foobar2000 for Windows

Audio players usually feature a sophisticated multimedia interface full of buttons, lights and other types of eye-candy. But there's always an exception to the rule; in this case, it's foobar2000.

foobar2000 is exactly the opposite of what you would expect in an audio player. It features the simplest, most minimalistic interface you'll ever see in this kind of program. But don't get me wrong, because this doesn't mean you don't get any interesting functionality.

To begin with, foobar2000 is extraordinarily fast – it hardly took half a minute to index my huge music library – and extremely light on resources. You simply won't notice it's running. Also, as foobar2000 can be controlled with customizable keyboard hotkeys (or media keys, if your keyboard has them) you don't really to open the program's window.

Like I said, foobar2000 hides a bunch of interesting features under its simple appearance. It plays a dozen formats (the list of which can be easily expanded with additional components), features gapless playback, supports full Unicode, includes advanced tagging functionality and even lets you rip audio CDs and convert files from one format to another, provided you install the necessary plug-ins.

In all, foobar2000 would never win a design contest, but it's undoubtedly one of the lightest, fastest and most functional audio players you'll find. However, if you are still not convinced you can also try other alternatives such as AIMP or Winamp.

If you value lightness and functionality over appearance in an audio player, don't hesitate: foobar2000 is the program you're looking for.