To listen to music on your computer you can use different programs that can be downloaded from the page on the best audio player programs for PC. Each of these has different characteristics, different graphics and, in some cases, the graphic effects that accompany the music.
Personally I have always remained fond of the old Windows Media Player (now in version 12 on Windows 7) with which, from the early days, I was hypnotized by lines and colored figures that seemed to follow the music or, at least, gave the impression.
Even when you go to pubs or small discos, where, without a DJ, a playlist is programmed on the Windows media player and, on TV screens, you can see abstract images in continuous movement.
Let's see what are the best graphic effects that can be downloaded for free, for Windows Media Player and the most useful plugins .
Plugins with visual effects that follow music played with WMP with lines that move according to the speed of the beats of the song listened to, can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft website (no longer).
On this dedicated page you can scroll through various preview images of the graphic effect that would appear on the screen listening to music on your PC.
On this site you can rest assured that they are free or, at least that they do not contain malware or unwanted programs.
Paid ones, like the WhiteCap, are clearly marked.
Those who have never thought about using a Windows Media Player visual effects plugin, can easily install them by pressing the download link from the Microsoft page to download the desired effect.
This is recognized by Windows and no manual user action is required.
Once Windows Media Player is open, you can press the right mouse button on the bar at the top and choose the " Running " mode from the " View " menu; from there, by pressing the right button, the graphic effects to choose appear.
By default Windows Media Player should have the Alchemy, Battery and Bars and Waves effects.
If the installed graphic effect does not yet appear, you can press the right button on the WMP interface, go to Tools -> Options -> Plug-in and check if, among the graphic effects, the new one appears.
For some it is possible to press the Properties button and customize the display, for example, by choosing the speed or the colors.
Any effect you choose will appear on the screen every time you play music from your PC and even when, playing a video, you don't have the codecs to view it.
Some of those available for free download are:
1) Ice and snow
2) Terminator III
3) Trilogy 1
In addition to WhiteCap, for a fee, there is another that is worth mentioning whose name is Soundspectrum's G-Force.
This I have tried and it is a magnificent collection of graphic effects that go in time with the music.
Of course I would never spend $ 20 on a graphic effect, but you can try it.
A free and very popular plugin is PixelFusion which serves to better view videos and films from low resolution.
Once installed, the plugin settings can be found under Options> PlugIn> Video-DSP> Plugin.
Very useful then is the Lyrics plugin that allows you to see the lyrics of the songs you listen to via Windows media player.
Only to improve the audio is required to try the DFX plugin, whose free version, although very limited, totally changes the listening of music on the computer.
On iTunes for MAC there are several great graphic effects on the WowLab website.
For Winamp the best should be MilkDrop, a plugin with video effects.
Unfortunately the graphic effects seem to have gone out of fashion and there are no great free resources on the internet but, if I tickled your imagination, maybe you will find a few more and you will share it here!
In another article, how to optimize Windows Media player with WMP Plus.
