Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Why have you changed your music player to foobar? (Read 13726 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

What was the reason that made you change your old, well known to you music player to new appliacation?
If you use some app every day and especially if it makes something important to you (like playing your favourite music) mostly you stick with it. It is really hard to change it - you know all the keyboard shortcuts, you can use its GUI with closed eyes, you are accustomed to its icon on desktop etc. Some people can argue that their app (the one they are using) is absolutely the best in universe and others are useless. But despite that facts people sometimes change their mind. I wanted to ask why current foobar users left their old music players? Was it serious problem with previous app or just "I' gave foobar a try and I stuck with it" ?

For me there was one reason - Unicode. When I added any non standard letter to filename or path of my music files (like Russian letters, Japanese letters, special signs and so on) my old player (Winamp 2.92, later updated to 5.1) was able to play it, but not to update file tags. Additionally I couldn't add that specific letters to tags. My room mate from dorm told me about foobar when I wanted to open .spc file and I was tired of using "Meridian 1.09" - simple and not so stable player for only several game music formats. In the begining I used foobar (v. "0.8.3 special") only for .spc files. But when I got problems with Unicode in Winamp I have tried how foobar will work with it. And it works perfectly since that day. Additionally I found possibilities for playing new and exotic file formats, specific functionalities, very good tagging options and now I can't imagine better music player...

So how about you?

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #1
Lightness, playlist of radio from urls (from radio-locator), encoding.

The main reason is probably encoding. I can finally do EVERYTHING I want with it, I don't need to wait for updates or changed in the settings etc., I manage my templates however I want and change them whenever I want in one simple click.

I've always used the default media player as audio player before, don't really care about listening on the pc. I care mostly about having a perfectly organized collection.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #2
I first heard of foobar2000 on AudioHQ, back when it looked like Notepad with playback buttons. It was described as the single most professional audio player application in existence, so the fact that it didn't look anything like that made me curious. When I took a look at the extensive preferences window and discovered the intricacies of the title formatting syntax, I was hooked.

Today I've dialed back the customizing, but over the years I've learned to appreciate the "professional" character of foobar2000. It does what I tell it to and, often more importantly, it does nothing I don't tell it to.
Nothing is impossible if you don't need to do it yourself.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #3
If I had to pick one feature (there are many I could mention), it would be:

Flexible tagging

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #4
I can hardly remember what I used before fb2k--I've used it pretty much since Peter released it. I used WinAmp for awhile, when that was the best of the rest, but when Peter left the team to do his own player, I followed.

Now that I have an iPhone I'm forced to use iTunes. I have a very small subset of my collection there, lossy copies of CDs or FLAC files. I let iTunes do what it wants with that subset, and I keep it far away from my main collection.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #5
I was attracted to the project by virtue that the userbase just plain seems savvy.  I've been on the prowl for a light, easy-to-use media player - basically, the audio equivalent of Media Player Classic (although, if enough audio customizations were available, I'd use it in a heartbeat).

FB2K does what it promises to do. It was the first, and I mean first media player that I have ever used (and believe me, I have used just about all of them) that was able to scan my 445k+ library without using up a ridiculous amount of resources.

With that, I was sold.  Peter, thank you.
Regards,

Jim
ThatRuled.com

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #6
Winamp didn't have multiple playlists. I only use one main list anyway, but I make/destroy plenty of temp playlists, and there's just no way of managing that in Winamp.

Along the line I discovered several other functions as well that make me stick to foobar. Some of these are probably in winamp as well fb's (playlist search versus WA's "jump to..."), but it's too late now!

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #7
Because I found iTunes to become too 'bloated' over the years. Loved the older versions while I used them, but I could care less about being able to launch the store from the app and I don't own any Apple portable products, so also don't care about syncing compatibility, nor do I care about video. I would love to see an iTunes-Lite that just plays music as I did love the interface.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #8
What made me choose fb2k, was that I could make it do whatever I imagined I would need (I wasn't 100 percent right about that though), and with a space-economic screen view as a bonus. Not beautiful, but functional.

What made me discover fb2k, was that I searched the 'net for a solution which bypassed the Windows mixer and took exclusive control over the (USB) sound card (so I wouldn't get system sounds or whatever over my speakers) and offered bitperfect output. I then learned that bitperfection out of software isn't that crucial (while ReplayGain is!), and that what I was really looking for was a soundcard that didn't have Soundblaster-era quirks, but before I learned that, the search for information had already led me to discover fb2k.

And I didn't really ditch anything, because I hadn't done the CD ripping job and the computer wasn't yet my main music player, so I used Windows Media Player (there was a minimal version called mplayer.exe or something, right?), VLC, XMMS, or whatever was available on the computer in question. Maybe even Winamp.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #9
gapless

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #10
Speed...like a Fox,
Tagging...like anyone else,
Modularity,
Portability
... and FREE. What else.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #11
Believe it or not, I accidentally fell into foobar2000.

I used to use Winamp ...and so did this friend of mine who was a computer guru wizz-kid He could hack anything and loved going under the hood of stuff and he also liked audio engineering....funny thing is, he was a L33T computer user but the only thing he had no knowledge of was foobar2000 !!

I had no special computer skills; I was just a typical userland guy. I remember seeing screenshots of foobar2000 at download sites, but would always move on...typical computer users don't get a hard-on when looking at a screenshot of foobar2000 out of the box. Of course, back then [~8 years ago] there was not as much of a foobar2000 customizing scene.

One day, discovering that it could run in portable mode, I downloaded foobar2000 just to quickly play some music files from a USB stick. I took the USB stick to my friends house and forgot to take it home with me.

About a week later, I went back to my friend's place to get my USB stick back.....he starts this audio player on his desktop, and starts flying around clicking on panels, clicking on tracks, clicking on buttons, playing his media library......The interface looked awesome, I asked him what music player it was; he said it was the foobar2000 from my USB stick copied to his desktop and customized.....I WAS SHOCKED! I had no idea you could do anything you wanted with this software.

So, right there, my friend gave me a live tutorial on how he customized everything and where to go under the hood to set all these things up....and that was that!

Believe it or not, I have a backup copy (all files) of my first foobar2000 layout...or should I say his layout; using Columns UI interface.
I now have many other backup copies of my customized foobar2000 interfaces from the past; I save the whole folder, not just the theme and config files.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #12
I like to keep my music for archival purposes and listen to it occasionally. I remember long time ago I quit using Winamp because the video player (KMPlayer, PotPlayer, MPC-HC) I was using was necessary enough for my listening habit. One day I tried foobar2000 and I remember I was enlightened but its old style feeling.
Now I listen much more and in longer sessions of time because of this little great player,  I've also replaced at least five other software with foobar2000, I use it for literally everything music related.

I usually don't like 100% customizable software and the way foobar2000 is made is actually perfect, you can break everything but the core (for example on Linux you can break really everything). I really like that he keeps it closed source but 100% open for the components.

mIRC and foobar2000 are the best software I've ever used (even I don't use it much anymore, mIRC is the only software I've ever bought). I'll say it again, if Peter removes that useless flattr and changes it with something like Elementary OS style payment, I would gladly give some money.

edit:
Apparently I've already replied to this thread...like last year...
This explains more, let's see if a mod decides to join them together

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #13
I changed because Foobar can play just about anything, it can be controlled via Foobarcon (probably my main reason) and it was free.
But what pushed me towards it was its popularity.
I now use JRiver simply for convenience but return to Foobar more often than not as I dont have to faff around with tags etc to get things in the library organised with Foobar. I just have all my folders organised so Foobarcon can navigate them easily and without any complications, which is something JRiver is lacking.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #14
Two words: speed.

See how fast it is?

I used QMP before fb2k, but it let me down the day I decided to rip my entire CD collection. I had installed fb2k previously but didn't gave it time to learn to use it.
Besides the speed, I uninstalled all tagging progs now that I can take care of that with fb2k. Besides, this forum is fantastic. I almost never had any question that wasn't answered here.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #15
I changed my player?

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #16
1. Multiple playlists
2. ReplayGain scanner
3. Encoding with DSP
4. Tagging

I used to use Winamp before I switched to fb2k.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #17
Quote
Flexible tagging

Playing music is easy.  Dealing with metadata is an art form

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #18
For me it's simply the spectrogram visualization. Even though it cuts off below 50hz (*grumbles*), it is the only media player I know of that has this kind of visualization. All other features (replaygain!) are an added bonus.
The ability to actually see the different frequencies in songs was something I had been looking for since I was like 10.
If only there was a way to extend the frequency range of the spectrogram below 50hz... then it would be near-perfect.

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #19
For me it's simply the spectrogram visualization. Even though it cuts off below 50hz (*grumbles*),


The spectrogram (the high-detail moving picture) does not cut off below 50.

The spectrum (the vertical bars) might, but it's hard to tell without a horizontal axis.

You've got the FFT size set to 4096, right?

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #20
Quote
Flexible tagging

Playing music is easy.  Dealing with metadata is an art form

Agree 100%, with both. foobar2000's tagging is absolutely amazing. Probably its best feature. It literally replaced every other software for me, before foobar2000 I barely knew music files had all these information inside. Years and years of organizing music, I have now an almost perfect collection that I can leave to my children!

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #21
I can't even really remember what I used for music before foobar2000. I think I used to use Winamp with those crappy skins. foobar is light, and pretty much completely customizable - over the years I've built up my music library, tagged the bejeezus out of it, and as a result I've got such a well-organized library that I can find anything really quickly. Add in the built-in converter support, awesome plugins such as the ability to read SACD rips, super-flexible tagging and you've got an all-in-one solution.

My only wish would be to see some native versions for Mac and Linux. It looks like the devs are taking the plunge into the mobile market - maybe we can see something else in the future. One can only hope 

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #22
I started to use Winamp a very long time ago and about one year ago I discovered flac music so I decided to rip my cd and searching for how to rip I discovered Foobar.
At the beginning I used it in a very simple way with CUI.
Now I have pleasure in changing the skin and learning more about so many things : tags, codecs, wasapi, scripts (already made) and so on

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #23
The spectrogram (the high-detail moving picture) does not cut off below 50.

You've got the FFT size set to 4096, right?

It doesn't cut off on the linear scale,

 

Why have you changed your music player to foobar?

Reply #24
After over a year I can add one more thing, which causes that I will never leave foobar - permanent customization of File Properties window. I can rename, add, remove and change order of standard tag fields. When I found it in Advanced Preferences, then configuring of foobar became one of my hobbies. I have never seen other player that would allow me change such basic and such important feature. I can create most ergonomic order of fields and easily tag my files whit whatever tags I like.
It is highly correlated with foobar's extensible tagging functionalities. Additionally all those tags can be displayed in columns - so you can sort your music by anything you want - artist, label, keywords, bitrates, modification date, day when they were added to your library, number of plays, mood, real name of author, remixer, BPMs, keys, ISRC numbers, DISCIDs (lol...), comments, opinion of your grandmother on particular track, pitch of your dog's barking while song is played, colour of your room walls when you heard the track for the first time... 
I can't forget about several 3rd party extensions like Waveform Seekbar. Many of my friends were shocked when they have seen seekbar from my foobar  . At least 3 of my friends have switched to foobar just because of Waveform Seekbar - they found it so cool  . When you mix it with Musical Spectrum and built in peak and volume meters you have perfect, professional, real time analysis of what you hear. The icing on a visualisation/analysis cake is built in Spectrogram... Especially after dhromed's colour tuning  . Thanks again mate
Despite my foobar design has number of elements it is very ascetic - just DUI panels/tabs, some colour on the background of default playlist viewer and no special effects. But I have seen what others can do with foobar's wiev... Just amazing. Skins mechanism from other players is a joke compared to foobar's abilities of changing its look.