The Unofficial Winamp FAQ (for version 1.45): by Justin Frankel
...in no particular order

Q: Winamp's output is jumpy.
A1: Do you have a Pentium? :)
A2: Try increasing the priority in the preferences
A3: Increase the buffering to ~8 seconds in the preferences
A3: See the next question.

Q: Why does Winamp skip when I scroll a window down in Netscape or Word, 
   even though I have a P2-300?
A: Your video card is taking bus bandwidth from your soundcard, there is 
   nothing that Winamp can do or could do. However, if your video card supports 
   it, you can play with the "PCI Bus Retries" setting which will likely fix 
   this problem.

Q: Why is Winamp so small?
A1: MFC stands for Microsoft Foundation Classes, and is a system that eases 
   development of Windows applications. MFC is used by many Windows 
   applications. We see MFC as a product with benefits and downsides.
   Winamp doesn't use MFC.
A2: Winamp is designed to not take up much space on the screen.
    Try the double-size option if you want it to.

Q: Other players claim to have "256 bit/sample" quality. What does this mean?
A: This means that the player represents floating point numbers during the 
   decode process with 256 bits, giving much more precision than the common 
   32-bit or 64-bit numbers. People claim that this produces higher sound 
   quality, but it doesn't appear to (to us).  In addition to 256 bit floating
   point numbers seeming needless, there is another issue. The Floating Point 
   Unit (FPU) on Intel 486DX+ CPU's have a maximum external precision of 64 
   bits, meaning that for a program to perform _any_ operations on the numbers,
   they must first be rounded down to 64 (or 32) bits, then the FPU performs 
   operations, then produces 64 bit (or 32 bit) output.  This is then stored 
   in a 256 bit number. So, it might appear that the extra precision really 
   isn't ever used.

Q: What is the point of the option "Allow multiple instances"
A1: I, unlike most people, have two soundcards, and enjoy playing multiple 
    MPEGs at once.
A2: My GUS PnP can play 4 outputs at once, and I enjoy playing multiple MPEGs
    at once.

Q: Why doesn't the volume control work on my system?
A: Your soundcard's driver is broken. Talk to your hardware vendor about 
   having them fix it. It seems that MANY soundcard drivers are broken these
   days, leading us to believe that it might be our code. PLEASE, DO NOT EMAIL
   US WITH THIS "BUG".

Q: What are the little green and red dots next to the play icon?
A: They are supposed to be two lights, a green one and a red one. The green 
   one is lit when synchronization is normal, and the red one lights up when 
   synchronization is lost, i.e.  when you are fast-forwarding or rewinding or 
   when you have a corrupted MPEG. Also, this lights up at the end of the MPEG.

Q: Why does Winamp's memory usage appears to grow as an MPEG is played?
A: This is because Winamp uses memory mapped files to ease the decode process. 
   Don't worry- Winamp isn't actually taking memory away from other 
   applications, it's just using free memory, and will release memory to the 
   system when another program needs it.

Q: Why doesn't Winamp load filenames with spaces from the Windows Shell 
   correctly?
A: You need to register file types using the option in the preferences

Q: Winamp won't play this MPEG file that Winplay3 has no trouble on.
A1: The file is probably a MPEG 2.5 layer 3 file, which is unsupported by 
    Winamp because it is proprietary to Fhg, the makers of Winplay3. We'd 
    like to support it, but the specification isn't publicly available. Expect
	support sometime in the future for this format.
A2: Otherwise, it is corrupted in some way that makes it unreadable by Winamp. 
    We try to improve our synchronization code as much as possible, but we 
    can't make it work 100% of the time.

Q: How can I find out about some of the little tips and tricks that make 
   my use of Winamp more pleasurable?
A: Go to the about box (by clicking on the lightning-bolt or hitting F1), and 
   go to the "Tips n bugs" section.

Q: I emailed a bug report to "nullsoft@nullsoft.com" and haven't heard back,
   should I try again?
A: No! We hear you the first time, but we don't have time to reply to all 
   emails. So just look for a fix in a future release.

Q: Why doesn't Winamp show international fonts (i.e. "ü') in the songname field?
A: Winamp uses it's own bitmapped font, and we're too lazy to make all the entries
   by hand.

Q: Why won't Winamp play the MP3s from this web page?
A: Winamp currently does not support streaming. Please just download the file in
   Netscape, and play it with Winamp after. Winamp does however support indirect 
   streaming at this point, which means you can play files as they are being
   downloaded.

Q: (From Wawb): If I shake Winamp around, will it answer my important life questions, like
   the Magic 8 Ball[tm]?
A: Maybe.