Looking for a new audio player

I'm currently using Foobar2000 on my computer with a large majority of core components removed aside from anything having to do with skinning support. I would like to be able to delegate as many resources as possible to various tasks which require my machine to run at max load. My computer performs tasks like these on a regular basis. I will not go any further into what those tasks are.

Music is something I cannot be without and as I do not have a regular speaker system or second computer to use I am forced to run an audio playback application program at the same time resource intensive tasks are performed. I believe Foobar2000 is probably as good as it's going to get but I figured I'd check a few forums to see if there was anything I missed before I write my own application program.

Criteria:

Windows, No shell integration, Lightweight and skinnable GUI, audio playback only or ability to remove extra components, and Global hotkey support. Again, it must use an absolute minimal amount of resources, including Virtual Memory. Console-based recommendations are also welcome if they excel at minimal resource usage. Please do not base your recommendation off of information found in Windows Task Manager.

You can bet that I've already looked over every popular player out there, so recommending Winamp, MediaMonkey, iTunes (Eww) etc. is pointless. If you recommend VLC I will tell you, you are an idiot. Don't say I didn't warn you.

You could try Songbird. *snicker*

No, foobar2000 is the best out there.

How about Mplayer? It can be (or I should say is primarily) used from the console, however I don't know how much resources it takes. It's a videoplayer first and foremost, but there's no reason why you couldn't use it to listen to music.

I've used it to listen to music before. It makes a nice, light, Mp3 player. You can make play-lists on it, but I don't know if you can save them or anything. Just my 2 cents, I'm not much of a technology guy.

mplayer has some instability issues, specifically memory leaks when using certain options (-loop and playlists IIRC), when running under Windows. However, that may only be with video files, I have yet to try playing audio files with it because it's been in the back of my mind. It's also been quite the while since I last tried it as well, so there have probably been several new releases. I'll give it a shot using audio codecs only and report back.

Try Spider player ~3.38mb
*Internal 32-bit sound processing

or http://gourl.gr/eqg ~512kb
*Very tiny :P

Foobar2000 is the best in my experience and I'm sure you probably agree with me. As for alternatives, I've been out of the Windows sphere for a little while, but I generally used Foobar2000 or Winamp with some minimalistic theme.

I wouldn't recommend Songbird, because that's a lot like iTunes and is a little resource heavy.

Quoted for truth. You're not going to find a better player on Windows than foobar2000.

I'm not trying to sound like a dick here, but this implies you have both done extensive hours of research regarding which media player is "best". Moreover, you must be able to define best on a general scale and say it is true for every person using a media playing application program. As each and every single person has their own specific needs and wants, this is pretty much impossible to do. So I would like it if you refrain from further saying that there is a "best" of anything having to do with media players. In fact, I would urge you not to say that there is a "best" of anything in the programming universe. It shows great ignorance to someone who is well studied in the related areas.

A media player is essentially an application program that handles "Codecs" (Codec literally means coder-decoder). The decoder itself and the quality of the encoded file are what actually use the majority of system resources.

Foobar2000 is indeed a masterpiece among masterpieces for a user who desires everything they can get from their media player. However, with all of that extra code that enables Foobar2000 to support various components and features comes with it a very probable drop in efficiency. Though it is probably a very small one. This can however add up to a 10 minute difference in the length of time it takes for my computer to complete a resource intensive task.

As I need every single resource I can get, I must have a program that does what I need it to and (Give or take a few minor details.) only what I need it to. Of course efficiency also depends heavily on the programmer who wrote the application program. So while you may find media players that are only a few hundred kilobytes in size, it may in fact use up even more system resources than a much larger program. Especially if the person who wrote the program is relatively inexperienced.

I tried MPlayer, let's just say that it would be best left at being primarily for video.

Songbird. Memory leaks abound!

I've decided to write my own application program. I will still check this thread now and again to see if there are any new suggestions.