Tune Your Windows Media Player

With Windows Media Player 12, which comes with Windows 7, you can listen to music and watch movies. All though not the best media player in my opinion, still worth to take a closer look at.

With just a few tricks you can use Windows Media Player 12 to your advantage when playing music lists or movies.

Lots Of Sound Settings

Start Windows Media Player, play any song and go to Play-now mode at the lower-right by ticking Play now enable.

Click with your right-mouse button on the window and choose Options, pick one of the possibilities like Cross fading and automatic volume leveling. This option comes in handy if you don’t want moments of silence between songs (Pick 3 seconds overlap for example).

Do you have mp3’s that are very loud, while others are quiet? Well, enabling automatic volume leveling should do the trick for you.

Thereafter, you will have to use the right-mouse button and enable the play-now window and choose more options. Go to the media library and check Values for adding volume leveling for new files.

Tip: It can take a while – like a couple of songs or albums – before the Windows Media Player recognizes the correct volume leveling for all your songs.

Maybe you don’t want to disturb your neighbors or colleague’s all too much while you are listening to your music… If that’s the case, go to options for dynamic attenuation and select normal difference.

The volume of loud sounds in your music or videos will be somewhat reduced so that you won’t bother others. This, however, does mean that you won’t be able to listen to your songs the way it was suppose to be.

Select Graphical equalizer and use the sliders to change or reduce the tone or accentuate. Too complicated? Use the presets in the equalizer by clicking on Normal and F.E. select Rock, Rap, Dance or Techno. You will immediately hear the difference and you can change it if you wish so.

If you want to play a song faster or slower, select Options for playback speed and select Slow or Fast or even insert your own value. Good for some good ol’ fun. 😉

Automatic Playlists

Another convenience in Windows Media Player 12 is the ability to automatically create playlists as you go. In order to do this you need to go to the library (close off Now Playing) and click on Create Playlist > Create Automatic playlist.

Give the playlist a name and select criteria for the playlist, like Album Artist, Rating, Date Added, Sub genre and Keyword Fields.

Not enough choices? Select More and select criteria such as Language, Time span, Title, etc. Based on the set criteria, the playlist will be automatically adjusted when you add, delete or edit music.

In the library-window it is also possible to add songs to your playlist that you are listening to. Click with your right-mouse button and select Add to. Now select the playlist or click on more playlists.

Windows Media Player plus

Do you want more features in Windows Media Player 12? Install the free plug-in Windows Media Player Plus.

One feature in particular that starts Windows Media Player with the song you were playing when you last shut down comes in very handy. Moreover, this plugin gives you the possibility to search through your library without having to open the search function first.

With the built-in Tag Editor Plus you can edit the metadata of mp3’s with ease.

Check this out if you prefer an alternative for Windows Media Player.

Are you using a kick-ass media player yourself? Please let me know in the comments.