AIMP player, or Artem Izmaylov Media Player is a small but multi-functional program designed to play audio files. This article will talk about its capabilities, interface, and how to add ready-made design styles to your AIMP — skins or skins.
Key Features and System Requirements
This program contains many functions that will be useful to the average user, occasionally listening to music, and an avid music lover:
- Support for more than 30 formats without the need for additional audio codecs. These include: MPEG (.mp1,. Mp2, .mp3), M4A, M4B; FLAC AAC, AC3, APE, AT3, AA3; CDA, DTS, DSF, DFF, IT; MIDI, MO3, MOD, MPC, MTM; OFR, OGG, OMA, OPUS, RMI, S3M, SPX, TAK, TTA; UMX, WAV, WMA, WV, XM MKA.
- Play online radio stations.
- Create multiple playlists and the ability to edit them while playing music in one of them.
- Configuring "local" and "global" hotkeys that allow you to control AIMP in active and inactive windows, respectively.
- Equalizer with a dozen ready-made settings for the most popular music genres.
- A deep change in appearance with the help of an extensive library of covers.
- Editing audio file tags.
- Scheduler. It allows you to turn off the computer after playing the last file in the playlist or wake the user at the appointed time.
This program is undemanding to computer resources and is completely free. From the official site you can download AIMP for Windows (7, 8, Vista, XP) and Android. Other operating systems are not supported.
Interface Overview
AIMP design is such that its basic functions can be used using knowledge of Windows Media Player. Conditionally, the interface can be divided into 3 functional blocks:
- Playback
- Playlist management.
- Music Library.
Note. Next, we will consider the interface of the cover installed by default in the current version 4.51.
Play block
It consists of 3 parts:
- The title bar.
- Information block.
- Control buttons.
The title bar contains 5 buttons and the name of the program in its center. The first is responsible for calling the AIMP main menu. The second button in the form of four small squares switches the combination of cover colors from gray and white to black.
The last 3 buttons control the window: minimize it, expand it to full screen and close it.
The information block contains the cover (it is automatically downloaded from the Web), the name of the record and album, file format and bitrate.
To the right and below it are the buttons:
- Playback controls ("Start" / "Pause", "Stop", "Next" / "Previous").
- The scale of the volume control.
- Scheduler (similar to a clock). When this option is enabled, a timer will appear next to it.
- Displays the window of the visual image in the form of a monitor icon.
- A sound effects manager containing an equalizer and tools to distort the original sound.
- Repeat the playing track and random play.
Below them is a rewind bar with timers at each end. The first displays the elapsed time since the start of playback, and the second shows the length of the recording.
When minimizing the window, a narrow bar appears on the desktop, displaying the name of the track, control buttons and the scroll bar. It is useful to know that such a feature is present in AIMP.
Note. The control buttons appear only after you hover over the thumbnail.
Playlist
This window in AIMP for Windows includes the following elements:
- A series of tabs with ready-made lists.
- A line with the total duration of the playlist, the size of the files and the number of the latter.
- List of playable songs.
- Control buttons: "Adds" and "Delete" files, "Sort". Operations with the playlist: "Create", "Open", "Close", "Save", "Rename".
- A string to search for entries in the list.
You can display or hide the window using the "Playlist" command in the main menu. You can also separate it from the main one and place it anywhere on the screen.
Music library
The implementation of this function in this version of AIMP is such that in appearance and capabilities it is very similar to Windows Media Player 11. The music library is designed to structure the collection of music on the hard drive. Its window consists of 3 blocks.
In the first (left) is the composition tree. It is an automatically created group based on tags embedded in audio files. The button at the top of the block allows you to change the way music is sorted by the following parameters:
- Without grouping. The tree of folders containing the music is displayed.
- Albums.
- Artist and album.
- Year, artist and album title.
- Genre, artist and album.
When you click on one of the groups in the list on the left, a list of files included in it will be displayed.
The third block is a string that includes:
- 2 fields for searching by album or record name.
- Buttons to add and remove files from the audio library.
- Three-position switch for the appearance of the second block: table, table with album cover, cover only.
Adding downloaded covers (skins)
The first thing to do in order to add new covers to AIMP is to download them from the official site as an archive and unzip it. You can install them in 3 ways.
The first method is the easiest, and it consists in dragging the file from the archive into the playback window. After that, the settings window will open, in it you need to select the added cover, and then click "Apply" and "Ok."
The second way is a bit more complicated. It runs as follows:
- Open the "Settings" window in the main menu and go to the "Covers" subsection.
- Click on “Install” and indicate the path to the extracted file.
- Apply cover using the button of the same name.
The third method is universal for all versions of the player and consists in the following:
- Find the AIMP folder on the hard drive. It is usually located in the system partition of the hard drive in the Program Files directory.
- In it, go to the Skins folder and copy the previously unpacked files into it.
Note. AIMP 4.51 supports covers from versions 2.x and 3.x.
- Open the cover settings window using step No. 1 of the second method and enable the added “skin” using the “Apply” or “Ok” buttons.
This completes the procedure for adding a new skin for the player.
To summarize, we can say that AIMP is such a convenient program for playing music with a customizable design and an intuitive interface.