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Topic: Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000 (Read 179067 times) previous topic - next topic
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Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #100 –
I used to musicmatch jukebox, the I switched to Media Jukebox but I found it to be a little resource heavy as well as not free.  Then someone pointed me to foobar2000.  Ever since then it has been my favorite audiplayer. Reasons:

+Plays EVERYTHING i've tried to play with it, aside from video.
+Customizable in everyway imaginable.
+a great community of nice people if you have any trouble.
+and simply because it kicks a--!

Downsides:
-a stereo to 5.1 upmixing dsp would be nice.
-would be usefull to be able to play dvd or other media.
-a somehow improved albumlist or watch folder thing would be nice, can't say I ever use it now.

All in all I don't see myself using anything else in the near future for my audio needs.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #101 –
I just discovered fb2k today.  For me the big thing - actually, the deciding thing - is the memory footprint and low resource usage. 

I do graphic design, which chews up system resources like crazy.  Any program  that isn't design-related has to be as lean and clean as possible.  There's no Outlook or Office on this system, and I even swapped out Norton's bloatware for something leaner.

I have a licensed version of MusicMatch, but it's such a hog that I never use it.  I finally got tired of working in silence, so I went looking for an mp3 player that can just load up a few hours worth of music and play it without getting in my way...  It looks like fb2k is going to do that just fine.

However, I do wish that it had some documentation or a readme file geared toward the audio-idiot.  Audio is just not one of my areas of competence! 

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #102 –
I use it for the .shn and .flac support. It rules!

What I would like to see is better options for configuring the columns. I find "foo_ui_columns" very difficult to understand.

[span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%']Thanks for foobar![/span]

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #103 –
I like Foobar because all of the things mentioned before plus one thing

IT LOOKS GREAT

..wouldn't change it for anything

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #104 –
Before it i used winamp and Quintessential (most visually stunning player i ever seen)

I started to use foob from version 0.7 beta 2. It's best `coz:
1. It is tiny and fast.
2. Other players sounds too bad on my HUGE speakers (Estonia 70W - made in USSR)
3. Good Multimedia Keyboard support
4. Lots of useful plugins!

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #105 –
  • It's easier to handle than these skinned players with small buttons and distracting color shemes
  • And what's more important it's very versatile
  • It's small and starts up fast
  • It's the best audio player around

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #106 –
Well that i love most about foobar is its philoshophy.

I started using foobar as my main player when it didnt  had even a seekbar. But i knew what peter was thinking on how  an  audio player should be, and that was enough to make me stay. Stability and  performance  at top' not sacrifising them for skins etc0. Every feature of it has great functionality, simply cause is made to play music in a correct way free of the commercial bloatness of nowdays.(btw its meticulous seekbar now its the best as the most of its features).

Now i m not even thinking of other players, IMHO foobar overwhelms them all, at least  to the way i use an audio player: listening music at home. Also there many people outthere considering the same about foobar the time that one of its greatest features,its open architecture, is yet unexplored.


All the above evangelize only good days to come for our favourite player!!cheers :)

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #107 –
Clean simple and it works.
oh and its not microsoft.....

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #108 –
Simple look, but inside is very powerful, stable, generic tag editor(i love it!!!), and many more...
It's my default audio player 

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #109 –
I've been using foobar 2000 for a while now but I would have to admit it's a very "get your hands dirty" sort of player. For the first few weeks I had foobar i was going nuts with it, tweak this, tweak that, what does this do, what does that do, whoops shouldn't have done that.

I can still remember trying to learn how to change the way the playlist looked, I must have stuck my head in the fan numerous times to figure that out, but when I got it right I was pretty proud of myself, like taming the beast. Once you figure the logic behind the display system you understand that it's for maximum control, you can pretty much display anything with it.

The main feature that made me turn from winamp to foobar was the replaygain feature and the ability of foobar to utilize it on pretty much every format it can play.

All I can say is, Peter, my hat is off to you sir, well done.
or as we say in New Zealand, Cher Bro
Who are you and how did you get in here ?
I'm a locksmith, I'm a locksmith.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #111 –
Add something...
Drawback:
- The context menu let me headache... 
- Diskwriter can't use ACM codec...
to be continiued...
Becoz it's free and nearly perfect, so i won't expect too much.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #112 –
I switched from Winamp to Foobar2k because of power, speed, stability, customization ability, and I think it looks great.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #113 –
Foobar is great.

Like most here I was a Winamp user.

I asked them to implement multiple playlists so that I could see which playlist I was listening to or working on but they did not ! (so they lost me)

Then a young gilr told me about Foobar and I use it all the time (even though it hangs up on my machine ( a crappy 3 year old AMD Duron 800 with ME and 256Meg of Ram)

Like many others I feel Foobar could have a better (more interesting) user interface to start with.

And some help screens or info on how to make it look good.

A volume control would be great !

And help screens with all Preferences pages.

As an occassional music user I do not know what things such as DSP or columns are, yet everyone mentions them !

Great work.

I tell all my friends about it.

Regards

Digby
NZ

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #114 –
The first version of fb2k I tried was 0.586. At the time I fired it up once didn't see much and kept using Winamp.
About half a year later I downloaded 0.7.6 to develop an input plugin and have been hooked ever since

My favorite features are:
- ReplayGain
- Masstagger/renamer
- Formating Strings
- The Random Button, this works great when I'm not sure what I want to listen to.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #115 –
Well, I have FB2K installed, but don't use it at the moment as my primary player. Why? Equaliser CPU usage.

On my PII 333mhz music machine, the EQ takes up a full 15% of the CPU time (on top of the ~11% it takes to decode the MP3/OGG tracks). It'd be great if someone would point me to, or put an option for, a "fast" EQ that sacrificed some quality for a speedup (I'm well aware that the Shibatch EQ eats most others for breakfast quality-wise). By comparison, XMPlay can decode tracks at 7% CPU and the equaliser is an additional ~4% on top of that, meaning it takes less than half the CPU usage of Foobar for media playback overall.

Other than that it's a good player; very versatile indeed, especially the mass-tagging/file-arranging capabilities!

(P.S. Hi to the other NZers in the thread above...!)

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #116 –
-windows gui
-masstagger
-if any function is not useful to me, i can easily turn it off
-replaygain
-im able to listen almost every type of file
-afaik the best sound, comparing to the players ive used..
it just roxx

:B is playin: Limp Bizkit - Clunk [Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ #08]
Shroud of virtue hung to mask your stigma as I smile and laugh and dance and sing your glory while you lie, cheat, and steal.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #117 –
Quote
Well, I have FB2K installed, but don't use it at the moment as my primary player. Why? Equaliser CPU usage.

On my PII 333mhz music machine, the EQ takes up a full 15% of the CPU time (on top of the ~11% it takes to decode the MP3/OGG tracks). It'd be great if someone would point me to, or put an option for, a "fast" EQ that sacrificed some quality for a speedup (I'm well aware that the Shibatch EQ eats most others for breakfast quality-wise). By comparison, XMPlay can decode tracks at 7% CPU and the equaliser is an additional ~4% on top of that, meaning it takes less than half the CPU usage of Foobar for media playback overall.

Other than that it's a good player; very versatile indeed, especially the mass-tagging/file-arranging capabilities!

(P.S. Hi to the other NZers in the thread above...!)
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=245826"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Try using foo_convolve with an equalized impulse.
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #118 –
Quote
Try using foo_convolve with an equalized impulse.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks, that's a good suggestion -- the CPU usage is down from ~26% overall to ~20% overall now; it's strange how the convolver is a faster equaliser than the equaliser itself .

For anyone else: Start with the FB2K "special" installer that inclues the "foo_convolve" plugin, or just download the plugin separately. Take the Unitpulse2K.wav impulse (download from [a href="http://www.sjeng.org]Garf's site[/url]). If you're really worried about CPU usage, you can trim it down to 512 or 1024 samples in length from the default 2048 using Audacity and save as a new 32 bit WAV impulse (I trimmed to 512, which may give a quality hit, and I kept the pulse in the middle; it may better to use a 'Dirac' style impulse with the pulse at the start?).

Either way, load your WAV impulse in FB2K, select the Diskwriter preferences, and *enable* the "Use DSP" box, as well as your EQ preset. Right-click, run a conversion to another 32-bit WAV file, then disable the EQ, enable foo_convolve, and load that converted WAV file as your impulse. Voila!

Psynapse (below): I didn't notice much of a quality difference, but then again my current equipment isn't of "golden-ears" quality...

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #119 –
Quote
Quote
Try using foo_convolve with an equalized impulse.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks, that's a good suggestion -- the CPU usage is down from ~26% overall to ~20% overall now; it's strange how the convolver is a faster equaliser than the equaliser itself .

For anyone else: Start with the FB2K "special" installer that inclues the "foo_convolve" plugin, or just download the plugin separately. Take the Unitpulse2K.wav impulse (download from [a href="http://www.sjeng.org]Garf's site[/url]), and if you're really worried about CPU usage, trim it down to 512 or 1024 samples in length from the default 2048 using Audacity (I trimmed to 512, which may give a quality hit). Save as a new 32 bit WAV file if you're editing it (I kept the pulse in the middle; it may better to use a 'Dirac' style impulse with the pulse at the start?). Finally, load it in FB2K, select the Diskwriter preferences, and *enable* the DSP and Equaliser. Right-click, run a conversion to another 32-bit WAV file, then disable the EQ, enabled foo_convolve, and load that converted WAV file as your impulse. Voila!
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=246005"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



this sounds terribly involved. does it actually produce a significant improvement in sound quality or cpu usage?
_
psy.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #120 –
First.
It can play Ogg-FLAC!
As far as i know, Only two palyer, one Directshow coder/decoder can play Ogg-FLAC, they are foobar2000, Sound Player Lilith, And this Illiminable Ogg codec.

Second.
It can correctly play and display list of chained ogg vorbis stream.
Other player will treat it as a one big audio file only.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #121 –
This is mostly in comparison to Winamp (my default player), managing a mp3 collection of ~17000 files.

Pros:

+ Conforms to the normal Windows UI (ie no skins)
+ Gapless MP3 support

About Equal (mentioned because these seem to be the selling points of foobar):
* Resource usage. With the full playlist loaded and a decent set of UI options, foobar doesn't come in much lighter on memory than winamp, and seems to take a little longer to start up.
* Stability: I haven't experienced any crashes with either.
* File formats: While this doesn't affect my main library (I've standardised on mp3 for consistency), if I get a rare file in some other format somewhere on the net, someone invariably seems to have written a winamp pluggin for it.
* Tagger: The foobar tagger isn't something I find useful at all, since I use an external program for most of my tagging. For one off typo fixes, the winamp tagger is just as useful as the foobar one.

Cons:

- Preferences dialogs are a UI nightmare
- Doesn't support displaying the art in id3v2 tags (all my files are tagged as such, it's the only way to ensure art maintains its association with the mp3)
- No dynamic playlists
- Only way to do artist -> album -> song drill down appears to be a floating album list window, rather than something docked with the main UI
- Sometimes has clearly the wrong choice for default settings (eg APE tags as default for mp3 ahead of de-facto standard and widely supported id3v2 tags)
- Most importantly, it intimidates me in that I feel it might mess up my file tags at any moment. The complete lack of documentation, second class id3v2 support, and cryptic configuration dialogs just don't inspire confidence that foobar is a program I want to be using on a music collection I've spent hundreds of hours ripping and tagging.

I try foobar every now and then, but go back to Winamp every time. I think it has potential, but it really needs some heavy work done on usability before I can consider it as a serious choice.

I hope this will be taken as it was intended: as constructive criticism to the developers of what they need to improve to win over converts to a program they've obviously worked very hard on.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #122 –
Quote
Pros:

+ Conforms to the normal Windows UI (ie no skins)
+ Gapless MP3 support

If these are all the pros of foobar2000 for you I also don't see the need to leave winamp. I understand that it is hard for a user who is used to winamp to change to foobar2000 but why should he do so at all if there's no real incentive?

All the cons you listed are either none to me or I don't agree because these are the features which make foobar2000 some kind of unique (i also think that the preferences dialog is great because everything is at its logical place though there may be some arguable points).

The lack of documentation probably makes it hard for users who don't know anything about audio but for those the basic features (playing audio files) are easily accessible and they don't have to go through the preferences at all. For the advanced users every function in the preferences is labeled with its correct name or has some basic documentation included (Tagz scripting reference). I don't see the need for further documentation since some basic trial and error is more productive than reading a documentation IMHO. 


Regards,
The Link

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #123 –
I began to use FB2K since version 0.6 just because FB need less system resource than WinAMP. I dislike WinAmp since WinAmp 3 for it used too much system resource. What does WinAmp want to be? I only need a player which can play the music when I am working. Of course, it's better with high quality.

Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000

Reply #124 –
Q: Tell us why have you chosen foobar2000 [...]?
A: There was no choice! foobar is the only functional audio player I know.