Earlier today, I had a problem with my media players. Both Media Monkey and WMP refuses to play mp3 files. Since they can play mp4 and AAC files without any problem, I immediately know that there’s something wrong with the mp3 plugin on my sistem.
Fixing Media Monkey was a breeze, I only need to download the MAD plug in and everything returns back to normal. But while googling for the plug in, I came across XMPlay. It is nothing new to me, I used it a few times before as portable music player (I brought it on my UFD). It’s been a while, though, so I wanted to see what new tricks it has.
And those tricks are good, let me tell you.
Firstly, the way it sounds. I am used to the way Media Monkey plays my music, listening XMPlay doing the same gave me a surprise. I tried listening a song back and forth between Media Monkey and XMPlay, and I like XMPlay more. The bass is a bit more emphasized, and the treble is a little crisper. It’s nothing I can’t do with careful equalization, but still, It’s a nice thing to have without having to fiddle with those sliders.
Next is memory usage. XMPlay is only a 300 kilobytes download, so I won’t be surprised if it uses little memory, too. And it does, it only uses around 3000 kilobytes, compared to around 30.000 kilobytes in Media Monkey and 20.000 kilobytes in Windows Media Player. It doesn’t mean much for me, I have 2 GB of RAM anyway. But for those who are tight on specifications, this kind of saving is really good.
I also didn’t think a player this samll would have any media library, but I was proven wrong. This player even integrates a basic media library which is enough for most people’s needs.
And lastly, the plug ins. XMPlay comes as a bare package. It can play standard formats with no problem, but if you need FLAC or AAC (like me), you need to download the plug ins. It’s not a hard job, as the file size is only around 200 kilobytes, and all you need to do is placing the files in the same directory as XMPlay. Not only file support, it also have a lot of skins and visualizations to choose from.
Now, the bad things. This player doesn’t have any portable media player support, especially auto-sync. his only apply for those who need it, though, so if you don’ need it, it’s no problem.
Next, this player needs a beter buffer system. I experienced quite a lot of stuttering if I listen to it while doing hard-drive intensive things, like installing a software. It rarely happens, though.
In my opinion, this is a very good music player for its size, even compared to full player ike Media Monkey, It remains competitive. Therefore, I happily recommend to try this one, especially if you are low on computing power. You might actually like it.
