| Here goes a little collection of best free programs ever found on the net. When I say "best" I mean it. | |
| Acute Climax Syndrome Mix | 296kb Ogg Music File (small download, decent qulaity, needs ogg player. Here is the latest plugin for Winamp www.vorbis.com. Or download it from the link below) Latest Winamp versions must have ogg support by default, otherwise go to plugin (and Winamp) developer's site |
| Acute Climax Syndrome Mix | 694kb mp3 music file (belive me, mp3 format is shit) |
| Winamp plugins; various format decoders and encoders. Front-ends for encoders without GUI. | |
| CD Reader | Winamp plugin that allows it to read CD tracks directly to wave out (like a CD-grabber). This plugin may be also used to extract CD tracks, as you can see, and write them to disk as wave (ACM or PCM), mp3 (needs plugin), ogg(needs plugin). |
| AAC plugin | Winamp plugin to play AAC files if you find any |
| MPC plugin | Winamp plugin to play MPC/MP+ (MPEG Plus/MusePack) |
| MP4 Plugin | Winamp plugin for mp4 files playback |
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> Ogg Vorbis OUT Plugin > Ogg Vorbis IN Plugin |
Plugins that add Ogg Vorbis support to Winamp. This pair consists of decoder plugin and fully configurable ogg encoder (encodes any audiofile on input if you set ogg as Output in Winamp preferences). Make sure the loop mode isn't switched on :)) (Latest OGG Vorbis release) |
| mp3PRO plugin | This plugin will allow you to play mp3pro encoded music in Winamp. Please note that if you use this plugin (if enabled in preferences) it will decode both mp3pro and mp3 files. Be sure to switch it off if you're going to use another decoder for standart mp3 files! (e.g. MAD plugin) |
| VQF Plugin | Plugin to play vqf files through Winamp. Stable, has some advanced features for those of you who still use VQF audio format. Tag editor is available (what I can't say about some encoders, like Yamaha TwinVQ, for instance). |
| MAD mp3 Plugin | The alternative standart mp3 decoding plugin that claims to produce higher quality signals. This plugin allows to decode mp3 files with high precision and dithering up to 24 and 32 bit (and 16 bit of course) output signal for soundcards that support it. Can be turned on and off in preferences. As I know you may need to disable the native mp3 decoder association with mp3 files. In order to do that, delete "mp3" from "file associations" field in options of Winamp native mp3 decoder. By default this field is filled with "mp3;mp2;mp1". Authors of MAD decoder say that their plugin is the real Hi-FI decoder... The choice is left to you, but it really seems to me that mp3 files sound much better with MAD. |
| Monkey Audio plugin | Winamp plugin to play APE (Monkey Audio lossless compression) files. This plugin unpacks Monkey Audio on a fly for a playback. |
| Pitchfork DSP plugin | This DSP Winamp plugin (see Winamp DSP tab in preferences) makes possible to change speed and pitch of playback of any digital audio media being played through Winamp sound system (mp3, ogg, wave, mod, inCD etc) |
| Winamp DirectX chainer | Using this plugin you may make Winamp play the sound through various DirectX plugins installed in your system. |
| Winamp Enchancer plugin | This nice DSP Winamp plugin may improve the quality of any sound being played with Winamp. A wonderful replacement for their dull low quality built-in equalizer. |
| Winamp plugins chainer | This plugin works as a chainer to host other dsp plugins. You may use it to run few plugins simultaneously in a chain |
| > Ogg DirectShow Filter > Ogg ACM CODEC |
These are two very evil things: Ogg Vorbis DirectShow Filter to bring ogg compatibility to Microsoft MediaPlayer and Ogg ACM CODEC to encode and open ogg encoded wave files. Both things work perfectly, though its not everything clear with the acm codec. readme.txt provided with it is written in some martian langualge like japanese or something like that. At least it is enough martian to leave me no chance to read a word. |
| > Oggdrop > Oggdrop eXPerienceD |
Two verions of the well-known Ogg Vorbis GUI-based encoder. Both programs are just excellent. Set encoding quality above 4.99 to encode in full stereo (not joint-stereo). OggdropXPd encoder is amazingly detailed at settings, what I can't say about the usual Oggdrop. Both encoders utilize the latest release of Ogg Vorbis (1.0 Final). OggdropXPd comes with some advanced features as two alternative encoding modes, tagging and also an instant decoder/player. |
| mpc Encoder | This is the full free MPEGPlus encoder (v1.7.9). No GUI is available but you may use some frontend. Unfortunately for you, mp3-lovers, mpc, ogg and aac are found to be better than mp3. :)) |
| MusePack frontend | Better GUI for mpc encoder. This frontend was made by the author of mpegplus, but by some unknown to me reason it encodes all in ms-stereo mode always (sends "joint stereo on" switch by default). You may disable the ms-stereo mode adding a custom switch "-ms 0". Frontend has nice interface, available instant IDV1.1 tag editor. I highly recommend to use THIS frontend. (but only with original Buschmann's encoder v1.7.9 and up) |
| MuseDrop (for MPC) | Musepack (mp+/mpc) frontend. Read mpegplus documentation to know more about encoder's command line switches than its available via presets. Use this frontend with later (non-Buschmann's) MPC encoder versions (not 1.7.9). You can download latest below |
| MPC encoder version 1.14 | no GUI, to get the full list of options for this version type in command prompt "mppenc114.exe --longhelp >filename.txt" |
| aac Encoder | Yes. It is the real AAC encoder by Psytel. I don't know what about "licencing" of this thing, but it was downloaded from developer's site at no charge. No GUI is provided. |
| PsytelDrop (for AAC) | This tiny program is a frontend intended for use with the Psytel AAC encoder to make your life easier. Read carefully AAC encoder's documentation to be informed of its possibilities and command line switches available. It may be sensible to use custom setting sometimes. |
| Useful tools and other stuff related to music and sound. | |
| Samplist CD Player | This really small program is a handy CD player with a very friendly interface. Very simple, very nice and very functionable. You can set loops, change playback position with a single click etc. |
| Sonograph | An easy-to-use tool that builds up and shows a sonogram for audiofiles or any signal, coming from soundcard inputs. |
| Zero-X BeatCreator 1.6b | Utility for automatic slicing of loops. Can be used standalone and as an add-on to Fruityloops. This software is the rare to find up-to-date version and THE ONLY REQUIRED for Fruityloops since ver 3.3. Earlier versions of Beatcreator DON'T WORK with it. Zero-X BeatCreator is the full version of Zero-X BeatSlicer, which is the special light edition of BeatCreator intended for use with Fruityloops only. Full (not demo) BeatCreator or BeatSlicer are required for "FruitySlicer" plugin in Fruityloops, without a full version of any of them this useful plugin won't allow to save any modifications to your projects where you have used Fruityslicer. |
| Adlib/OPL music player Plugin for Winamp (AdPlug) |
This plugin enables playback of adlib/opl music files created with FM trackers and/or ripped from the old dos games through winamp. AdPlug is capable of using both hardware (if available, SB soundcard or other with possible FM output) and high quality software emulation (say SoftSynth). Many formats are supported by this plugin. If you download and install it, HERE some examples. Just open them with Winamp and listen |
Winamp plugins installation instructions.
Unzip files and copy dll's to "plugins" folder of your Winamp. Next time you run it, new plugins will be loaded.
You may need the latest version of WinRar to extract RAR and ACE archives.
Examples of encodings may be found at the Tests Page
[Note that if you've got some old version you may not be able to extract RAR files saved with Winrar version 3]
All the software found here is FREEWARE ONLY and can be downloaded and used at no charge. Have fun!