foobar2000

[KoolDrew]

I have heard alot about foobar but noone actually says why it is better thenothers? What makes it better then lets say Winamp? Also alot of pople say that the sound quality is much better using foobar2000. IS th8is true? I thought the quality of sound had to do with the file itself and its quality its like 90kps or 128kps and not the actual player being used (correct me if im wrong).

 

[konakona]

there is no sound quality difference assuming no plguins are used.

what it does offer is
Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player
Audio formats supported "out-of-the-box": WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3, MPEG-4 AAC
Audio formats supported through official addons: FLAC, OggFLAC, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, CDDA, TFMX, SPC, various MOD types; extraction on-the-fly from RAR, 7-ZIP & ZIP archives
Full Unicode support on Windows NT
ReplayGain support
Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists
Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger)
Highly customizable playlist display
Customizable keyboard shortcuts
Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)
<taken straight from foobar2000.org>

so in the end, its kinda like IE vs firefox. i have been using firefox for quite some time and appreciate its tab browsing ability and all, but still fail to see whats soooo great about it. the thing is its just marginally better in every aspect and doesnt have any glaring drawbacks. IE is still needed however as quite a few sites are designed for IE only and wont work properly with firefox (stupid web designers, oh well) foobar2k vs winamp appears to be a similar case where winamp has nothing to offer over foobar2k. the only reason i could imagine someone preferring winamp is for its milkdrop visualization plugins. i usually do other stuff while listening to music so this doesnt pertain me.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I did use an older version of MusicMatch on my previous MP3-based jukebox, but its lousy database annoyed me: the designers were too stupid to realize they needed to be able to distinguish between two different CDs titled "Greatest Hits", or "Live", or "Best Of"! Idiots.

My current music server box has 900 of my CDs ripped to lossless FLAC format (using EAC), so I needed a player with FLAC support. Foobar2000 works well so I've never bothered to try anything else for it.

 

[Andvari]

Foobar uses so few resources, and is fast as hell. Those are the reasons I like it, because I don't use all those extremely advanced features.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: VanillaH
there is no sound quality difference assuming no plguins are used.

what it does offer is
Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player
Audio formats supported "out-of-the-box": WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3, MPEG-4 AAC
Audio formats supported through official addons: FLAC, OggFLAC, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, CDDA, TFMX, SPC, various MOD types; extraction on-the-fly from RAR, 7-ZIP &amp; ZIP archives
Full Unicode support on Windows NT
ReplayGain support
Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists
Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger)
Highly customizable playlist display
Customizable keyboard shortcuts
Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)
<taken straight from foobar2000.org>

so in the end, its kinda like IE vs firefox. i have been using firefox for quite some time and appreciate its tab browsing ability and all, but still fail to see whats soooo great about it. the thing is its just marginally better in every aspect and doesnt have any glaring drawbacks. IE is still needed however as quite a few sites are designed for IE only and wont work properly with firefox (stupid web designers, oh well) foobar2k vs winamp appears to be a similar case where winamp has nothing to offer over foobar2k. the only reason i could imagine someone preferring winamp is for its milkdrop visualization plugins. i usually do other stuff while listening to music so this doesnt pertain me.

For me, it's the other way around.
I tried Foobar, but it wasn't fast enough with my playslist(~5000 files), plus I didn't care much for the interface.
I don't use Winamp for it's visual appeal(I listen to music after all, if I wanna watch, I'll play a movie), but rather for the fact that it does what I want perfectly.

Browsers OTOH, every site I ever use works fine under Mozilla, now that my bank officially supports it

 

[NightCrawler]

Lightweight and it has tabs

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: NightCrawler
Lightweight and it has tabs

i am assuming you are talking about foobar. yeah, i mean people are nuts about tabbed browsing, wouldnt you want the same with mp3 players? why have 1 giant playlist when you can have them organized your way and easily accessible. here is a screenie.

 

[NightCrawler]

Vanilla: Holy Crap that is a lot of Tabs !!!!