A self-contained classic-player-style media player with a 10-band EQ — a loving tribute to the late-90s desktop audio player, built fresh in GTK4 with original artwork.
EasyAmp plays your local music through its own GStreamer pipeline (with a built-in graphic EQ) and shows a live spectrum or analog VU meters. Because it owns its own window, the chrome is pixel-styled to evoke the era.
Original artwork and an original name. EasyAmp uses no trademarked names, logos, or skin bitmaps from any media player. It's a tribute to an era, not a clone of a product.
- Media player — open files/playlists (anything GStreamer decodes: MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG, Opus, M4A…), transport controls, seek, track metadata,
.m3uload/save. - Built-in 10-band graphic EQ — preamp + 10 bands with a live response curve, value-colored sliders, bypass, and portable JSON presets (auto-loads an
EASYAMP DEFAULTpreset if you save one). - Visualizer — switch between a live green spectrum analyzer (GStreamer capture + FFT) and dual analog VU meters (atomic-green, real dB scale, glowing needle). It captures the system output, so it reflects all audio playing on the machine, not just EasyAmp.
- Mini scope — a small mirrored bar-graph waveform under the timer.
- Docked single-window UI — player + EQ + playlist snap together with EQ/PL toggles, in a beveled gunmetal skin with green LCD readouts.
- Python 3 + PyGObject with GTK 4 (
gir1.2-gtk-4.0) - GStreamer 1.x with the base/good plugins (playback,
equalizer-10bands) - numpy (spectrum FFT)
- A working audio server (PipeWire or PulseAudio) for the visualizer capture
- Fonts (OFL) — DSEG7 Classic and Pixelify Sans ship bundled and auto-install on first run
Grab a ready-to-run build from the latest release:
| Platform | Download | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 🪟 Windows (x64) | Installer (.exe) · Portable (.zip) | Unsigned — at the SmartScreen prompt click More info → Run anyway |
| 🍎 macOS (Apple Silicon) | Disk image (.dmg) | Unsigned — right-click the app → Open. Intel Macs: build from source (INSTALL.md). Visualizer needs a loopback device (e.g. BlackHole) |
| 🐧 Linux | Flatpak bundle | flatpak install --user EasyAmp.flatpak |
Everything is bundled — no Python or GTK install required. To build from source instead, see below.
See INSTALL.md for full per-OS instructions. In short: install the native prerequisites (GTK4 + PyGObject + GStreamer) from your OS package manager / Homebrew, then:
pipx install . --system-site-packages # gives you an `easyamp` launcherBundled fonts (DSEG7, Pixelify Sans — both SIL OFL) are copied into your user font directory on first run, so the intended look shows up with no manual setup.
./run.sh
# or
python3 -m easyampSee ARCHITECTURE.md for the design. In short: a GStreamer playbin (with equalizer-10bands as its audio-filter) handles playback; the spectrum/VU come from an independent GStreamer pulsesrc capture of the system output, so they reflect all audio playing on the machine.
- Created and authored by VonHoltenCodes (Trenton Von Holten) — main author & creator.
- Co-authored with Claude (Anthropic's Claude Code).
EasyAmp stands on a lot of open-source work — thank you to:
- GStreamer — playback pipeline, the
equalizer-10bandsgraphic EQ, and the capture source. - PipeWire — audio capture for the visualizer.
- GTK 4 / PyGObject — the UI toolkit.
- DSEG 7-segment font by keshikan (SIL OFL).
- Pixelify Sans by Stefie Justprince (SIL OFL).
Testing & QA
- @ContractorKeith — macOS testing; diagnosed the GTK-bundling launch crash on Apple Silicon.
If you maintain something EasyAmp uses and want different/expanded credit, please open an issue.
MIT. EasyAmp is completely open source. Bundled fonts are under the SIL Open Font License (see THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md).