AudioStreamer

The common weakness of all portable players is their limited storage capacity, which may prevent you from taking that one extra song you like. If you play your music on a portable player at work or in other environments, where you have a computer at your disposal, you would definitely want to try out AudioStreamer. This lightweight application gives you the possibility of taking your entire audio library with you, to work or in other places where you have a computer and a working Internet connection. It can turn your computer into a streaming server, to which you and other users can connect from anywhere in the world.

AudioStreamer is freeware and it is compatible with all popular Windows versions. Its core components can be extracted directly from a ZIP or RAR archive without going through an installation process. Apart from a constant Internet connection, the software doesn't have any special requirements.

The application comes with a web-based user interface, which you have to access yourself, on a web browser of your choice (by default, you have to go to http://localhost:9090). After accessing the web interface and inserting the default login credentials, you can start targeting your audio folders for streaming. All you have to do is access the settings tab, type in a path and click a few buttons, according to the on-screen instructions.

Folders and their contents are added instantly to AudioStreamer's database, because the application doesn't need to copy or upload them. It only needs to know which audio files to stream. Besides specifying the path to one or more folders, you can also tick a few options, to set the application to perform a volume normalization process, use ID3 tags and more.

Targeted audio files are displayed in folders and sub-folders, in their original structure. Also, the files are displayed together with a few options, for playing them right away, adding them to a playlist and for displaying their metadata. Once your files are in the playlist, you can skip to any file you want just by clicking it and you can also move it up or down in the list by clicking and dragging. Besides managing your playlist, you can also view the album cover and audio visualization for the currently playing song, in the same area of the interface, but on separate tabs.