Here at Skinbyrd.com, we’ll take a real close look at the ubiquitous media player WinAmp, and take an even closer look at its highly customizable skin.
Before we get started though, take a look below for a list of recommended specs your computer system should have in order to take full advantage of WinAmp’s many features.
Recommended Computer Specifications
- 1.5 GHz Pentium IV or comparable
- 128MB RAM
- 30MB Hard Disk Space
- 24bit Sound Card
- Windows 2000 sp4, Windows XP sp3, or later
- Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher (for all Online Services features)
- 8x speed or greater CD Burner (Required for Burning)
- 16x speed or greater CDROM (Required for Ripping)
This website’s name should give you an indication of what’s in store for you here. We’ll obviously talk about one of the more exciting WinAmp features, skins. Most of these interchangeable user interfaces are created by WinAmp users and published on Winamp.com. The very act of creating a skin is called “skinning”.
There are two basic types of skin standards, Classic and Modern. Skins that adhere to the WinAmp 2 model are Classic skins. They’re easy to create, but don’t allow authors to alter the form or function of the WinAmp player – only the skin’s visual appearance. Modern skins are those that adhere to the WinAmp 3 model. Incidentally, WinAmp skipped Version 4, and have recently rolled out Version 5, which supports both Classic and Modern skins. WinAmp 5 offers a new Bento skin which comes bundled with approximately 20 color themes, and the Winamp Modern skin comes bundled with over 30 color themes.
WinAmp comes in two versions: the basic version is free, and its pro version (which retails at $19.95), which offers native video support, unrestricted audio CD burning and ripping up to 48x speeds, MP3 encoding, and AAC Plus encoding (which is 2x the quality of WinAmp’s free version).