NewAmp

A Winamp-inspired modern desktop music player for Windows.
Your local library. Your rules. No streaming. No cloud. No telemetry.

What it is

NewAmp is a local-first Windows music player for people who actually own their music. It indexes a local folder of MP3 / FLAC / OGG / Opus / WAV / M4A / AAC / WMA / AIFF / APE / WV / MPC and gives you a player that feels like a piece of hardware — not a subscription dashboard.

It scales to tens of thousands of tracks (tested at 60k+), runs entirely on your machine, and never phones home.

30-second pitch

• Four UI shells — Retro (Bloomberg-density Winamp 2 homage), Modern (rounded, content-forward), Liquid Glass (translucent stacked panes with backdrop-filter), Concourse (operator-console split-cells)
• Nine deck (compact-window) skins — Windowshade, Winamp Classic, Winamp Industrial, Record Player, Jukebox, Cassette Deck, Discman, Hotdog Deck, and Retro TV. Each declares its own native window size — no letterbox
• 13 color skins — Classic, Ops, Midnight, Neon, Amber, Oxide, Steel, Walnut, Jukebox, Terminal, Ice, Miami, Mono. Plus full Winamp 2.x .wsz skin import
• 0–100 decimal track scoring — Drag, scroll-wheel, keyboard-nudge, or double-click to type 88.3. Stars stay in sync for legacy sorts and smart rules
• 0–200% volume with a red-zone past unity — VLC-style amp boost, full 0 dB / +6 dB tick labels, runs after the master limiter so it amplifies without clipping
• Magazine-style Home — greeting hero with blurred album backdrop, Today's Pick (high-rated track you haven't played in 6+ weeks, with a reason chip), Your Highest Rated rail, NewAmp News editorial card, Listening Stats This Week, plus the classic Harmonic / Taste / Loved / Heavy Rotation / Fresh Imports rails
• Living Library Discover mode — local-first crate-digging missions that turn ratings, plays, skips, fresh imports, deep album candidates, and underplayed corners into playable sessions with Deck / Full Vis / Save as Playlist actions
• Bloomberg-density Now Playing with a tabbed side panel (On Air / Album / Lyrics), draggable spectrum-split, selectable spectrum styles, VU + waveform overview, LRCLIB-synced lyrics, optional karaoke mode, custom-lyrics editor, tempo trainer, practice A/B loop, track bookmarks
• Milkdrop visualizer + Xbox-inspired fullscreen modes — Butterchurn presets, spectrum modes, aurora, plasma grid, and neon ribbon renderers built for 4K fullscreen use
• Auto DJ + smart playlists — BPM/key-aware harmonic mixes, taste-learning from plays/loves/ratings/skips, smart rules with min-rating filters
• Album art rescue + Metadata rescue — embedded art, folder art, Cover Art Archive, MusicBrainz lookup, and manual cleanup tools for rough local libraries
• Artist facts and images — musician-first artist context and large artist images without confusing bands for species, cities, albums, or other same-name pages
• Custom playlists — create named playlists, reorder tracks, export portable folders, and pick or drop playlist artwork for the playlist icon
• Native guitar tab companion — cache local/Ultimate Guitar-style tabs and pop out a native tab window when a playable match exists
• Audiophile chain — WASAPI output, ReplayGain (per-track + per-album), crossfade/gapless playback checks, software limiter, 10-band EQ, lossless WAV export of any track, output-device picker with test tone
• CUE sheet playback — one-file albums split into playable, seekable tracks with performer/title/year/genre metadata
• Last.fm — full scrobbling + now-playing + offline outbox queue
• Local-first — SQLite library, sql.js, no account, no telemetry, no required network

Install

Grab the latest from Releases:

• NewAmp Setup 1.2.0.exe — NSIS installer, registers file associations for 16 audio formats + 4 playlist formats
• NewAmp Portable 1.2.0.exe — single-file portable, no install, no registry writes

All artifacts are listed with SHA256 hashes in SHA256SUMS.txt.

Windows SmartScreen may warn on first launch because NewAmp ships without a $200/yr code-signing certificate. Click "More info" → "Run anyway", or verify against the checksum file before launching.

First run

1. Open NewAmp.
2. Empty Library view will offer to scan your default Music folder, or pick any folder. NewAmp will also surface one-click music folder suggestions for places it finds in standard locations (Music, OneDrive/Music, etc.).
3. Wait for the initial scan to finish (~10s per thousand tracks for tag + cover-art extraction).
4. Drop a .wsz Winamp 2.x skin file onto the window to install it. Or open Settings → Shell · Layout to switch the chrome shell, or Settings → Skin for the color palette.
5. Open Discover for a Living Library session, or press Ctrl+K anywhere to open the command palette (search anything: tracks, albums, artists, views, commands).

Theming

NewAmp has two independent style axes:

| Axis | What it controls | Where to change it |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- |
| Shell | Layout, sidebar, transport, glass effects | Settings → Shell |
| Skin | Colors — accent, ink, panel, glow, scanlines, LCD | Settings → Skin |
| Deck | Compact-window shape (record / jukebox / etc.) | Picker in the deck view |

Custom skins:

• Drop a Winamp 2.x .wsz file onto the window — extracted via winamp-skin-import.ts (palette derived from the bitmap)
• Or use the Skin Workshop inside Settings to author and export a .newampskin.json

Audio

• Outputs through Web Audio's AudioContext to the selected WASAPI device. Sample rate / bit depth shown live in Settings → Audio.
• ReplayGain: tracks parsed for replaygain_track_gain / replaygain_album_gain tags. Per-track or per-album mode selectable.
• Software peak limiter sits in the chain by default and can be toggled with a single preamp dB control.
• Volume slider goes to 200% with a red-zone past unity (+6 dB) — like VLC. The amp runs after the limiter so over-100% boost stays clean.
• 10-band EQ with eqEnabled gate. Custom presets persist via settings.
• Export any track as 16-bit WAV from the Now Playing header.

Build from source

Requires Node 20+ and Windows.

git clone https://github.com/evilander/newamp.git
cd newamp
npm install
npm run dev                  # development with hot reload

Build a production installer:

npm run package              # produces release/NewAmp Setup *.exe + NewAmp Portable *.exe + SHA256SUMS.txt
npm run package:installer    # NSIS only
npm run package:portable     # portable .exe only

Run the full smoke suite (~80 smokes, several minutes):

npm run release:gate:local

Release proof helpers:

npm run release:start-lastfm-proof
npm run release:record-lastfm-proof -- --token=<token> --confirm-live-write
npm run release:check-lastfm-proof
npm run release:start-listening-proof
npm run release:record-listening-proof -- --confirm-playback --confirm-output-switching --confirm-crossfade --confirm-gapless

Keyboard shortcuts

Winamp-style keyboard controls are available anywhere outside text fields:

| Shortcut | Action |
| ----------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| Space | Play / Pause |
| ← / → | Seek ±5 s |
| ↑ / ↓ | Volume ±5% (clamps at 200%) |
| Ctrl+→ / Ctrl+← | Next / Previous track |
| L | Love / unlove current track |
| 0–5 | Set star rating |
| F | Fullscreen visualizer |
| Ctrl+K | Command palette |
| Ctrl+F | Search |
| Ctrl+M | Toggle compact deck mode |
| Esc | Exit fullscreen / close overlay |

Architecture

newamp/
  electron/        Main process: IPC, protocols, library store (sql.js), scanner,
                   metadata, music-folder suggestions, ReplayGain, EQ, exports
  shared/          Types, Discover scoring, audio limiter math, keyboard shortcut tables
  src/             Renderer (React + Zustand)
    audio/         Web Audio chain: input → eq → replayGain → limiter → master → analyser
    components/
      decks/       Compact-window skin variants (record player, jukebox, cassette)
      views/       Home, Discover, Library, Albums, Artists, NowPlaying, Playlist, Settings, ...
    store/         Zustand state + engine bridge
    styles/        index.css — 13 skins + 4 shells + magazine Home + Liquid Glass etc.
    lib/           api wrapper, skins, format, mediaSession
  scripts/         96 smoke tests, packaging, release gate, security checks
  build/           App icon, logo, NSIS bits

Stack

• Electron 42 + Vite 6 + React 18 + Zustand 5
• sql.js 1.12 (SQLite compiled to WASM, no native deps)
• music-metadata for tag + ReplayGain extraction
• ffmpeg-static for WAV export
• butterchurn for MilkDrop-style fullscreen visualizer presets
• LRCLIB for synced lyrics (with custom-lyrics override)
• Last.fm (optional, fully offline-queueable)

Privacy

• No telemetry. No analytics. No crash reporters that phone home.
• Library, settings, ratings, bookmarks, and history live in your OS user profile under %APPDATA%/NewAmp.
• Last.fm scrobbling is opt-in and uses your own API credentials; tokens are stored hashed in the release proof manifest.
• Synced lyrics fetched from LRCLIB are anonymous lookups by artist + title + duration.

Contributing

Pull requests welcome. Before opening one:

1. npm run smoke:rating && npm run smoke:home && npm run smoke:skin && npm run smoke:audio-limiter && npm run smoke:audio-output — at minimum
2. npx tsc -p tsconfig.json --noEmit && npx tsc -p electron/tsconfig.json --noEmit
3. For UI work, run npm run package and try the produced installer end-to-end

License

MIT. The "NewAmp" name and logo artwork are project-specific; everything else is yours to fork.

Acknowledgements

NewAmp stands on the shoulders of Winamp (1997–2013), the open-source audio community, and decades of bedroom DJs who refused to give up local files.