Every month or so, I’ll come across a piece of software hidden in the depths of the internet that really hits me as a surprise. How are some of these applications so unpopular?
I’ve preached on my loyalty to Winamp Lite in a previous article. It’s old and many would consider it to even be deprecated, but it’s always done the job for me. When I’m listening to music downloaded to a local drive, I don’t need Spotify or iTunes in charge of my music. However, for the past week, I’ve slowly started to fall in love with a new, free, and portable alternative to Winamp Lite that seems to incorporate the same elements of simplicity while also offering some really awesome extra functionality. Let me tell you about Hokrain!
Download Hokrain
First worth mentioning is the website that Hokrain calls home. Though I’ll echo and help explain much of it in this article, Hokrain’s website is one of the best examples of a one-pager that I’ve ever seen. All of the information that you’d be interested in, including a direct link to download the application, exists on a single page.
It saves you from wasting time and makes you want to download and give it a try. It’s one click away and you know everything that it has to offer, so why not?
Hokrain is completely portable and can be run from a flash drive. Hokrain runs perfectly on any version of Windows, from 98 onward. It’ll cost your disk 600 KB of space and I’ve yet to see it go over about 7 MB in RAM usage. Compared to one of the applications I mentioned earlier, Spotify or iTunes, the difference in resource intensity is extremely significant.
Out of the box, Hokrain’s interface is very simple and clean.
One quick glance and you’re able to see practically everything you need to begin listening to your music. Hokrain supports the following formats:
- MP3
- MP2
- MP1
- MPA
- OGG
- WAV
- AIFF
- MO3
- IT
- XM
- S3M
- MTM
- MOD
- UMX
- AAC
- AC3
- APE
- MAC
- CDA
- FLAC
- MIDI
- MID
- RMI
- KAR
- MPC
- MP+
- MPP
- TTA
- WMA
- WV
Navigate to a folder, double-click a track, and it will immediately begin playing.
Let’s break down a few of the more interesting parts of the audio player’s interface:
- Hokrain has a nice CPU usage monitor that shows just how much processing power it is consuming while playing. It’s near the top-right of the interface, and just 0.42% in the above screenshot.
- Hokrain’s volume slider is very large, running all the way up the right side of the interface. Unlike many audio players, it’s vertical rather than horizontal. Being so large, it really allows you to easily set an exact volume percentage, if you’re into round numbers like me.
- There is also a quality spectrum that lets you visualize the current track’s visual quality.
- Below the spectrum, you’re able to graphically seek your track. Some audio players have a simple slider that lets you seek through the track, but a graphical seeker really lets you pinpoint a particular part of a song at just a glance. No more hearing around and wasting time to get to the part of a song that you want.
The application’s settings are filled with goodies. Hokrain comes stocked with six different themes that you can choose from. Here is the Windows XP theme:
The General tab offers a lot of information and lets you set more than just your theme. There is an OSD (on-screen display) every time you change tracks to notify you of what is currently being played. It can be turned on or off. You are then able to toy with shell integration options, your tray icon, and a few other small tweaks.
Another great thing about Hokrain lies within the two Hot Keys tabs.
If you’re using a media player, you need to use hotkeys. It’s just that simple. Hokrain supports a ridiculous amount of hotkeys that let you control playing, stopping, pausing, muting, seeking, and plenty more. I’d argue that there are possibly even too many hotkeys!
The coolest part of the settings is something that I’d consider to be a “quality of life” feature, one that isn’t exactly necessary but it’s really nice to have: Scrobbler.
If you’re not big on Last.fm, Hokrain lets you keep local records on what tracks you play, how long you’ve listened to them, and how many times you’ve played them. You can sort these records to make out what your favorite songs are. It’s just an example of Hokrain thinking outside the box and doing more than the average audio player.
Hokrain is an audio player that I’m happy I’ve found. Even if you’re pleased with your current audio player, it’s a piece of software really worth appreciating. Give it a try and see if you like it. Let me know what you think in the comments!
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Don’t you ever hear about AIMP3? Unbeatable since few years in Music Players category.
AIMP3 is much better
There is another alternative for Hokrain – “WinyL (http://vinylsoft.com/)”. Works well with all popular media formats.
I have just installed VLC player forgot about anything like other media players. It just plays everything!
I don’t bother with music players but this one I have to try. I’m impressed that it went out of its’ way to support old-school MOD (and the other tracker formats) as well as MIDI. Portable, compatible with Win98 and up, small size… Really nice find!
I use VLC for everything.
My favs was AIMP and foobar2000, but I think I have to try this too. Thanks.
I’d still use aimp!
no, i just installed and set it to default!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the find. Though I remain a staunch fan of Winamp, I will give it a try.
I stop searching for media player after I have Billy and Daum Potplayer. By the way, nice to meet other Uematsu fan.
I always use VLC.This doesn’t really give me a reason to switch.
I’m a fan of jaangle and I think I will stay with it.
downloaded and installed
“The coolest part of the settings is something that I’d consider to be a “quality of life” feature, one that isn’t exactly necessary but it’s really nice to have: Scrobbler.”
You make a statement like that, but you don’t back it up with anything. What’s a scrobbler and why is it a “quality of life” feature. Pretty much I use media monkey to manage my local music, heck ALL my music is local. When I have wanted to get to it remotely I’ve used Orb and a web browser. I’ve used WinAmp, but feel as you’ve stated that it’s “old”, it does not bring anything new to the table. For quick listening, I’ll browse to the songs I want in explorer and play it in MPC-HC or VLC. I just downloaded Hokrain and will give it a try.
The paragraph just below that one explains what a scrobbler is and what the exact feature offers.
Not really, you say its “Quality of Life” show a picture of scrobbler, which as far as I can tell looks like a media library function, which is useless if you have to go into the options to access. The next paragraph starts about lastfm and statistics, you never backed up that statement or explained what a scrobbler is. What am I missing? Why would I want to use Hokrain and this quality of life feature? What does it do that would make me want to use it? Not trying to come across rude or anything, I’m just trying to understand why you think this program, and that feature in particular, is so great to make me give it a second chance. Thank you.
Well, didn’t like it. Too slow browsing to networked drives, kind of ugly looking interface as well. I’ll stick with MPC-HC.
The reason it’s relatively unknown is that there are about fifty million “audio players” out there. One more just gets lost in the crowd.
I’ll probably download it and add it to the pile I have, since it’s portable and appears pretty clean in user interface.
I run Linux anyway, but Windows for portable stuff. On Linux I just use VLC. I used to use Kaffeine but it went bonkers on me at one point so I had to uninstall it. Actually I use VLC for movies, but I use Exaile for audio – because it has a simple directory browse that stays open on my music directory so all I have to do is click on a file name to play the file. That’s why I was using Kaffeine before – it had the same feature. VLC requires you to open a directory browser.
I never use these complicated music players that have fifty million ways to set up playlists that don’t match how *I* listen to music – which is one at a time selected manually. I also hate “music libraries” – all my music is under one directory structure and I know where everything is already. Most of those programs try to force you into doing things “their way”, rather than how you want to do it.
Will it scrobble songs across Last.fm? Currently, I am enjoying using foobar!
It won’t, but I’d suggest such a feature to every developer from here on who creates any sort of audio player.
very small and very useful music app. thanks
Regards.
Before your certain bloggers claimed to to bring hidden jewels deep in internet.
I posted my replies to like: The software which changed /made easy your life
etc. etc. but never found a single comment from them till now.
There were lot of such small programs and I am using those still from the era of previous millennium. Some started just from their student life and was only for 1 item say view pictures and now it is a versatile MM job and free.
A archive app in the reign of Winzip ; while Winzip was still in the age of Spanning files on floppies; and it offered the splitter + archiving a folder or a Directory; all free
and like …
Thanks any how to bring one now.
Hope for future …
AHMalik
If I am not mistaken that’s the FF7 OST, nice! I wonder if this player works with DFX because I am using it with Winamp and it’s better than other players at the moment for me.
The simplest audio player I’ve ever found was Apollo ( http://apollo.capacala.com/ ) which I used for a while. Let’s try out Hokrain now…
And I use Irfanviewer; runs a lot of picture formats; audios; video; flash; and a deep app for pictures much more to work-on …
Music from YouTube and similar is often disgusting. It’s the perfect example of “digital” sound in the worst sense of the word: cold, cutting, caustic, harsh, metallic. Who has refined ears surely understands what I say.
I am still looking for a player/tool able to soften that sound.
Is there something for me?
Yuck! Interface-less player. Thought winamp was more functional or even aimp3!
Barely makes it into the green in WOT …
Seems great, but like most said, it looks a lot like AIMP3. It’s not really like most of us want to fix something that’s not broken :)
That said, I think I’ll try this on my ‘dying’ computer which isn’t in a that well shape.
Thanks for sharing this great back-up, in case AIMP3 fails in the future :)
but still lack of what I want: a lyric display
I have always used vlc if I am listening to just a few songs in a row or songbird if I am having a long listening session. Now hokrain is used for both mainly because of its incredibly low resource usage (only 7mb compared to the many 100 of songbird)
Winamp, cliche and the best ever, simple and user friendly.
If you would like to change your mind one more time… download a DSP plugin for Winamp named Ozone MP, you can find it free on Winamp site. Sadly Izotope is no longer selling the full version of it, but I have a full version, bought it years and years ago. It blows my mind every time how good it makes the music sound. Biggest regret is that there is no way to use it with a portable player. Izotope makes some killer sound applications, lately I started using one of their basic ones for cleaning up voice and music files, when I can afford it I’m getting their RX 2 Advanced.
Another audio player. Must check it out, fairly. Thanks.
Just try XMPlay. You wont go to any other player for mp3. http://support.xmplay.com/
Its default theme is very boring. Just try some themes.
Mediamonkey FTW.
You can make it incredibly stripped down or it can handle advanced poweruser scripting. Supports loads of hotkeys, formats and library management functions.
hmm.. i prefer VLC than this because its a package player for both video or music.
Is this player good? Maybe. It’s simple, clean, fast, blah blah blah. . . Buh what happens when that’s just not enough – of which it hardly ever is right? What happens when I wanna use playlists, artworks, edit metadata, etc.? Because come on, if all I wanna do is “listen” I need only plug my headset into my smartphone and have at it right? I know most modern players are resource huggers, but so what? I’ve never had ma system slow down simply because I was listening to some music on iTunes, VLC or MPC-HC (Zune though, maybe) and I use a Netbook at the moment which has jus’ 1.66GHz and what not (an Acer One). Video playback is what usually leads to such. If simplicity’s just it, like you want a “clean” interface, then sure, go for it. But if that’s not the case, I really don’t see how this here player supercedes any of the aforementioned, especially VLC Media player.
P.S.: Sorry for elaborating, couldn’t help it. :-)