Compact 500×128 window
You can narrow it to 330 px or widen it, and it remembers the width. Drag it by any part of the window, or pin it above everything else.
Ampere 2 · Windows audio player
Same player.
A third of the size.
A compact audio player for Windows, rebuilt from the audio engine up. It's one 23 MB file with no installer, no account and no telemetry, and it opens almost the moment you double-click it.
- Pay what you want, from £0
- Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit
- No installer
What changed underneath
Its own audio engine. Nothing extra to download.
The first Ampere played audio through libvlc, the engine inside VLC. That made a 330-pixel player a 69 MB download that took a moment to start up. Ampere 2 decodes MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus and WAV itself and sends the sound straight to Windows' own audio output.
0network connections, ever
1file to copy anywhere
0admin prompts
Everything it does
Small on screen. Complete where it counts.
A player in the style of the compact Winamp-era players, rewritten for today's Windows and made to stay out of your way.
Opens almost instantly
There's no media framework to load, so it starts noticeably faster, most of all the first time you open it after a restart.
A playlist when you want one
Add files or a whole folder, drag to reorder, shuffle and repeat. It opens and saves .m3u playlists.
Fully keyboard-driven
Visible focus outlines, arrow keys on the seek and volume bars, shortcuts that work anywhere in the window, and labels for screen readers.
No telemetry. No network code.
There's no account, licence check, update ping or analytics. It plays the files you give it and does nothing else.
Leaves your defaults alone
Adds Play and Enqueue to the right-click menu, and it asks before doing that. It never makes itself your default player.
Hands on the keys
You never have to reach for the mouse.
Tab moves between the controls. The seek and volume bars respond to the arrow keys, Page Up/Page Down and Home/End.
- Ctrl + ←/→Skip back or forward 5 seconds
- Ctrl + ↑/↓Volume up or down
- Ctrl + LOpen or close the playlist
- Ctrl + OOpen files
- Media keysPlay, pause, stop, next and previous
Formats
The formats people actually keep.
Every format is tested against real encoded audio. FLAC is decoded by the player itself, so your lossless library plays on any machine you copy Ampere 2 to.
- MP3
- FLAC
- OGG
- OPUS
- WAV
- M4A
- AAC
- WMA
- M3U / M3U8
Green: decoded by Ampere 2 itself. M4A, AAC and WMA play through Windows' Media Foundation, which Windows “N” editions leave out.
- The Options window is two checkboxes. One for file associations and one for always-on-top.
- Runs alongside the first Ampere. Each has its own settings and right-click entries, so they don't interfere.
Before you download
What it doesn't do.
Some of these were given up to get the smaller size and faster start-up. Better you know now than after you've downloaded it.
No equalizer
It came from libvlc and was removed along with it. If you need one, keep using the first Ampere; both can run side by side.
A shorter format list
It doesn't play APE, WavPack, DSD, Musepack, MIDI or tracker modules (.mod, .xm, .it, .s3m).
The queue isn't restored on exit
If you want to keep a playlist, save it as an M3U first.
No extras
No spectrum analyser, global media keys, internet radio, album art or skins.
Get Ampere 2
Free. Pay what you want, including nothing.
Nothing is locked, time-limited or held back if you pay £0. If you do pay, it goes toward building more small tools like this one.
£0+· version 2.0 · one 23 MB .exe
Questions
Good to know.
Is it really free?
Yes. The minimum price is £0, and nothing is withheld or time-limited if you pay nothing.
Windows says “Windows protected your PC”.
That's SmartScreen. The executable isn't code-signed, and an unsigned file has no download reputation with Microsoft until a lot of people have run it. Click More info, then Run anyway. If you'd rather check the file first, upload it to a service such as VirusTotal and compare it with the hash published alongside the download.
Should I use Ampere or Ampere 2?
Ampere 2, unless you need the equalizer or one of the formats it dropped. The download is a third of the size, it starts faster, and you can use it without a mouse. If you're not sure, run both, since they don't interfere with each other.
My .m4a files won't play.
You're almost certainly on a Windows “N” edition, or an install with Media Foundation removed. Ampere 2 tells you this when you open the file. Installing Microsoft's free Media Feature Pack from Settings › Apps › Optional features fixes it. Every other format plays either way.
Where does it put things, and how do I remove it?
Settings and a small diagnostic log (capped at 256 KB) go in %APPDATA%\Ampere2\. The right-click entries go under your own user account. To remove it, turn the associations off in Options, then delete that folder and the .exe. Nothing is left behind.
How do updates work?
The player never checks for updates. New versions are posted here. Replace the old .exe with the new one and your settings are kept.
Also from RPSoft
The two I charge for.
Twenty-three megabytes.
Runs anywhere.
One file, no installer, no account, and you only pay if you want to.