fmedia

At a first glance, you would say that fmedia can't be any simpler, but despite its bare-bone appearance, this audio player has many advantages to offer. First of all, the application uses an insignificant amount of resources, which makes it a valuable tool on a slower computer or on a laptop with little battery life left. What's more, the player comes with some other useful features as well, including recording and conversion capabilities.

The software is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD and it is offered completely free of charge. Its components can be extracted from a ZIP archive, so you don't have to go through an installation process. There is no need to meet any special requirements and, as previously suggested, you don't need powerful hardware.

The main user interface has a fairly simple design. It consists of a list, in which you can drop your audio files, as well as a few basic playback controls. You just drop your files and play them. It's as simple as that. Additionally, you can add URLs, if you wish to listen to streams or online radio broadcasts.

If you decide to listen to an online broadcast, the application's recording function may come in useful. It provides several options, in the "Record" menu, for recording immediately or making a few preparations first. Furthermore, the software comes with a built-in converter as well, so you can store your audio files or recordings in different formats.

Simplicity is fmedia's key feature. The application was designed from the ground up to use as few resources as possible. What's more, if you really can't afford to sacrifice too many resources or battery power, you can still play your music, but without the user interface. If you drop an audio file over one of fmedia's executables, the application will play that file right away and it will only show a timer and progress on a command prompt (CMD) window.

You can expect a high quality playback for as few resources as possible, when playing your audio files with fmedia.