Now in beta · Built for audio nerds · Windows and Mac

The Media Player You Didn't Know You Needed

Lucent is a free music player for Windows and Mac, a spiritual successor to Winamp built for audio nerds. It plays your library, streaming apps, and internet radio, with a video and audio editor, studio analyzer, and 32-band EQ built in. Every song comes alive with 448 visuals drawn live on your graphics card.

Download for Windows Download for Mac

Windows 10 and 11 · macOS 12 or later · Updates itself

Full screenShift+F11 lays every window edge to edge across your screen. Lock one in place and the rest fit around it.

448live visuals 214MilkDrop presets 34Winamp AVS presets 29ray traced 57particle 4–32EQ bands

For streaming listeners

The Best of Both Worlds

Keep Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Pandora, SoundCloud, or YouTube for the music. Hide the app and watch it play in Lucent instead.

Your library stays put. Nothing to move or sync.
Control it from Lucent. Play, skip, and volume, plus shuffle, repeat, playlists, and what's up next wherever the app allows.
Visuals that hear only the music. A video or call in the background won't move them.
A player worth looking at. Any skin or theme, even Lucent Classic.

The player

Your music, laid out your way.

The player, library, queue, equalizer, analyzer, artwork, and visuals each get their own resizable window. They snap together, move as one, and swap places when you drag one onto another. Lucent remembers where you left each one, saves whole layouts by name, a lock keeps any window in place, and the link button takes them all along with the player.

D Tidy every window into one neat rectangle

G Fill the screen

K Shrink it all back down

Shift+D Balance the layout, a new way each press

J Link every window, so they all follow the player

1–9 Switch to a layout you saved

448 visuals

Every frame is drawn live on your graphics card.

Every visual reacts to the bass, mids, treble, and beat. Ray-traced scenes, particle storms, fractals, and Winamp's own spectrum, plus 214 MilkDrop and 34 AVS presets in the same picker.

MilkDrop and AVS, built in

214 MilkDrop and 34 Winamp AVS presets, each credited to its artist. Your own .milk and .avs files import too, with a modern glow.

Visuals that know the song

Lucent finds each song's build-ups and drops, even on radio and streaming. The glow builds into a drop, and Auto cuts to a new visual as it hits.

Find one in seconds

Press V and type. Filter by tag, sort, and star favorites.

Up to 4K, with HDR

Automatic resolution keeps it smooth. Up to 4K, Ultra detail, and HDR highlights.

Record it to video

Save any song with any visual as a 4K, 60 fps MP4.

Make your own visuals

Each visual is one HLSL shader. Drop yours in a folder.

Video and audio editor

Edit, repair, and measure without leaving your player.

Right-click any song or video and open it in the editor. Cut, clean up, split stems, master, and undo anything. Your original stays safe.

The Lucent video and audio editor with a video of a DJ set open, its picture above the waveform, markers, and a selection ready to trim or delete

Video too

Trim MP4 and MOV without re-encoding. Save frames, a GIF, or a smaller copy in H.264, HEVC, or just the sound.

Dock it anywhere

Snap the editor beside the player, or drag it free.

Split into stems

AI splits vocals, drums, bass, and the rest. Solo, mute, keep, or save them.

Tempo, key, and loops

BPM, key, a snapping beat grid, and a loop maker that finds seamless loops.

Plugin browser

Search your plugins, filter by type, and star favorites.

Plugin chains

Run VST3 effects live, save chains, or bring them from REAPER.

History

Every step listed. Click one to go back.

Clips like REAPER

Drag clips to move, trim, and fade. Overlap them to crossfade.

Every effect, one menu

Press E to search every built-in effect.

Cut, copy, and paste

Click-free joins, zero-crossing snap, and paste between apps.

Analyze

Peak, true peak, loudness, DC offset, stereo, and a clip finder.

Meters and views

True-peak and LUFS meters, and a spectrogram view.

Repair

Remove hum, clicks, noise, and DC offset.

EQ and dynamics

Parametric EQ, compressor, and true-peak limiter, heard live.

Tempo and pitch

Change tempo, pitch, or both.

Channels and markers

Swap, invert, mono, widen, and drop markers.

Analyzer

See the whole sound in detail.

A spectrogram, waveform, spectrum, stereo scope, and LUFS loudness meter for everything you play. Press Y.

SPECTROGRAM20 Hz – 20 kHz

WAVEFORM

SPECTRUMpeak hold

STEREO SPREAD+0.62

Spectrogram

Every frequency as a heatmap.

Waveform

The signal, in step with the heatmap.

Spectrum

Live bars with peak marks.

Stereo spread

How wide the mix is.

Loudness

LUFS, loudness range, and true peak, to broadcast standards.

Pauses with the music so you can look closer. Click the loudness to measure again from now.

Studio equalizer

Faders like a mixing desk, over the music's live spectrum.

4 to 32 bands. Your curve carries over.
See problem frequencies behind the curve.
15 presets, or save your own.
Safe boosting. No distortion when you boost.

EQUALIZER

Preset

Drag the fadersPreamp −4 dB so boosts don't distort

Skins and themes

Five skins. Eight themes. Any combination.

Skins set the shape, themes set the colors. Pick one of each and watch the player change.

Or go full Winamp 2 with Lucent Classic, or drop in any .wsz skin.

Theme: Midnight · Skin: Lucent

Internet radio

The best of internet radio, in high quality.

Thousands of stations, with Lucent's EQ, meters, and visuals on every one. Here's SomaFM's Groove Salad, with the station's art in the Artwork window.

SomaFM's Groove Salad playing in Lucent: the player shows Thievery Corporation's Lebanese Blonde, the Artwork window shows Groove Salad's turntable art, and the Online radio window lists SomaFM's channels with Groove Salad highlighted

Keep your favorite stations on the air.

SomaFM, Radio Paradise, Nightride FM, and NTS run on their listeners. Press the heart next to a station and Lucent opens that station's own donation page (or The Lot Radio's shop). Every cent goes to the station: Lucent takes no payments and no cut.

High quality streams. MP3, AAC, HE-AAC, and HLS up to 320 kbps, buffered so a shaky connection doesn't drop out.
Station art and song covers. The station's art fills the Artwork window, and Lucent finds the cover of each song that comes on.
The good stuff, up front. SomaFM, FRISKY, Radio Paradise, Nightride FM, and NTS.
Video stations. Watch live sets from The Lot Radio, or filter to Video only.
Every genre. 31 genres, search, filters, favorites, and history.

Live video radio

Watch the DJ, not just the stream.

Stations that stream video, like The Lot Radio from its shipping container in Brooklyn, play in Lucent's Video window, live.

Four Tet's live set on The Lot Radio playing in Lucent: the Video window shows him at the decks in the sticker-covered booth, the player shows Four Tet live on The Lot Radio, and the Online radio window is filtered to video stations

Live, as it happens. HLS video streams play with the sound in sync, in a window you can resize, lock in place, or take full screen.
Who's on now. Lucent shows the DJ playing on The Lot and NTS, from each station's schedule.
Find more. Press Video only in the radio to see every station with a picture.

For people who care how it sounds

Everything else you'd reach for.

Gapless, crossfades, and bit-perfect

No gaps between tracks, or a crossfade if you like. Exclusive mode sends audio to your DAC untouched.

Library

Link folders, show any tag as a column, sort by it, find duplicates, and make playlists.

Artwork window

Big cover art, pinned on top if you like.

Keyboard first

A key for everything. Media keys work in the background, and play controls sit in the Dock and taskbar.

Last.fm

Scrobble what you play, from your music, streaming apps, and radio.

Picks up where you left off

Your queue and window layout are waiting next time.

Tag editor

Edit titles, artists, lyrics, and art safely.

Bandcamp and Beatport

Purchases land in your library automatically.

Visuals for any app

Visuals for anything your computer plays.

Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Pandora, SoundCloud, and YouTube

Control them from Lucent's player, Pandora's thumbs included. Spotify's song info comes straight from the app.

Full screen, edge to edge

Visuals fill the whole screen, up to the top edge beside a MacBook's notch.

Videos

Play MP4 and MOV videos, with Lucent's EQ on the sound.

Your default player

Make Lucent your music player in one click.

Import from another player

Bring playlists, plays, and ratings from Apple Music, MusicBee, foobar2000, Plex, or YouTube Music.

Record live

Record from your audio interface, up to 192 kHz, with VST3 effects.

Track marks for DJ sets

Mark songs in long sets, saved as cue points.

Converter

Batch convert to MP3, FLAC, or WAV, tags included.

Report a bug in one click

Opens a report with the details filled in.

Plays MP3 · FLAC · WAV · AAC/M4A · ALAC · WMA · OGG Vorbis · Opus · AIFF · CAF · AC-3 · DTS · MKA/WebM · WavPack · APE

Get Lucent. Now in Beta

Free and open source under the MIT license, for Windows and Mac. Expect a few rough edges while it's in beta.

Download Lucent-Setup.exe Portable .zip

Mac with Apple silicon Intel Mac

Signed and notarized by AppleThe Mac installer and app are signed with Lucent's Apple Developer ID and checked by Apple, so they open like any other Mac app, with no warnings or workarounds.

System: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. macOS 12 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.
Graphics: Any Direct3D 11 GPU on Windows, or any Metal GPU on a Mac. A recent one gets you Ultra and 4K.
Install: Your account only on Windows, no admin rights. Into Applications on a Mac.
Privacy: Crash reports include where it crashed, your system, and your graphics card. Never your name, files, or music. Turn them off under Options, then Updates. This site counts visits and downloads, with no cookies and nothing personal.

Lucent is free, and always will be.If it's earned a spot in your setup, you can help keep it going.

Buy me a coffee

Download the installer
Grab Lucent-Setup.exe for Windows, or the .pkg for your Mac, from the latest release.
Run it
Windows installs for your account with Start menu shortcuts. On a Mac it goes into Applications.
Forget about updates
Lucent updates itself when you close it and shows what's new first. Want every build? Choose Every build under Options, then Updates. Rather choose when? Switch off Install updates automatically there.