1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

2017-07-22 09:56:36

Problem: excessive RAM usage:

The span of time from the beginning of CPU usage to the end is approximately one minute. CPU usage is capping out at ~13%, so a single thread's managing to cap out a core (eight-core machine).  The red is kernel time, the green is usermode time.

1.75GB is vastly more RAM usage than expected from a music player. Only Firefox uses more RAM than that on my machine, and I have a bajillion tabs open at all times. foobar2000 exhibits this behavior on every single launch. After this initial period of gobbling up RAM, foobar2000 holds steadyish with its RAM usage, hovering somewhere between 1.75GB and 1.80GB.

I leave it on "Shuffle (tracks)" through my entire library on startup, which consists of 6637 items as of this writing.

To test, I made a portable full install and pointed it at my music folder. The RAM usage shot through the roof as it was scanning the Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications folder, which contains (among other things), zipped application backups from my iPad.

It continued holding steady at 3.76GB of RAM usage, capping off around the time it finished scanning the iTunes folder, until it crashed about a minute later, not having finished scanning the music folder. When launched again, it presented the "was terminated abnormally" dialog, but the "crash reports" folder is empty.


foobar2000 version: v1.3.16
Only default components of a Full Install are installed.

Windows version: Windows 10 Pro, x64, v1703 (Creator's Update)

Machine stats:
CPU: AMD FX-8350@4.00GHz
32GB RAM

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #1 – 2017-07-22 11:31:07

Which plugins do you use? And did you try it with a fresh profile, meaning: no 3rd party plugins?

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #2 – 2017-07-22 11:34:05

I did try it from a fresh install as well, as a portable installation. The results of which are described above.

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #3 – 2017-07-22 11:44:17

Ah, I missed that part: "Only default components of a Full Install are installed."

Are you sure there are only ~6-7k tracks in that folder? Either foobar2000 finds way more tracks than that (even way more than 100k) or there's something seriously wrong, like a memory leak in a decoder or some other component.

Does the console (View -> Console) print anything suspicious during the scan?

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #4 – 2017-07-22 12:06:58

According to Ctrl+A>Properties, I have 6.6k items.


I booted up the portable install and added the music folder to the library location this time. Watching the console, it's barfing on the iTunes app backups, spitting out
Location not parsable: "E:\Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications\com.apple.Pages 4.zip", reason: bad allocation
before repeating itself with every .zip file it encounters, in alphabetical order (as provided by Windows)
However, com.apple.Pages 4.zip is not the first .zip in that folder:

Together, the ten .zips in that folder before com.apple.Pages 4.zip weigh in at 3.49GB:

So for some reason, foobar2000 is holding onto those .zips in RAM when it shouldn't be, and running up against the memory limit for 32b programs, hence all the bad allocs.

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #5 – 2017-07-22 12:08:48

Re-run the installer and uncheck 'Archive Reader' plugin.

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #6 – 2017-07-22 12:09:47

Re-run the foobar installer, do a custom install and de-select the Archive reader.

Or go to File>Preferences>Media library>Exclude> *.zip

edit: too slow.

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #7 – 2017-07-22 12:13:18

Without the archive reader, the import completed with no problems, and RAM usage is holding steady at 39.88MB.

Re: 1.75GB of RAM used by foobar2000

Reply #8 – 2017-07-23 01:46:57

You can also set the ,
Foobar2000 (Properties) -> Media Library  to manual scanning ONLY

Here you can add folders to the Foobar Music library (used for like searching the entire library, including the archives)
after you have added your music folder... for example I store all my music
- MP3 (video game music from before I got the game music files, and plenty others)
- and video game music files "SPC(SNES), PSF(PS1/PS2), VGM(GENESIS)"
I use a single umbrella folder for all my music:  C:\JoeMusic\
anyway I have this single folder registered in the "Media Library" section of Foobar2000 and

Getting to the point..  right-click on the said folder in "Media Library"
and uncheck
- "Rescan in Startup"
- "Monitor for changes while running"

that will do it I only do "Scan Now" when I make changes to my.. music folder... maybe a few times a year...