Qmmp

A multimedia player with a soft spot for the good old times. FREE | QMMP.YLSOFTWARE.COM

This one is a nostalgic choice for anyone who remembers Winamp and its ‘llamas’ welcome sound. However, in every other regard, Qmmp is a modern multimedia player that continues to receive frequent updates, enhancements and fixes. We think it attracts a noticeable number of people who want to have a simple player with a playlist and all the frequently used controls fit inside its small main window. Qmmp looks very similar to Winamp, and given the fact that it supports all of the uncountable numbers of WSZ skins ever created for Winamp 2.x, you can make it look identical to the prototype.

Qmmp was made with the idea that you may want to organise your music with a file manager and browse albums as folders, without keeping a separate library (which is commonly a SQLite database in most other players). Having said that, all you need to do is drag a selection of files or folders on to the player’s window and watch them be added to the playlist. By default, the Qmmp window consists of three parts: the player itself, the equaliser and the playlist. All three stick to each other like magnets, but you can still detach the equaliser and playlist, rearrange them or keep them completely separate.

The player is a versatile multimedia machine, thanks to the bundled set of plugins. Most desktop environments associate Qmmp with audio files, whereas the player can open video files just fine. For that, Qmmp uses FFMpeg and Mplayer plugins, but it also supports mpg123, gme, Wasapi and more.

For instance, using gme (which stands for ‘game’), you can play games such as Super Mario for Game Boy right inside the Qmmp player. Looks as though we have an application for everything, which means you can get rid of other media players — if you like the approach and style of Qmmp.

The player should already be available in your package manager, so no need to deal with sources (unless you need bleeding edge code).