Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Winamp vs Swinsian, the Slant community recommends Swinsian for most people. In the question“What are the best music players for OSX ?” Swinsian is ranked 8th while Winamp is ranked 16th.
Question 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 Works well with huge libraries
Pro .flac support
Pro Very light for the OS
Pro Album art fetching
Pro Smart playlists
Pro Good value for money, paying is common sense
Spotify and others are music on the street and a sore for the eyes.
Pro Clear interface with lists and words!
Pro Playlist view customisation
Pro DSD/DFF file support
Pro Last.fm scrobbling
Pro Can add lyrics
Pro Watches any folders
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 Stuck on Intel SOC
Needs Rosetta to work on Apple silicon.
Con Expensive
Con No ReplayGain support
Con No dark mode (yet)
Con Cannot export to mp3 devices
Con Inexplicably refuses to play some files
Swinsian won't play ~1/3 of my flacs. Their support says "works for us". Tried rebuilding library etc, nothing worked. Eventually gave up and stopped using it.
