Portable XMPlay

Portable XMPlay is a lightweight Windows audio player that reminds of Winamp’s looks. It comes with support for several advanced audio playback capabilities, such as gapless output, automatic gain control, interpolation and volume/pan ramping, track info, and media library.

This is the portable version of XMPlay. You can store it on USB flash drives or other portable devices to have it with you all the time. You may run it without administrative privileges.

Gaining access to its features requires only opening the executable file because there’s no setup included in the process. It does not write entries to your Windows registry and leave other configuration files on the target PC. It actually saves the settings data on the storage device. Getting rid of it implies a simple deletion task of the files that you have downloaded from the Internet.

The GUI looks minimalist and some features may be difficult to decode, but the good news is that it does not take too much space on the screen. Plus, if you don’t like the interface that much, you can appeal to various skins to alter its appearance. You may lock the position of the audio player on the screen.

Portable XMPlay works with several file formats, such as OGG, MP3, WMA, WAV, AIFF, CDA, XM, S3M, MTM, MOD, and UMX, as well as PLS, M3U, ASX, WAX, and CUE playlists. It able to play archived/compressed files (ZIP) and lets you drag and drop files, folders, shortcuts, and URLs, and monitor the clipboard for playable links. Other formats are supported via plugins.

The application offers you the possibility to create playlists with favorite audio files and export them to PLS or M3U file format. What’s more, you can queue files, remove items from the playlist and delete them from the computer, loop the list with songs, and give ratings.

You can view and alter track information, such as title, artist, date, comment, album, genre, and play count. Tracks can be sent to the library and sorted by title, artist, album, date, or other criteria.

Portable XMPlay helps you set up custom folders which are automatically monitored for new songs. If it detects new items, there are automatically added to the playlist. You can also make the program look for dead tracks upon its launch.

The utility comprises several audio features that you can take advantage of, such as automatic gain control (and ReplayGain), 9-band equalizer, and reverb options. The supported file types can be streamed via FTP or HTTP connections (like Shoutcast, Icecast), and you may also write a copy of files to the disk, and scan FTP folders and HTML webpages for audio streams.

You are allowed to open and play audio files with multiple cues, set up rules for displaying the titles of the track (e.g. update title from cues, omit filename extension), reassign hotkeys for various actions (e.g. pause, play, stop, restart), install all sorts of plugins (including Winamp ones), and save settings (e.g. DSP, loop, decoder) for particular tracks and automatically apply them when tracks are played.

Last but not least, you can write 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit WAV files, configure external encoders (e.g. MP3, OGG), normalize volume, apply dithering and noise effects, allow multiple instances, save playback position upon closing, and enable fade out effects.

The bottom line is that Portable XMPlay is all worthy of your attention if you are on the hunt for an advanced audio player. It provides excellent output playback, while remaining light on system resources.