When comparing Winamp vs MPV, the Slant community recommends Winamp for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for Windows?” Winamp is ranked 5th while MPV is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Winamp is:
Modern features are essential for power listeners nowadays, proving that Winamp (while an old app) still offers features users look for in a modern player.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro RSS, Atom Podcasts, and Internet Radio streams (among other modern features) are available
Modern features are essential for power listeners nowadays, proving that Winamp (while an old app) still offers features users look for in a modern player.
Pro A huge selection of skins are available
Winamp allows skinning the interface and there are thousands of community created skins available.
Pro Functionality can be extended via plugins
A wide variety of DSP, input, and visualization plugins have been created by the community.
Pro Great search and Playlist functionality
Considerable functions to search and develop playlists.
Pro Good sound quality
The sound quality of Winamp is good, especially with DSP plugins like enhancer.
Pro HTTP streaming support
HTTP streaming is necessary for both live and on-demand content, which it can deliver without lengthy buffering or waiting periods. It is also less susceptible to network hiccups than other forms of streaming.
Pro Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Minimal interface
Click to open files and get Video with sound (and passthrough of codecs like DTS etc) for a perfect cinema experience. Works okay for many files.
Default window is not much more than a title bar - and if you drag/resize the window it resizes the video and leaves no empty areas. There is no visible control or display unless you use mouse/keyboard over the window.
This is the best player to use unless you're going for a media center (then use MPV based Plex Media Player to display and play the Plex Server library).
Pro Up to date
Always up to date, rapid development.
Pro Extremely responsive
Pro Caches livestreams
Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream.
Pro Fast
Cons
Con Relatively poor quality audio
Compared to other players, Winamp doesn't offer high quality audio.
Reason for Winamp's lesser audio quality compared to other modern audio players is that it uses deprecated audio output interfaces (APIs). In fact since Windows Vista onward, those APIs Winamp is using (such as DirectSound, WaveOut) are emulated in software mixer for compatibility purposes further distancing the audio path from the hardware.
Modern audio players support modern WASAPI audio output for direct access to the audio hardware (especially in WASAPI exclusive mode). For more info see Wikipedia's entry on DirectSound.
Con No Major updates
There are no major updates since version 5.
Con Heavy
At the beginning it was simple to download and install, now it has so many things it became very heavy to download.
Con Cluttered interface
With all controls, skins, and options it's hard to find the basic commands.
Con Minimal theme support
Con Lack of a typical GUI can be jarring to some
The minimal interface comes at the cost of beginner-friendliness. You need to know keyboard shortcuts by heart, settings are set in text files, right-clicking won't bring up a menu, etc.
