One of the first truly amazing MP3 players has been brought to life outside the computer screen. The design of Linamp, a real-life incarnation of Wina

Maker recreates classic Winamp MP3 player in real life with the Linamp, Llamas not included

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2024-06-09 05:00:02

One of the first truly amazing MP3 players has been brought to life outside the computer screen. The design of Linamp, a real-life incarnation of Winamp, combines the classic UI with even more nostalgia—it has the retro appearance of mini-rack home audio systems from the 1980s.

The Linamp system is powered by a Raspberry Pi 4B with a 32GB SD card. It utilizes a 7.9-inch extra-wide touchscreen to display the classic Winamp UI, including the spectrum analyzer visualization we loved so much and the scrolling artist and title information of the track playing. Rodmg, a software engineer by trade and maker by hobby, designed and built the whole project.

The display is driven by Dietpi, a Debian bookworm derivative, with a custom Qt 6 app written in C++ with Qt widgets. The maker said he chose to program it that way because he “wanted a challenge and to learn new things.” While developing the custom app, he had to re-implement deprecated functionality to run the audio visualization on the display.

Rodmg designed the case to be built in sheet metal to bring Winamp to life as a physical object. His inspiration was an Aiwa stereo he grew up with and still owned. Rodmg disassembled the Aiwa radio, took pictures and measurements, and then used those as inspiration for his design and dimensions.