HT-MP3Player

After a long day’s work, you most likely get home and hit the “play” button to enjoy one or two favorite songs. Needless to say that this operation requires a dedicated application which can read audio files, and in case you’re looking to try something new, then HT-MP3Player comes in a lightweight package, with a straightforward set of tools.

The visual design consists of all elements you get to work with. However, the overall layout feels a little rough around the edges, despite its little animations, or color themes. The playlist is constantly in plain sight, and you can start by dropping a few audio files over it.

Note that the only file supported for input is MP3, but this is a pretty popular format, unless you want more quality out of audio. Moreover, playlist management is done under the application’s own HTP format, with no support for other types, like PLS, or M3U. This goes for both saving, and loading playlists.

You can randomize the whole list of songs for a surprise with every new playback. At the other end there’s the possibility to sort them alphabetically. In case you add all songs from your hard disk drive, a dedicated option helps you easily remove all duplicate items, or enable multiple selection delete for manual picking.

Playback controls let you play, pause, and stop playback, with a dedicated progress slider to skip through content, but it’s not fitted with length values. What’s more, it only minimizes to taskbar, and since there’s no hotkey support, it needs to be brought back up for playback management.

Bottom line is that picking an audio player nowadays is mostly a matter of taste. Sadly, HT-MP3Player isn’t quite prepared to handle sophisticated tasks, and comes in handy if you simply want to listen to a bunch of MP3 files. Playlists are generated under its own format, with no option to read other formats, while controls need to be handled from the main window at all times.