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Which is lightest on resources, free and portable MP3 player for Windows with playlist support?

I don't need any visualization/plugin/skins.

Please give info about memory usage (while song is running in player) also in your answer.

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Consider making this CW. – alex Jan 15 '10 at 11:08
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protected by Ivo Flipse♦ Jan 9 '11 at 16:09

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8 Answers

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Use an older version of Winamp from the 90's ;)

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Definitely, I used a pre-AOL takeover 2.x version of Winamp for years, great little player, did everything I needed and ran with almost no resources. Thank god for oldversion.com for when you need the pre-bloated versions of great apps! – GAThrawn Jan 15 '10 at 14:31
u were right Winamp 2.0 is lightest oldversion.com/download_Winamp_2.00.html – metal gear solid Jan 15 '10 at 15:59
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up vote 7 down vote

I think foobar2000 suits your needs

Wikipedia on foobar2000:

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface. While supporting a large number of audio file formats, it has many features for metadata support and file organization, and it has a converter interface for use with command line encoders. To maximize the audio fidelity of consumer-grade equipment, it provides noise shaping and dithering. It features a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. While the core is closed source, the SDK is licensed under the BSD license.

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While it's easy to bloat fb2k with components, the music-playing bit is really very light, so if you want lightness above all, fb2k's your best choice. – Phoshi Jan 15 '10 at 11:09
@Phoshi Agreed, mine has tons of components installed and it consumes around 90 MBs of memory while playing MP3s. I am not complaining though, I love my components :). – swamplord Jan 17 '10 at 3:14
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up vote 2 down vote

Damn Small Media Player

I know there are loads of mp3 players available, so why one more. The motivation behind me writing this app is that I am fed up with the ever increasing size of mp3 players. This is meant to ease my pain :-P. I aim to keep its size below 2MB at all costs.

Using the player:

  • Ctrl+A on the List Ctrl selects all the files in the list of files
  • Global HotKeys added for Previous(Ctrl+Alt+Z), Play/Pause(Ctrl+Alt+X), Stop(Ctrl+Alt+C) and Next(Ctrl+Alt+V)
  • Download the exe and run it. Its that simple.
  • Click on Add button and select the files/folders you want to add to the playlist
  • Shortcut keys (Z= Previous, X= Play/Pause, C = Pause, V= Next)
  • Playlist Queue(Select the file and click on Insert key to add file to queue)
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it'good but it takes approx 20 MB memory while playing songs. is it normal. – metal gear solid Jan 15 '10 at 9:22
iTunes takes about 30-40 MB, so I suppose its normal – Sathya♦ Jan 15 '10 at 9:59
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up vote 2 down vote

XMPlay is pretty good. Very lightweight, skinnable, no install needed.

alt text

XMPlay is an audio player, supporting the OGG / MP3 / MP2 / MP1 / WMA / WAV / AIFF / CDA / MO3 / IT / XM / S3M / MTM / MOD / UMX audio formats, and PLS / M3U / ASX / WAX playlists. A load more formats are also supported via plugins. When XMPlay was first released in 1998, only the XM format was supported, hence the name "XMPlay".

XMPlay is freeware.

Another small and lightweight player is musikCube, which supports playlists as well as dynamic playlists:

alt text

musikCube is freeware.

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do u know how to make a simple look ox xm play. i don't need any skin. – metal gear solid Jan 15 '10 at 8:37
and musikCube takes 11 MB RAM even if song is not played. I didn't liked both – metal gear solid Jan 15 '10 at 8:45
+1 for xmplay. It´s just great. 3,164 KB of memory usage while playing. – Edgar Nov 26 '10 at 5:55
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up vote 0 down vote

Media Player Classic Home Cinema meets all your requirements!

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MPC is great, but while far from bloated, I don't think it could be considered one of the lightest. Not for just MP3 anyway. – outsideblasts Jan 15 '10 at 8:43
@outsideblasts - u r right – metal gear solid Jan 15 '10 at 8:47
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up vote 0 down vote

Winamp Lite (you can find it at the bottom of the page). It's small (~3MB), light on resources and familiar. Has everything you might need just for playing music. If you want to extend its functionality, you can do it through plugins.

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up vote 0 down vote

musikcube (http://www.musikcube.com/) is a fantastic light media player. Although the last update was in 2006, I haven't really found any features lacking.

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up vote 0 down vote

use 1by1. its free, portable, small(152kb) & lighest(takes about 5mb of ram) audio player. just give it a shot

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