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Topic: Personal note of praise for foobar2000 (Read 3711 times) previous topic - next topic
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Personal note of praise for foobar2000

I just wanted to note my awe at the transcendent beauty of this program.  Whoever programmed this is a god, I do believe.  The interface is so streamlined and simple, yet with every feature a casual listener (or perhaps even a developer) would want or need.  It is, IMO, legitimately better than any other media player I've come across, including commercial-based ones, such as ITunes or Windows Media Player.

Also, out of curiosity, how was this implemented?  In what language?
[blockquote]What an inane question.  I checked the SDK, C++, obviously.[/blockquote]

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #1
Before he created foobar2000, Peter Pawlowski (the developer) was one of the main developers of Winamp in its v2.x glory days.
I don't think foobar2000 needs to be compared to iTunes or WMP; they serve different user needs.
The interesting thing about foobar2000 is how far it allows you to go under the hood and customize it.
many users prefer automated no-brainer solutions and foobar2000 will not accomodate their wishes out of the box; it requires consideration, and some people just don't like making their own decisions.

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #2
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I don't think foobar2000 needs to be compared to iTunes or WMP; they serve different user needs.


The copious amount of components to customize your own foobar2000 blow anything else just out of the water. There is no comparison.

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #3
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I don't think foobar2000 needs to be compared to iTunes or WMP; they serve different user needs.


The copious amount of components to customize your own foobar2000 blow anything else just out of the water. There is no comparison.


Bullshit, Winamp has just as much customization >_>.

 

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #4
No, it even has much more customization than an average foobar2000 user could imagine

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #5
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Bullshit, Winamp has just as much customization >_>.


party pooper.

I had tried winamp for almost a year - I repeat, no comparison at all to foobar.
Winamp  crashed on me regularly without even trying third party plugins. Foobar hardly ever crashed on me with those included. Without them - perfectly stable.
Run foobar for over two years now, added functionality with components, vst plugins etc., just haven't yet dared to look under the hood. Scripting capabilities elude me.

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #6
No need to be a fanboy, kraut. When it comes to comparison of customization, so Winamp has a ton of more options and tweaks than foobar200 will ever had. And when it comes to features so there are also many in Jriver Media Center or Helium Music Manager we could dream of.

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #7
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No need to be a fanboy, kraut


No, it is just I have tried the lot from winamp, dbpoweramp, media monkey, cowon, windows media player, VLC... and I can't remember what else over the last three years.
Winamp was at least somewhat better regarding crashes compared to media monkey, the other stuff had never the options foobar or winamp had.

I had some problems with foobar2000 crashes in windows xp with some third party components, but not in windows 7.
I also use asio as my soundcard natively supports that format for playback from file with various VST plugins, i.e. dolby for headphones and ambio for the speakers.
No problems with foobar2000.

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #8
No need to be a fanboy, kraut. When it comes to comparison of customization, so Winamp has a ton of more options and tweaks than foobar200 will ever had. And when it comes to features so there are also many in Jriver Media Center or Helium Music Manager we could dream of.


I'm not that much familiar with Winamp, I've just used it a couple of years ago for a few months, but I can't remember to be able to customize it as much as foobar2000. There was a huge lack of customizability in terms of the UI and additional Components.

What features do you think has Winamp, which foobar2000 hasn't?

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #9
If every second user here praises foobar2000 for its customizability so it would be helpful to define what you mean. Actually that term I use for the amount of options and  tweaks you have. Example: winamp has countless (I guess 50 or even more!!)options for its playback queue whereas foobar2000 has not even one! In that sense: I dislike such customizability and therefore prefer foobar2000!

In regard to features: there are many in Jriver Media center and Helium Music Manager i would like to have in foobar2000

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #10
To be perfectly honest, I used Winamp since the DosAmp/WinAmp 1.x days and it was rock solid on all my machines. When someone says that Winamp, Media Monkey etc. were all crashing regularly, I would honestly doubt the stability of their system. I've seen far too many crappy modified OS installs that were unstable as hell, but the morons would blame everyone from Microsoft to the app developers, everyone except of course themselves (always wondered why they would download such rubbish of unknown provenance instead of modifying untouched copies). Of course, I also make it a point to generally refrain from installing alphas and betas on my machines. That was one of the reasons I stayed away from foobar till it hit the magic 1.0 mark. Might have been silly, but 0.x versioning makes me think that the app's not really ready for prime-time yet. Anyway, what finally made me switch was that I wanted a simple stable memory-efficient audio player (I have better dedicated video players) with no bloat, no skinning or other such tripe, one whose main UI I could customize and one that could play all my audio formats with ease. I did try out Winamp Lite for a little while, but then foobar 1.x rolled around at the same time I finally switched from XP to Windows 7, so I made it a two-fer.  While I do miss a few things with foobar that I haven't found workarounds or plugins for, at least it is still being developed actively, unlike Winamp that pretty much went into maintenance/extended support mode after AOL bought Nullsoft. I also love the fact that foobar has a portable mode and I can carry it around with me on my USB stick with my other go-to apps.

As far as customizability and features go, these are subjective issues and some people like to fiddle around excessively, while others couldn't care less and just want things to work out of the box. I believe foobar provides something for everyone, although yes, some of the other players I've seen do expose a lot more settings to tweak and play around with (too many perhaps?)

So on the whole I am quite happy with the switch indeed (thanks to Peter and all the other devs involved with it!), and hope to be using foobar for the foreseeable future, as long as it remains true to its roots and the KISS philosophy and doesn't get all bloated or messed up over time.

Personal note of praise for foobar2000

Reply #11
I love foobar because it  allows me to use multichannel VST.  I don't know any other Player that can handle  multichannel VST. Foobar have very good 3rd Party Plugins.  WinAmp looks nice but have not the functions I need.