Almost everybody likes listening to music, and that’s why OS vendors ship a media player bundled with their operating systems, just like Windows Media Player comes with Microsoft Windows out of the box to let you quickly play your local music library. But truth be told, audiophiles usually turn to third-party apps like Foobar, Music Monkey or WinAmp etc., as these come with a bevy of features not found in a basic media management app like WMP. If you’re not satisfied with the number of music formats supported by your current music player, try BZR Player. This portable Windows application boasts support for an impressive number of formats and is a must-have for those with music in a variety of formats. As of this writing, the application supports a staggering 480 playable formats including MP3, OGG, Amiga MOD, FLAC, Atari YM, Nintendo NSF and many many more. That’s the most extensive music format support I’ve seen so far in any media player.
File format support isn’t the only thing where BZR Player really shines; it has quite a few handy and powerful features to make your music consumption more delightful. For instance, BZR’s archive feature allows you to play audio files straight from archives including ZIP, RAR, 7-ZIP, LHA, ATR, BZIP2 and so on. Then there’s the Pattern view that enables viewing notes for formats like AHX, HivelyTacker, Screamtracker 3, Digi Booster, Star Trekker, Game Music Creator, Sound/Pro/Noise Tracker and Ice Tracker. Moving on to a bit more advanced side of things, the program also supports multiple sound engines including SIDPlay, Adplug, Libmodplug, Game Music Emu, FLOD and TFMX.
A good application isn’t all about good looks and a truckload of features though; it also has to be intuitive to use. Fortunately, BZR Player is pretty good in that department as well. You can quickly start playing your favorite track via simple drag and drop; just drop a single file or even a folder containing multiple song over the player, and it will add all the files to the playlist in one streamlined process. The interface carries playback buttons at the bottom, along with a seek bar. It houses a virtual dot matrix display that shows you information about the current song including its name, bitrate, format, play time etc. On the right, there are controls for volume, pitch and audio balance, along with toggles for volume normalization, reverb effect, shuffle and repeat.
In addition to the main player view, you can bring up a few applets via small radio buttons at the bottom right, for features such as opening a file and toggling the playlist, file information and pattern views. The player allows you to add and save multiple playlists to keep your music collection well organized and easily accessible. That said, it also lets you add bookmarks for audio streams from the internet, i.e. the radio stream URLs found over Shoutcast etc. The file information applet gives you a thorough overview of the current file being played via id3v1/id3v2 tags.
The Settings window lets you configure a few parameters to customize your experience. You can tweak various advanced options here under General, Display and Pattern tabs.
Even though BZR Player looks very simple on the surface, it boasts a myriad of features and supports a huge list of formats. You can download this powerful music player for free using the link below. It’s a portable app that doesn’t require any installation, and works on both Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.
