foobar2000 1.1.1

Rated 50/50 by anomoly at May 11, 2009

http://customize.org/foobar That's a laugh. The "how to use skins" page is bare a** blank My favorite plugin? foo_input_reverse.dll

Rated 40/50 by emanresU deriseD at May 11, 2009

Who said anything about wanting it to be "pretty"? Not me. I hate skins (because they're so often poorly implemented). And my complaints about the UI aren't solved by plugins. If you have to spend hours hunting down, configuring, and updating plugins, you're already come across something I hate about applications like this and Firefox: They omit functionality that should be built in. I don't install software because I need a full-time hobby or a weekend project. But I HAVE spent hours fiddling with plugins for fb2k. I have it in a "bearable" state of usability, but it will never be what I want it to be. If you can't discern "usability" from "attractiveness", I don't care. If you are happy with this level of usability, I also don't care. As far as sound goes, I would never brag about "playing flat". Personally, I only care about my ears being happy, not artists or sound engineers. I've found a "Noise Sharpening" plugin that really does make certain moderate-bitrate files sound better. I also like using "loudness" so I don't have to crank the volume to ridiculous levels in order to get the most out of the bass and treble. BTW, I can hear well over 20 kHz. I can also see just fine, but that doesn't mean I don't like to adjust my monitor's colors. Purism doesn't amount to a hill of crap if it reduces your enjoyment.

Rated 50/50 by limtzhng at May 17, 2009

"Plays FLAC and just about any audio file." The best free music player at the moment. Could have better skin work. Download without regret.

Rated 50/50 by magOwl at May 22, 2009

"Easy to organize music with, the same way one would with J. River Media Center or MediaMonkey? Filtering, categorization, rating--these are all as easy to figure out and perform on a daily basis as with the others? Yeah--right." In my opinion foobar blows those apps you mention out of the water on all counts. I've tried em all and none of them comes close to what I can do with foobar. But that's just my opinion. I use two plugins, masstagger & facets, which are both found on the main foobar download page (facets in one of the off-site links at the bottom), plus a couple of custom tags, to organize and keep my collection in check. Well.. to be honest I have a couple of other plugins, but nothing that affects organizing/categorizing/filtering.. and I don't rate my music, I know what I like :) but that would be easy to implement if I wanted to. And I like the interface, I use the built in one.. album art on the top left, playlist(s) on top right and facets at the bottom... and it looks fine, no clutter, no outlandish elements, no distractions. It keeps my collection in order, plays it, and does so without any fuss.

Rated 50/50 by ZenoLabs at May 23, 2009

It rules, babe!

Rated 30/50 by jorgosch at May 24, 2009

I was an avid supporter of foobar before and I still think it's a very good player, but the recent politics of getting rid of unwanted plug-ins by just removing the supported hooks look a bit like dictatorship to me... and now you get BANNED on the foobar forums for just asking about blacklisted components or even the contents of the blacklist itself. It's time to look for alternatives.

Rated 50/50 by anomoly at Jun 8, 2009

You can stop buying into a proprietary way-overpriced format for one. A friend has one of those sacd players and I couldn't figure out why one would want to use them to begin with (at any price)?, He also loves blu-ray, which I suppose is great if you happen to own a $5,000 tv set. Not only the best gui but the best installer. Love it

Rated 50/50 by Blaxima at Jun 8, 2009

This is the one piece of software that I can honestly say has never let me down. Every time I see a change log mentioning bug fixes my response is "really" because I haven't come across any in all my years using it. It really is a rock solid piece of software(politics aside). @cowagR http://www.hydrogenaudio...dex.php?showtopic=41664

Rated 40/50 by cowgaR at Jun 8, 2009

@Blaxima: thx, so quick answer is it can't (too many "intelligent" morons out there, the sad picture of foobar community). So I need to use WMP to play these wavs [all my library is stored on raid disks]. Or use foobar with HW HDCD enabled DAC, which is impossible once I'm already using D10 cobra with my notebook and I haven't seen one on the market yet. Original post: Can anyone confirm that foobar doesn't have the ability to play HDCD files? e.g. 20bit wavs encoded in 16bit which needs to be decoded good...not in 16bit only. What I heard is that even 24bit setting won't help it. Moreover WMP is showing some HDCD icon when playing/decoding these music files... any link/help appreciated, HDCD is deprecated format by SACD but there are still few albums only in this format so what can I do.

Rated 50/50 by anomoly at Jun 8, 2009

You can stop buying into a proprietary way-overpriced format for one. A friend has one of those sacd players and I couldn't figure out why one would want to use them to begin with (at any price)?, He also loves blu-ray, which I suppose is great if you happen to own a $5,000 tv set. Not only the best gui but the best installer. Love it @cowga couldn't u just play disc through a very nice snd card like the m-audio audiophile192 HD (up to 24/192), via wmp for the decode, and then record that directly possibly to a second HD card. I suspect the original 20 bit depth can be digitally preserved via the hrdware to a fully digital file which essentially alleviates the disc scratch problem. Isn't that what this boils down to? bit depth?

Rated 50/50 by sn0wy82 at Jun 9, 2009

"Excellent software, a must have!!!" Low on resources, supports a wide range of formats- more than most people will use Interface could do with an overhaul

Rated 20/50 by agreddon at Jun 15, 2009

"Skip this and go to Song Bird" Well, it is a very simple interface, it does have that going for it. Media quality is okay. Where do I begin. First off, the interface does not set up like any of the other OSS players, and in a bad way. Even Zinf has this one beat hands down in terms of use of the interface. Worse of all is the fact that this lacks features. I'd only recommend this if you want a bare bones mp3 player and don't want to be bothered to code your own. Otherwise, stear clear.

Rated 50/50 by itsinsidethewell at Jun 22, 2009

"SIMPLE PLAYER AND EFFECTIVE." Simple basic music player.Easy to use.I hate WMP 11.Foobar does it for me. Theres nothing to dislike about this player. I was having issues with VLC player.Foobar is much better.Thats all I wanted was a simple easy player to play music while I surf,and this is it.

Rated 50/50 by zeeZee at Jun 24, 2009

playlists sitting in browser like tabs makes this awesome. windows media does have this.

Rated 50/50 by dewy05 at Jul 17, 2009

Low on resources. Great quality sound. Easy to use. Doesn't lag on slower PCs Easy to use interface, very simple. Been using this app for over a year and still have not found anything to complain about! Perfect for those who just want to listen to their music! Light on resources, just plays in the background. As for the UI there are skins you can install if you like, just google it! Sound quality is nice and clean too! I preferr it over any other media player free or not!

Rated 30/50 by emanresU deriseD at Jul 23, 2009

Thanks for the input and the information, but I stand by what I said before. What I was getting at isn't that fb2k can't be made relatively usable, but rather that it takes too much time and effort. Back before I developed an abiding contempt for anything to do with J. River Media Center, I enjoyed the fact that I could install it, and have it the way I wanted without hours of confusion and annoyance. With fb2k, I can have it set up to be bearable, but to get to that point I have to try this plugin, that plugin, this configuration, that configuration, this layout, that layout, and so on and on and on and on. And even when I settle on a set of plugins, I have to wonder if they'll stay updated in step with fb2k. And of course, they never have official support of any kind, and very often, you can't even get unofficial support at all. (These are some of the same basic criticisms I have for Firefox. Roj criticizes Firefox on the same grounds, so it's ironic that he doesn't for fb2k.) As a case in point, I had been using the "Columns UI" interface. After reading one of the foregoing reviews, I reverted to the default UI and tried the Facets plugin. It seemed ... OK, but I couldn't get it "just right". Then I remembered that Columns UI had a Genre/Artist/Album column feature, so I tried it. I could get the Genre/Artist/Album columns in place, but I found that when I'd select a genre/artist/album, the playlist would not change to reflect the selection. (Which kind of defeats the purpose!) I screwed around with it for 15 minutes but could not figure out how to make the playlist change when I'd select a different genre/artist/album. So I reverted to the tree view again, which works, but isn't what I prefer. In MediaMonkey, genre/artist/album... Just works. No nonsense, no screwing around, no relying on third-party plugins that indtroduce their own bugs and version dependencies. This is what I'm talking about. And it's just one example.

Rated 50/50 by Zoem at Aug 2, 2009

"Best free audio player ever!" Plays ogg files Dont have any easy, plays large variety of audio files.

Rated 30/50 by nuguy99 at Aug 7, 2009

"VERY simple interface and easy to use" It is what it is..! Media player 1.o Not mny features or tutoring

Rated 40/50 by netean at Aug 10, 2009

don't get me wrong, I do like foobar, it's functional and useful and plays well. But c'mon it's been in beta development for what... 5-6 years at least? Surely it's time to drop to the 0.9x series and move to version 1? FFS even Gmail came out of beta a few weeks ago.

Rated 50/50 by dhry at Aug 10, 2009

Best music player out there. "Now playing" plugin (for Uqwtyui Dpoqwyetz's benefit): http://www.maroonspoon.com/foo_prettypop/