AIMP2 - An alternative media player

by Romeo Wahed May 4th 2008

Audio players come in all shapes and sizes, from resource hogging beasts such as iTunes and Windows Media Player, to relatively more lightweight competitors such as Winamp, MediaMonkey. And if you happen to have an iPod or some other sort of portable media player, chances are you are sort of locked in to whatever application works best with your portable device. But let's say you don't care about support for a portable player and just want a capable, lightweight player that has frills but not too many.

Meet AIMP2. AIMP2 weighs in at a mere 2.88MB, has a slightly smaller memory footprint than Winamp and can do just about everything you want except sync with a portable device. It supports anything from AAC to WMA, allows you to record radio streams, has a fully fledged library to organize your music, allows you to manipulate playlists while listening to another, and even supports a number of Winamp plug-ins. And for those who like to wake up and fall asleep to music, AIMP2 also includes a timed start and an auto shutdown timer.

Although lacking some of the features that the bigger media players may have, AIMP2 has an impressive feature set for its size. Additional skins and plug-ins are relatively scarce, but the basic skin works so well other skins are almost unnecessary beyond mere aesthetics. It has also been localized for a number of languages (the default being Russian), which makes this a very international user friendly application.

Overall, AIMP2 just feels right, and is a good alternative for anyone that is looking for something that works the way it should.

Tags: aimp2, freeware, media player, MediaPlayer, music

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

hazard said 12:03AM on 5-05-2008

nice one. it's streaming audio perfromance is pretty good although it loses points for transcoding to wav or mp3 instead of just saving the raw stream.

.. and of course you are joking about winamp (my preferred audio player) being lightweigth on resources .. open up the Media Library and watch the memory usage soar! winamp loads/unloads resouces as required so depending on what you are doing it can use more than wmp.

Bannana said 12:29AM on 5-05-2008

Foobar?

Marco said 2:03AM on 5-05-2008

one of the slowest programs i've ever used :|

sanb said 3:37PM on 5-05-2008

very nice player who has tabs, powerfull EQ, suported some Input, DSP, General winamp plugins (and have yours plugins), has audio converter on command line encoders (can extact audio stream from video), advansed tag editor, audio library, can record radio stream, support many audio formats, have easy to use Skin Editor for creating nice skins and many more

shanoboy said 11:47AM on 5-06-2008

I don't know, nothing beats VLC player. No need to install codecs, simple, light weight and have some nice features.

Plus, it just sits in a folder, no install (version I got is that way anyhow.)

Muhammad said 9:23AM on 5-07-2008

I have been using Winamp for the longest time, did not want to give into the Windows Media Player. But lately i have seen the winamp size grow and load-times slow. About 6 months ago i found aimp and i love it. Its light, loads fast and plays everything i have in my collection. Love it.

srudesigns said 5:29AM on 5-10-2008

Thanks, but no... I'd rather stay with my lovely little songbird :)

dm5 said 2:17AM on 5-25-2008

I love AIMP2! Pretty much all my friends and family (geeks and non-geeks) are now using AIMP2. I've been using computers since the DOS age, and no lie this has to be the greatest piece of software I have ever come across. My only complaint, there should be more skins. But the amazing developers even created a skin editor :). Thanks Download-Squad.

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters