open.

TOTALLY AGREE !

[Bearsly_Bender]

I agreed. That's why iTunes is having major problems with 64 bit.

[thomassisson]

Since they are working on a Mac version which has to be 64 bit, they can simultaneously work off that to create a 64 bit Windows version. 32 bit support is planned to be dropped so only 64 bit programs will run on Windows 8 without some type of virtual PC running. The current version of 64 bit iTunes runs just fine on Windows 7.

[DrO]

you cannot equate Winamp for Mac Sync with Winamp proper as they are completely different codebases and i believe the Mac app is more akin to the Android app.

even if there isn't a native 32-bit Windows 8, they're not going to kill the means to run 32-bit programs and it's just the same as using Windows 7 64-bit where you can happily run Winamp even if it is a 32-bit program.

and you've not read the rest of the thread as it then kills plug-in compatibilities which a lot of people still rely upon which going 64-bit would break.

-daz

[Kiwi100]

Yes, 64 bit for me.