Linamp – A Raspberry Pi 4-based audio box with Winamp look and feel

Linamp is a media player box based on Raspberry Pi 4 SBC and a touchscreen display with a GUI that replicates the popular Winamp media player’s GUI that older readers may remember from the late 90s and early 2000s when it was one of the most popular music players for Windows.

Rodmg found some renders of what a real Winamp player could look like online, and it inspired him to create his own. As its name implies Linamp runs on Linux (DietPi) instead of Windows, and the hardware is based on a Raspberry Pi 4, a 7.9-inch touchscreen display, a USB DAC, and various connectors and cables, all housed in a custom-designed metal enclosure and a 3D-printed front cover both designed with Onshape.

Linamp audio player

Here’s the complete list of off-the-shelf items used for the build:

  • SBC – Raspberry Pi 4 with a 32 GB microSD card, a set of passive heat sinks, and the bottom part of a Raspberry Pi case
  • Display – 7.9-inch ultrawide display connected via HDMI and USB, the latter being used for power and touch input
  • Micro HDMI to mini HDMI cable
  • Apple USB-C to 3.5mm DAC with a USB-C to USB-A adapter
  • Extension cable for USB 2.0 + headphone jack
  • Extension cable for the Ethernet jack
  • Extension cable for the Raspberry Pi 4’s USB-C port
  • Push button connected to the Raspberry Pi GPIO for power on/off
Linamp internal design
Fully assembled kit before closing the box

Raspberry Pi based WinAMP media player

On the software side, the system runs Dietpi lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian 12 Bookworm. A custom Qt 6 app with Qt Widgets and Audacious code used for the spectrum analyzer was written in C++ to reproduce the look and feel of the original Winamp player. The code has not been made open-source yet, but I understand the plan is to make the project fully open-source. The first photo above already looks neat, but you may be even more impressed after watching the video.

The project’s Hackaday.io page has more details and says the following works in Linamp:

  • MP3, m4a, FLAC, etc. audio playback from local file systems or SAMBA mounts.
  • Playlist management for file playback
  • Real-time bar spectrum analyzer
  • Track information display including bitrate and sample rate
  • Volume and balance control
  • CD Playback (when connecting an external CD drive), including getting the track information from MusicBrainz

Bluetooth and Spotify playback are also being worked on.

I can already hear some say “Just take my money!”, but right now it’s not available. It’s not even possible to build your own as the 3D file and source code for the program are yet to be released. Once/if it is released you should be able to build one yourself. Alternatively, Rodmg has published an interest survey on Google Docs, and if enough people are interested he may start selling the Linamp system either as a kit or a fully assembled system.

Via Hackaday

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13 Comments
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Midgy
4 months ago

Neat !

Winters
Winters
4 months ago

Does it whip the llama’s ass, though?

Zeus Storm
Zeus Storm
4 months ago

Hahahah …good one!

Tim
Tim
4 months ago

You know it REALLY does.

Barrington
Barrington
4 months ago

That’s why it’s got all that cable coiled up. Just need a lama.

A K
4 months ago

What a waste of space. Instead of all those cables, a decent D-class amplifier could be placed easily. Along with PSU.

You are Not Ready
You are Not Ready
4 months ago

This news is old as dirt. Was announced months ago

Bill
Bill
4 months ago

Could be a fun project although as a music player, surely a Pi 3b+ would be more than capable, or even one of the smaller boards.

Seems that options could be available such as internal speakers.

Some kind of remote control feature would be needed, either dedicated or via bluetooth.

If is could be done relatively cheap then I may potentially see myself having some practical use out of it.

Benjamin Geiger
Benjamin Geiger
4 months ago

Heck, I’m old enough to remember when “Linamp” was still the name for what became XMMS…

ibnu
ibnu
4 months ago

buttons should be physical, not flat 2d touch screen

Engin
Engin
4 months ago

Internet radio streaming and a LAN web interface, please. Thank you.

chad schoening
4 months ago

Pretty cool but would be a must have for me if it had support for milkdrop 2… I still use the original winamp specifically for that reason. Not sure how a SBC might handle the graphics. Maybe it’s just not feasible but one can dream

snek
3 months ago

Milkdrop 2 is a trip.

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