speed

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speed

2003-01-29 06:04:10

not as fast as winamp2.

FYI, I'm running a 700mhz Athlon with 400+ megs of ram.

After using Foobar for a few days, I switched back to winamp2 in order to check out some ID3v2 tags on some of my songs. I couldn't help but notice how smoothly Winamp scrolled through my playlist of 2000 songs: there was no split-second lag time like there was in Foobar. Granted, WA2 doesn't technically have smooth scrolling, but who cares about that when you want to go from song #5 to song #1893? Foobar's only advantage to playlist navigation was that the 'global scroll' mousewheel function worked, though sadly not well due to the delayed scrolling. (global scrolling, btw, is much more useful than relative scrolling)

This prompted me to check the startup time... WA2 won by a good quarter of a second or so, even with 5 times more plugins. Yeah foobar is still beta but will it realistically get that much faster?

Bottom line: Other than a ton of playlist style variation, what does Foobar offer that's better than WA2? Is sound quality really that different...? I mean, we're all playing lossy music here anyway.

stripe

PS. the enqueue feature of WA3 is awesome. if they release a version that doesn't crash on me all the time i'm switching back just for that.

speed

Reply #1 – 2003-01-29 06:43:40

I'm not an audiophile by any means (hell I still can't tell the difference between 128kbps rips off WinMX vs. my thousands of --aps rips) but seriously, the sound difference between fb2k and winamp is like night and day, expecially when I could start hearing exactly what people were saying on certain songs...

speed

Reply #2 – 2003-01-29 06:45:27

I can't help but be reminded of reviews of Debian GNU/Linux, most of which point out that Debian isn't as easy to install as other Linux distros.

The point of installing Linux is to use it. So what if its installation doesn't look intuitive to the beginner? Once the beginner has gained enough knowledge, he would find out that using and maintaining Debian is much more comfortable.

---

So what if it takes longer to load? So what if it takes longer to scroll?

Does it get its job done well? Now that, IMHO, is what's really important.

edit: typos, emphasis

speed

Reply #3 – 2003-01-29 07:52:22

wow, my foobar with about 2233 songs starts playing music as soon as i double click it
there is absolutely no lag.
t-bird 1000 512 ram winxp

make sure your foobar is using the database.foo, saves massive time

speed

Reply #4 – 2003-01-29 07:59:58

Quote

[...]
there was no split-second lag time like there was in Foobar. Granted, WA2 doesn't technically have smooth scrolling, but who cares about that when you want to go from song #5 to song #1893?
[...]
This prompted me to check the startup time... WA2 won by a good quarter of a second or so, even with 5 times more plugins.

1) why don't you just disable smooth scrolling in windows? fb2k scrolls like a charm without this smooth bs over here.

2) wow, quarter a second! now that's something I'll lose sleep over! ...not. come on, how often do you launch your player?

speed

Reply #5 – 2003-01-29 08:21:24

I think this is what I was trying to say: What's the point of Foobar's super-minimalistic approach if it's not faster and easier to use?

Didn't mean to come off as whiny, I was just surprised that foobar ran slower than something with a GUI.

And actually I did have smooth scrolling disabled, I just assumed it was enabled since you can resize the playlist to any size (instead of being restricted to a certain number of lines like WA). And yes it's slower than WA2 scrolling.

stripe

speed

Reply #6 – 2003-01-29 08:37:38

I wouldn't call foobar2000 minimalistic. It's loaded with features a serious high quality player should have and then some. (Did I use that term correctly?) But I'm a foobar2000 fanboy, so your opinion may differ from mine.

IMHO I'd just say that foobar2000 is not bloated.

IMHO The point of "anti-bloat" is not to be faster and easier to use, but to be useful for the program's dedicated purpose.

speed

Reply #7 – 2003-01-29 08:42:15

stripe : you should take into consideration something :

- when you start foobar, it loads every tags before being started (from database if it's not the 1rst time you play thoses mp3s)

- when you start winamp... it only begins to load tags from files once started...

And, like voltron, on my computer, I got no lag and it start playing as soon as I double click...

speed

Reply #8 – 2003-01-29 10:08:42

I think that foobar is very beginning of development and final target is that everybody can make safe plug-in's using foobar API, like GUI in example. At this time is better to have ideal decoding engine and as much as possible open and well working API layer.

speed

Reply #9 – 2003-01-29 13:36:15

Quote

I think this is what I was trying to say: What's the point of Foobar's super-minimalistic approach if it's not faster and easier to use?

Didn't mean to come off as whiny, I was just surprised that foobar ran slower than something with a GUI.

And actually I did have smooth scrolling disabled, I just assumed it was enabled since you can resize the playlist to any size (instead of being restricted to a certain number of lines like WA). And yes it's slower than WA2 scrolling.

stripe

IMO, WA2 is stable and faster than FB2K. For some files WA2 is much faster which is why I feel FB2K will be experimental for a long time to come (not surprising considering it's age).

@certain posters:
My experience with posting in the FB2K forum was not pleasant. When I addressed an issue about the program I was immediately attacked for my usage of a specific encoder, which I found highly OT and unprofessional. Just because the main developer of FB2K is notorious for his sharp tongue doesn't mean others have to emulate this behavior by cutting others down so quick. It makes using FB2K even less appealing.

speed

Reply #10 – 2003-01-29 13:58:51

Quote

I'm not an audiophile by any means (hell I still can't tell the difference between 128kbps rips off WinMX vs. my thousands of --aps rips) but seriously, the sound difference between fb2k and winamp is like night and day, expecially when I could start hearing exactly what people were saying on certain songs...

Yeah... sure

The difference between a shitty 128kbps and a good encode is much larger than the audible difference a player could make (even if there are resampling issues). You invalidated your argument before you even made it by saying you can't distinguish 128kbps from --aps.

I'll take that back if you provide any proof to support your claim, but I doubt you can, seriously.

speed

Reply #11 – 2003-01-29 15:03:17

Who cares that WA2 is (possible) faster. I've swithed to Foobar because my primary target is audioquality and in that way Foobar rules IMO. Stripe.. perhaps your speakers and/or soundcard (especially speakers)aren't that good to hear a difference between those players, no offence but ever thought off that possibility.

speed

Reply #12 – 2003-01-29 15:09:10

if players set up properly
then no difference
else = placebo

speed

Reply #13 – 2003-01-29 16:49:17

Quote

IMO, WA2 is stable and faster than FB2K. For some files WA2 is much faster

just curious, which (kind of) files would that be?

speed

Reply #14 – 2003-01-29 18:33:08

Quote

wow, my foobar with about 2233 songs starts playing music as soon as i double click it
there is absolutely no lag.
t-bird 1000 512 ram winxp

make sure your foobar is using the database.foo, saves massive time

really? surprising. takes 5 seconds here with 1909 songs in the list, database enabled, similar speed computer (1.4GHz though). Well, mind you, my mainstay playlist directory is on the other computer over the network. That's probably where my startup speed difference lies.

speed

Reply #15 – 2003-01-29 20:19:08

Quote

really? surprising. takes 5 seconds here with 1909 songs in the list, database enabled, similar speed computer (1.4GHz though). Well, mind you, my mainstay playlist directory is on the other computer over the network. That's probably where my startup speed difference lies.

Is it just the playlist that's on the network, or the files (and/or fb2k's DB) as well?

speed

Reply #16 – 2003-01-29 20:27:52

foobar and its database are local, as is the playlist I suppose since I'm just quitting/starting foobar with the same playlist in memory all the time. Just the songs themselves are on the other machine.

<edit> ah, correction. my shortcut is "..foobar2000.exe x:\" so it's actually re-opening the directory each time. I believe I did that so if I add more files to the playlist directory I don't have to bother editing the playlist in foobar too. If I use the other shortcut that just starts up foobar itself with the big playlist already there it comes up instantly.

speed

Reply #17 – 2003-01-30 06:05:48

Quote

It's loaded with features a serious high quality player should have and then some. (Did I use that term correctly?)

(Off-topic) It makes sense to any English speaker familiar with the idiom, but to be grammatically correct you need to say "It has every feature a serious high quality player should have and then some."

The figure of speech implies that the subject has more than a given external high-quality standard and lacks nothing that said standard has.

To be perfectly accurate, maybe actually reference a high quality player rather than being generic.

Edit: Who am I to be talking about grammar errors? Thank God you can't see my old post. :smirk:

speed

Reply #18 – 2003-01-30 06:17:45

Quote

not as fast as winamp2.

FYI, I'm running a 700mhz Athlon with 400+ megs of ram.

That's also true for me (AMD 5x86/133 MHz), but even with simple playback of single sound files, not with advanced playlist options. Foobar can't play a 128 kbps MP3 file without stuttering here (on a Win95 system), so despite its appearance it's not usable for older PCs. Maybe the internal 32-bit architecture is the reason for that (don't know), but there's no option to prevent this behaviour. With Winamp 2.81 you could raise the CPU priority for playing sound files (also with the input plugins), but I can't find anything similar in Foobar, so the only thing it's good for me at the moment is reading file infos from MP4 files.

Quote

Bottom line: Other than a ton of playlist style variation, what does Foobar offer that's better than WA2? Is sound quality really that different...? I mean, we're all playing lossy music here anyway.

If I want sound quality, I use Mpxplay, because as a DOS player it accesses the sound card directly and not through a Windows driver. Switching from Winamp or WMP to Mpxplay with the same file always gives me a "mucho warm and fuzzy feeling".... The only drawback (and the reason for installing Foobar after a general system clean-up which also eliminated Winamp) is the lack of AAC/MP4 support, so I have to reconvert those files to WAV every time I want to do a comparison.

By the way, does anyone know if the FAAD2 option to send an AAC/MP4 file to stdout instead of writing it to the disk can be used as a direct audio player for those files somehow?

speed

Reply #19 – 2003-01-30 09:10:29

Quote

AMD 5x86/133 MHz

Da 0ld 5k001!

But it's just too slow, especially when performing folating-point operations.

As for increasing process priority, you can try using Taskinfo, or any other Windows task management utility.

speed

Reply #20 – 2003-01-30 09:33:47

Quote

Quote
IMO, WA2 is stable and faster than FB2K. For some files WA2 is much faster

just curious, which (kind of) files would that be?

MPC + CUE loaded as CUE is very slow negotiating tracks.

(Again, how a file format is used should not be an issue for debate, thx.)

speed

Reply #21 – 2003-01-30 12:58:33

Quote

Quote
AMD 5x86/133 MHz

Da 0ld 5k001!

Sure? As far as I know, this CPU has nothing in common with AMD K5, if you're referring to that with your remark... it's more like the latest and greatest beefed-up 486/DX the world has ever seen.

Quote

But it's just too slow, especially when performing folating-point operations.

Well, the important thing is (that's why I mentioned it in this thread) that Winamp 2.81 and even WMP 6.4 (not to mention Mpxplay) can play a standard 128 kbps MP3 file here without problems. When I raised the priority slider in Winamp to "high", I could even play AAC and MP4 files without stuttering using John33's compile of in_mp4.dll. So it looks as if I have to reinstall Winamp again just for the playback of AAC/MP4 files, and at the moment I don't feel like it.

Quote

As for increasing process priority, you can try using Taskinfo, or any other Windows task management utility.

Thanks, I'll have a look at it.

speed

Reply #22 – 2003-01-30 13:15:06

Quote

Quote
Quote
IMO, WA2 is stable and faster than FB2K. For some files WA2 is much faster

just curious, which (kind of) files would that be?

MPC + CUE loaded as CUE is very slow negotiating tracks.

(Again, how a file format is used should not be an issue for debate, thx.)

MPC seeking is slow due to it's poor container, this has got nothing to do with Foobar really so quit naggin about this. Same goes for MP3.
edit: mp3cue is a cheap solution of what should be done.

speed

Reply #23 – 2003-01-30 15:11:39

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That's also true for me (AMD 5x86/133 MHz), but even with simple playback of single sound files, not with advanced playlist options. Foobar can't play a 128 kbps MP3 file without stuttering here (on a Win95 system),

I find that a little surprising. I remeber running Win95 on my old 486DX100 years back, which would take forever to do anything, but it would play back mp3s in winamp smoothly

speed

Reply #24 – 2003-01-31 07:56:40

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MPC seeking is slow due to it's poor container, this has got nothing to do with Foobar really so quit naggin about this.

You are indeed as rude as I originally thought.

But despite your unsubstantiated comments it is true what I said concerning the speed in the scenario I described. Sounds like you're in a hurry to be the second person banned to me.

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