[USELESS] Why I am going away from foobar.

2013-12-22 11:49:57

Hi everybody.

I had, from the beginning, so-so user experience. One of the main being the user interface. Crappy, complicate, makes me feel uneasy.
Please understand I have a very large music collection Igrabbed from my own CDs, vynil and cassettes. Main of it being tagged on the fly, without deep knowlede of all the tagging stuff, so I appreciated the FOLDER VIEW. And I will always stay with folders logic and folder view, and hundred towsand miles from iTunes, whatever has an apple on it, being it software or hardware, and eve more distant from all the imitations. Fancy graphic with blipping, bumping transparent effect.
I work with computers, I made my own in the office, always had 2nd hand laptops at home, running XP with downgraded visual to win95. And I will change OS or hardware only if strictly compelled, with other 2nd hand plain, durable, sleek IBM or Panasonic computers. My way of life, despite being "hi tech"in many aspect is that whatever works has not to be upgraded.
Hence the problem. Foobar was continuously giving problems with my M-audio fast track pro. Nothing special as HW, I do know, but it is what it is. Bought 2nd hand, and I could afford it, and I'm not disappointed.
So I had to upgrade my foobar. I was using it because of the large amount of music I've got on my external HD, and then for the audio quality.
Once upgraded (keep in mind I had no external party plugin) I struggled one day to revert to an usable interface, and got stuck with the fact you have to "exit from editing interface mode". Result. Every time I click the mouse on a folder in the left column, the whole content of the folder substitutes the playlist. I'm sure that it is some trivial thing.
But just for that reason I'm going away. I'll stay away from such poorly thought interface. The main thing of an interface is not the ASPECT. Please, follow this passage. I'm AGAINST fancy looking and graphic effect. The main thing of an interface is the user experience, the immediate understanding of things, the ability of being "transparent to the user" and simply doing what the software is meant to, with the smallest amount of effort by user.
I simply wanted to listen to my music.

Sorry for this rage. I appreciate the fact you are all working on a free software that a lot of people appreciate. I used it free, for one year long (actually a would PAY for a good software to read and organize music, but I never seen a single commercial one that is worth an euro cent). But my frustration is great, my interest in spending days to render a software usable mining the net for information was gone. Too old. Too young. At least at home I want to be a simple user. Not an idiot one. Something confortably in between.
I thought your effort deserved my one to register here, and to tell you it all putting my real name and face on it. Do not blame me, please, if I'm now flying away from any kind of confront, do not bother to reply, or to help me fix my issues. My activity on the internet being not much more than personal email, it would be a bit too much keeping following here, and FooBar is now uninstalled. And will stay so.

I will repair my father micromega CD player, this is for sure, and I want to thank you for this decision. It is SIMPLY GOING BACK TO LISTEN MUSIC.
Then I'll try to migrate somewhere else to play MP3.

All the best and merry xtmas!
Luca.