HydrogenAudio

It's been a while since I've seen a thread like this, so I figured I'd float a simple question out there: What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

For me, one such feature is the fact that I can confidently use foobar2000 as a basic mastering step when converting from high sampling-rate and/or high bit-depth down to CD audio or MP3. This is thanks to foobar2000's wonderful dither, limiters, resamplers, and streamlined conversion process.

Foo_facets, title formatting, custom tags and the possibility to do whatever i want with them, moving/renaming files to my own presets with the push of a button, the unlimited tagging capabilities, the customizability, the performance.

It manages and presents my music collection in easiest and best way that I'm aware, while handling many aspects of it
It's "customization" (not Canar's favourite term ) offers that to many different user' tastes

i first got into foobar around 2005-2006 because it was the only player i could find with native cue sheet support.

obviously the main reason now is title formatting. it's so simple yet so powerful at the same time.  just the simple things like playlist sorting, grouping and column display. i couldn't live with out it.

just recently, i've got into the whole customisation thing via 3rd party components but if they stopped working tomorrow i'd happily go back to the default UI. although they are nice, they're not essential.

also the properties dialog is great. i tag my files manually (sad i know) but foobar is by far the easiest way to tag an album. i can type out the track details quicker than it would take to use an online service and verify the spelling.  and the converter/file operations is another great feature. again using title formatting to create a new folder structure based on tags. so yeah, i like title formatting.

I could mention so many things - but there is one central feature that many years ago caught my attention and let me switch from winamp:

Custom tags and the ability to create any possible view by title formatting.

Foobar allows me to organize my large collection easily and access my music the way I want to, something that no other player has been able to do so far.

I also love title formatting, and being able to present the detail and information I want, how I want it.

Since I got foobar, I've been able to greatly streamline my encoding process by automatically going from FLACs that I rip in EAC to mp3 (at V0 for archive and sometimes V4 for my ipod), and then easily copy those files from my untagged/sorted folder into the appropriate subfolders. I can't imagine how much time it saves me than doing it all by hand.

Bear in mind that the only time in the past several years that I even considered using another music player was when I was briefly stuck on a Windows 98 system when I was between modern computers, but we shall not speak of those dark days. So I don't know for a fact that other music players won't do this.

But the thing that makes foobar2000 a killer app for me is the ability to (for certain values of 'easily') easily make an auto-updating playlist that takes into account a song's rating, when a song was last played, the phase of the moon, etc. and finally delivers unto me the "no repeats except stuff I like a lot" shuffle-playing experience I have always wanted ever since I got my first CD player with a 'shuffle' function.

(Also it's lately given me a chance to seriously brush up on my Jscript, but that's just a coincidence  )

Foobar2000 doesn't crash so often as other players do, no other reason needed.

I don't know others experience, but for me it is the only player that does everything it promises on a steady basis without crashing itself or the system.

Thanks,

Rozzo

If this was a few years ago, I'd have said grouping in the playlist. However, most others are capable of the same by now.
A few years ago, i would have said id3v2.4 tagging, although by now most are capable of the same (except WMP, lol).
A few years ago, I'd have said replayGain, although by now, most are capable of the same, or something similar.
A few years ago, I'd have said gapless mp3 playback, although by now most are capable of the same, or something similar.
Shuffle albums/directories?

If anything, I keep using foobar2000 for the same reason everyone keeps copying it: it's features are just plain well thought out.

And more than anything, I can find those features because foobar has the sane menus.
I swear if you can find me a media app with comparable features and a more sane main menu/context menu, I'd use it. But you won't find one. fb2k seems to be the only app I know that assumes it's users know how to right-click and select multiple items: which is great because I'm not a slack-jawed funyun. Every other app either scatters crap all over it's main menus (hi iTunes) ("tools" menus are utterly pointless, if somethings not a tool why would it have a menu item in the first place?), or dribbles "toolbars" with 10,000 16x16 useless blotches of color that I'm supposed to derive meaning from somehow (I'm looking at you mediamonkey).

I guess my answser is "everything". I tried many media players in the past years, but never found one that made me think that maybe, some day, I'll stop using foobar2000.

It does everything I need, and in a simple way. Every other player have their custom UI and custom menus that are awfully shiny and hard to navigate, and are bloated with many unwanted features. foobar2000 can be customized to do *only* what you need, and you can do them without thinking about where you have to click, because its interface is really well thought, and well integrated into the system.

I got laid because I use foobar. 

Seriously, the reason I stick to foobar not only because of how good program is (which is damn good) but because.. LOTS of things, and what I learned while using it.

As a music player, I believe other program might suit me better since I have to adapt myself to use it and not the other way around, I have to sacrifice some features when using foobar as player, but I was willing to do it and I don't have any regret doing so.

As a tools, There might be other program that do things foobar could do too.. Yet I still use foobar.

So, "What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?"

Experiences.. I guess 

I was eager to find a way that made it easy for me to tag my songs with my own customized info. I used Helium MM back then which did the task somewhat well, but still was very slow and was still somewhat limited in it's functionality.

Then I (for the 3rd time or so) found out that foobar2000 actually did this and did it well, and also it was extremely lightweight.

Immediately I fell in love with ColumnsUI and it's flexibility and panels. Also I started ripping my music to FLAC after being comfortable with foobar2000. For some reason everything just feels easier with foobar2000 around. Also I'm totally in love with the addition of autoplaylists.

Another thing I love about foobar2000 is it's media library - 5 years ago in my Winamp-age, I still used file-handling to create playlists and organize my music (even though Winamp had a ML then).

There are still room for improvement of components and foobar2000 core and I have listed my ideas with links to respective threads in my "About me"-page.

Mostly? Like q-stankovic, "Custom tags and the ability to create any possible view by title formatting".

And Foobar is clean, lean and secure. By "secure", I mean I trust it not to mess with my files because of crappy code or some hidden "feature".

I'd say the most important aspect of foobar are the powerful library management features: The easy and well-arranged tag editing, the file-operations, etc.
But when I think about it a bit more, the DSPs are at least equally as important to me.

I guess it's the whole package, foobar does about everything I want. Some players feature gap-less playback, some replay gain, with some you can edit tags easily and some got DSPs. But none can do it all, except for foobar!

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

I must say that I haven't used (or even tried!) other players for so long that I am unable to answer this question  

But when I think about it a bit more, the DSPs are at least equally as important to me.

Add to that, I don't think the DSP's are flexible enough. They supports presets, that's great but they should be selectable from the Main Menu. When that's possible, I'll add the DSP functions to my list of things that foobar2000 does incredible smooth.

Another great thing about foobar2000 is that it has this cool skin I haven't really seen anywhere else. I don't know what it is but it blends perfectly with my Windows

I use foobar for 2 reasons .

1 - It's the only player that can handle a large library without my computer grinding to a hault.

2 - Like shakey_snake said, it seems to be the only player that has a sane menu system.

Sure....for all the reasons mentioned in this thread, but also..... for the EYE CANDY   

I've got it setup just the way I like it, and for me, it looks better than any media player I have seen 

I would say everything... but now for me for some things it has really a valid contender, MusicBee, especially for managing portable devices (see MTP...  ).
The foobar converter is still unbeatable but i say this because the really things that i miss are embedding covert art while converting and especially a portable device manager (excluding the really good but iPod only foo_dop). I know that with a device in USB mode you can do near all (Convert directly to (but is very slow) or use File Operations) but a proper manager would be better.

It's the perfect audio program for power users - tons of awesome components, settings for virtually everything, it's just perfect!
I have always said my number one reason for never switching to Mac (also because I don't like Mac) is because foobar wouldn't be supported unless I ran some VMware or something.

Foobar rocks. Point made!

Custom Tags - I like how foobar allows me to efficiently manage custom tagging schemes on not just one but large batches of files at a time. Either manually from the properties editor, automatically from the filenames, or a mixture of both.  Other players offer some basic functionality in this regard but nothing comes close to foobar when it comes to large batch tagging IMO.

Custom Interface - Different people use their computers in different ways. Furthermore different people use different features of foobar with different priority.  I particularly like to use playlist grouping with embedded album art (NG Playlist, EL Playlist, SCPL, etc.).  While a few other players offer this sort of playlist in addition to skinning, nothing comes close to foobar with regard to flexibility. I can easily use custom tags and crude titleformat logic to overhaul the foobar interface into something simple that suits my particular needs (which occasionally change over time).

Wine Compatibility - While foobar is developed exclusively for the windows platform, its clean use of API calls make it compatible with wine. This allows me to bring my custom interface onto Mac and Linux.  I often bounce between different platforms at both work and home and I appreciate the ability to bring foobar with me.

Community - While many people in this forum are quick to smack down inexperienced users and wild questions, the community on this forum help to develop and explore foobar in ways unparalleled with any other player, even WinAmp.  I regularly read through these forums and try to help others solve their problems and by doing so I keep finding new and interesting ways to use my own foobar.



So to sum things up: I love foobar because it allows me to listen to my music the way I want to like no other player and keeps giving me new ways to do it.

What foobar makes unique for me is what foobar2000 does (its functionality) and how it does that (its style), in short it is a combination of all.

After some experiences with other players (e.g. Windows Media Player, Winamp, MediaMonkey, Sonique) I tried 1by1, a directory player, and then became acquainted with foobar and fell in love with it:

• No fear of adware, spyware, malware, no fear of user statistics which are collected in the background and send to the internet "to make the software better" (foobar monitors its media library but not me, it respects my privacy and is not interested in user behaviour)
• Since the day I am using it I never had a crash, beta versions included,
• the program is developed further continuously.
• A clearly structured user interface with a practical integration of functions into context menus instead of main menu items with an excessive number of entries
• No colourful buttons or obtrusive button images (please never change this) but elegance by means of simplicity.
• A highly configurable design (I don't speak of theming, but user defined columns, status bar information and so on)
• Instead of a tiny little player window a GUI which can be maximized (very important for me)
• Full tagging, converter, Media Library organizing options
• Great plugins which enrich foobar's value for me
• Possibility to get in contact with the developers of foobar or of third party plugins
• Very good forum here on Hydrogenaudio; I never had a question which remained unanswered.
• So much more...

My English is not very good, for each post I need to look up most words in the dictionary but I hope it became clear how gratefully I am for this software.

Music is the most important thing in my life and I do listen, organize and sometimes even produce some parts of it (Converter, Resampler, DSP and VST functions) with foobar2000.

So nothing more to say than thank you.

Speed & Customization
Continuous development
Great forum help
Easy to backup (One folder only)
Simple auto-playlists query language
Excellent third-party components & support
Easy add/remove components without leaving residues behind

It organizes my library, rips and encodes music and manages my iPod in a minimal, sleek interface with a very low hard drive and memory footprint. Good 3rd party plugins coming from a great community  too.

And as a result it improves quality of life, mends broken relationships and improves sex life.

And as a result it improves quality of life, mends broken relationships and improves sex life.

ABX results, please.
 

hard core winamp convert myself...never really realized how much i was missing til i finally committed to learning how to use foobar2000 and making it work for me.

there are so many things, but i think the main thing that got me to switch is the tabbed playlists/playlist manager.

rather than one main solitary playlist you can soooo easily setup many playlists suite your tastes/mood/tagging etc and easily pop between them.

I used to use winamp before changing to foobar when 0.8.3 was the new release.  I like the fact I can move pieces of the ui around until I find something I like.  The converter feature has been flawless for me, and I can manage large batch coverts (though I'm sure others do this, foobar was the first to make it easy without having to fuss with command lines).  Plus, who doesn't like the colored cat icons for mp3, flac, mp4, etc. files?  That's a lifesaver if you have a couple of unsorted folders here and there.  At least we get "MPEG-Layer 3" and not "Winamp File" or something generic like that with one icon to represent them all.

I would say customization !

I needed a PC in my living room for playing music, surfing, etc, but I needed something with style (not a laptop) to integrate into my bookshelves. So I bought an Eeetop (LCD touchscreen, no keyboard-mouse) and then I tried every media center available: xbmc, mediaportal, elisa, winamp, itunes, etc. But none of them are customizable, and they are awfully slow (Mediaportal take at least 1 minute to launch, and then you'll have to click throught 10 menus before you get to a particular song), they do not offer artwork or playlist management, and often the buttons are just too small (well my fingers are obviously bigger than my mouse cursor ;-)
So my only alternative was to go with foobar (which I have used in the past when I discovered PUI interface) and build my own version including the desired modules and layout. And there's no other player that allow you such customization.

Now I can download hundreds of "Baby Einstein" picture and let my 4 year-old sit in front of the PC touching the screen to cycle throught the pictures while listening to music. That can last for hours ! (yet I don't know if the LCD would survive that long !)


Leo

It's stable, doesn't use a lot of resources and doesn't look like trash... you can make it to look like trash though, if you wish so.  It's configurable - not to the extent I want, but more than any other player I know. Plus, I like the nerds in the fb2k-forum on hydrogenaudio.org, though they're frightening at times.

Foo_facets, title formatting, custom tags and the possibility to do whatever i want with them, moving/renaming files to my own presets with the push of a button, the unlimited tagging capabilities, the customizability, the performance.

+1

Converted from Winamp because with 5.5 that totally went the wrong way, interface-wise.

Dealmakers:
- Multi-playlist
- Spectrograph visualiser (yea, I like it)

Why I got to love it:
- Far more powerful item management inside playlists and display customisability
- Extremely quick without (too-) quirky menus/buttons and non-standard interfaces and interactions.
- Layout Editing Mode
- No goddamn Winamp Agent
- Automatically Fill Values
- Autoplaylists
- Undo/Redo of playlist operations (oh darn i messed up => undo => yay)
- Facets (though that's not FB core, of course. And, truth be told, Winamp's media library browser is very similar and pretty good as well. But not nearly as customisable. Har.)

Repeating some others but:
- Tagz everywhere. eg. "guess values from filenames", "move files to..."
- Easily restructure/copy your library or parts of it thanks to the feature above.
- Replaygain playback and scanning for every format possible
- foo scrobblecharts (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components_0.9/Audioscrobble_Charts_(foo_scrobblecharts)) - IMHO the most underrated foobar plugin ever. It's like iTunes Genius but without the iTunes and craploads better, but I repeat myself..
- Just works (even on wine)

I am a classical music nut.  Classical music metadata available from the online databases is useless, actually worse than useless.  Foobar's flexibilty lets me specify all the tags I want, create them using masstagger and manage it all through facets.  Together with all the other add-ons and display options it's unbeatable.  No other player I have tried comes close to enabling a good classical music tagging system

Foobar lets me rename files by track and title, which is useful when I have a bunch of songs from my brother's iPod that were changed to four letter titles so you don't know which song is which. 

I said this a few years ago but

It is Foobars Playlists that do it for me.

I love making playlists and being able to load up several of them (tabbed playlists) is great for me.

Many of the other features are just beyond me at my age.

But I do wish they would make the song being played highlighted at all times, ie the highlight bar drops down with the song being played.

It is a bit of a pain when you look up at your playlist and a song is highlighted, but that is not the song being played now.

Ok there is that little arrow on the left, but that is very insignificant.

I know it is on the To Do List but how hard can it be (as the arrow is there)

Regards

And Thanks again for Foobar

Digby

It plays Music

Long time ago i've switched from winamp 2.92 to f2k 0.4 or 0.5 and i never looked back ...

There are so much things in foobar that i love, that i can't count it.

Long life to Foobar2000 and it's playlist "undo/redo" (Ctrl+Z/Y) feature. That is the way all softwares should behave. :)

with wsh panel foobar2000 becomes a kind of framework to customize it till it explode.
customizable organize/tagging features.

Plays music.

I'm dead serious, no other player does it on my PC. I don't launch them.

such sings as renaming files by the preset, useful track properties dialog, customization features (I made my own cool player with columns ui, ssena' s plugins and others developers, thanks for this). And I listen in foobar so many cool new artists and its tracks, so I can't figure how much.

Switched from Winamp years ago. Now it's one of the principal program installed on my computer

I use it because of its powerful ways to handle large libraries and its beautiful components making it nicer and customizable!

Thanks for this incredible media player

Plays music.

I'm dead serious, no other player does it on my PC. I don't launch them.

hurrrrr

Anyway, before I got an iPod (5.5G, decent but I'm not too taken by the new ones) and later an OS X computer, I used foobar2000 for its sheer simplicity and format support (I used WavPack images with embedded cuesheets, and had tried other lossless and lossy formats). Also, its customisability offers a lot of potential, though I made little use of it.

But I do wish they would make the song being played highlighted at all times, ie the highlight bar drops down with the song being played.

It is a bit of a pain when you look up at your playlist and a song is highlighted, but that is not the song being played now.

But isn't this what you get with FILE > PREFERENCES > PLAYBACK > check box next to Cursor follows playback.
I am using FACETS as well, but not sure this matters.

hurrrrr

Looks like some elaboration is required.

I switched to foobar2000 in 2003 because of its ability to continue playback after restarting. Winamp did had this feature back then, but not for free, and I couldn't afford it (youth, low salary etc.). In last "say how awesome it is" thread I posted something, but really I'm in no position to compare it to anything else. I don't use anything else (last attempt was two years ago with linux players). Every feature I need I get either out of the box or through plugin.

Dunno if there's anything more awesome than satisfying every need, be it ripping, tagging, organizing, re-encoding or preview generation etc. for seven years. Because if someone's looking for a software - not a fancy gadget - this is the criteria, not the "oh I just copied features list". And those two are the only ones I could provide.

Yeah, I think that's more the kind of thing that the OP was looking for.  And my criteria, if you're referring to them, are a bit vague because I didn't have a very complex setup.

For me, foobar keeps things simple and uncluttered.  I can make the appearance as basic as I choose (good for my bad eyesight) and can see everything that is going on.  Since I keep foobar in the tray most of the time, who needs eye candy and complex graphics?  Also I love the converter feature where you can make it do just about anything...that's nice to have too.