Why do people have gripes about foobar2000?

[Philippine Mango]

yea, where you would find kernel streaming I can only find null output..

 

[dug777]

It's fiddly and looks like ass, and on 99.95% of peoples onboard sound and computer speaker setups you'll never be able to tell the difference between it and winamp...

/thread.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
yea, where you would find kernel streaming I can only find null output..

what kind of sound card do you have? maybe it doesn't support it.

 

[daniel1113]

Originally posted by: beer
So if I want to share a playlist with iTunes, I can do it in two clicks. To do the same in foobar, I have to

(a) create new directory
(b) copy all the playlist files into it
(c) in all liklihood create a new playlist file (since presumably the files before were spread out over multiple directories since they were by different artists
(d) Share the directory in windows
(e) provide the UNC address to someone else who needs to get the files.

So I the end, I've wasted a couple of more minutes and now have duplicate songs gunking up my system. The sheer beauty of iTunes is that the UI makes common tasks completeable with one or two clicks - at the expense of some bloat, but really with 3 GHz of power and 1 GB I'm not exactly concerned over ~60 MB footprint

Or you could setup WombatShare for foobar. But hey, your method is good too.

 

[daniel1113]

Originally posted by: dug777
It's fiddly and looks like ass, and on 99.95% of peoples onboard sound and computer speaker setups you'll never be able to tell the difference between it and winamp...

/thread.

foobar + ReplayGain

/thread

 

[MAME]

Originally posted by: Pepsi90919

Originally posted by: MAME
it looks like crap

and winamp rocks

you look like crap, and winamp sucks

[mario twins]WRONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG[/mario twins]

 

[Krk3561]

Originally posted by: beer

Originally posted by: piroroadkill

Originally posted by: Pepsi90919

Originally posted by: ndn mbc
I'm a iTunes user myself.

Sure it's probably not an audiophiles first choice, but...

1. Looks great
2. Organizing is beautiful
3. Real time search (I know many of this, but whatever) is awesome
4. Sharing songs on your network is also a really nice feature.

#4 is actually what made me jump from winamp to iTunes.

you can't share a folder?

He uses iTunes, did you really have to ask?

So if I want to share a playlist with iTunes, I can do it in two clicks. To do the same in foobar, I have to

(a) create new directory
(b) copy all the playlist files into it
(c) in all liklihood create a new playlist file (since presumably the files before were spread out over multiple directories since they were by different artists
(d) Share the directory in windows
(e) provide the UNC address to someone else who needs to get the files.

So I the end, I've wasted a couple of more minutes and now have duplicate songs gunking up my system. The sheer beauty of iTunes is that the UI makes common tasks completeable with one or two clicks - at the expense of some bloat, but really with 3 GHz of power and 1 GB I'm not exactly concerned over ~60 MB footprint

Seriously. iTunes just makes everything easy.

 

[suse920]

Originally posted by: Krk3561

Originally posted by: beer

Originally posted by: piroroadkill

Originally posted by: Pepsi90919

Originally posted by: ndn mbc
I'm a iTunes user myself.

Sure it's probably not an audiophiles first choice, but...

1. Looks great
2. Organizing is beautiful
3. Real time search (I know many of this, but whatever) is awesome
4. Sharing songs on your network is also a really nice feature.

#4 is actually what made me jump from winamp to iTunes.

you can't share a folder?

He uses iTunes, did you really have to ask?

So if I want to share a playlist with iTunes, I can do it in two clicks. To do the same in foobar, I have to

(a) create new directory
(b) copy all the playlist files into it
(c) in all liklihood create a new playlist file (since presumably the files before were spread out over multiple directories since they were by different artists
(d) Share the directory in windows
(e) provide the UNC address to someone else who needs to get the files.

So I the end, I've wasted a couple of more minutes and now have duplicate songs gunking up my system. The sheer beauty of iTunes is that the UI makes common tasks completeable with one or two clicks - at the expense of some bloat, but really with 3 GHz of power and 1 GB I'm not exactly concerned over ~60 MB footprint

Seriously. iTunes just makes everything easy.

That it does, and it does it well

 

[Gurck]

Rather than quote everyone, I'll just write a bit on each point:

It's difficult to use

Yes and no. It is indeed difficult to customize it to be exactly the way you want it, and if your music is unorganized on your hard drive, you'll hate it. If your music is organized and you don't mind fiddling with it, its vast cusomizability is awesome. Once you have it the way you want it, usage is a breeze and no more difficult than itunes.

It sounds no better than other players, kernel streaming is a myth

By default, it's true it sounds no better than other players. Kernel streaming and ASIO are off by default and unsupported by the developers, and so, not wanting to deal with it, the developers only comment on how it sounds by default. I can tell you for a fact that the k-mixer does indeed muddy the sound though, as I've heard the difference when bypassing it; you get a more open & detailed sound.

It's ugly

This depends on your definition of ugly. Do you want a neon colored, "1337" skin reminiscent of riced Honda Civics and Alienware cases? If so, then yes, it's "ugly" to you - though it does support skinning and have a small community doing this, it's not nearly as big as the winamp skinning scene, and it helps to defeat the purpose of having a small memory footprint & no bloat. If you want a clean customizable window though, it can look as good as you want it to.

Have a look at the link in my sig, I've customized it to my liking. I may go further, but am quite happy with it. I can scroll through my playlists on the left and then scroll to any song in the playlist on the right. Searching is as easy as itunes; hit F3 in a playlist, type in what you want, it will display results in real time. I find the other features itunes has to be unnecessary for the way I listen to music (favorites, etc) and to add to the bloat. I also consider QuickTime to be malware, and will never install it on my PC. Unfortunately, itunes doesn't give you a choice when installing. Foobar has just about every feature I could think of which I don't deem unnecessary, it's clean & uncluttered, supports just about every file format natively, etc. It's kind of like the Linux of music players.

 

[daniel1113]

So clean.

 

[Krk3561]

Originally posted by: daniel1113
So clean.

whoa, how did you do all that to foobar?

 

[Enfer Singe]

Originally posted by: dug777
It's fiddly and looks like ass

just because you have to spend some time to configure it the way you want it, doesnt mean it looks like ass. you get to customize it the way you want it to look, and it is made to be more minimalistic without all the fluff (which I know there are winamp skins available to do this as well, but you get the point)

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
yea, where you would find kernel streaming I can only find null output..

what kind of sound card do you have? maybe it doesn't support it.

NVM, I had to download the plugin in order to get it...

 

[BD2003]

Because unlike some well designed apps like zoomplayer, foobar isnt even trying to help you out. It starts out barebones, and is quite possibly the most disorganized UI by default Ive ever seen in my life. Im sure its capable of great things, but I dont feel like spending 2 hours trying to figure out the simplest thing, when theres tons of programs out there that do 99% of what youll ever need to do by default.

Itunes is as bloated as it gets, but nothing can beat *browsing* by genre, artist, album. Id use WMP, but the fools that designed it dont let you do that simple thing. If theres a way to do this in foobar, it certainly isnt easy to figure out.

 

[daniel1113]

Originally posted by: BD2003
Because unlike some well designed apps like zoomplayer, foobar isnt even trying to help you out. It starts out barebones, and is quite possibly the most disorganized UI by default Ive ever seen in my life. Im sure its capable of great things, but I dont feel like spending 2 hours trying to figure out the simplest thing, when theres tons of programs out there that do 99% of what youll ever need to do by default.

Itunes is as bloated as it gets, but nothing can beat *browsing* by genre, artist, album. Id use WMP, but the fools that designed it dont let you do that simple thing. If theres a way to do this in foobar, it certainly isnt easy to figure out.

Playlist > sort > sort by...

Pretty tough.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Foobar rox, foo'

 

[Brule]

I keep it and winamp but have started using foobar almost exclusively anymore. Once I got kernal streaming and resampling set up there was a very noticable differance. (Chaintech av-710 in high sample mode)

On my boxes with onboard or dated sound setups I stick with winamp.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: daniel1113

Originally posted by: BD2003
Because unlike some well designed apps like zoomplayer, foobar isnt even trying to help you out. It starts out barebones, and is quite possibly the most disorganized UI by default Ive ever seen in my life. Im sure its capable of great things, but I dont feel like spending 2 hours trying to figure out the simplest thing, when theres tons of programs out there that do 99% of what youll ever need to do by default.

Itunes is as bloated as it gets, but nothing can beat *browsing* by genre, artist, album. Id use WMP, but the fools that designed it dont let you do that simple thing. If theres a way to do this in foobar, it certainly isnt easy to figure out.

Playlist > sort > sort by...

Pretty tough.

Which does nothing but sort a giant damn list into an organized giant damn list. Does nothing even close to what I mentioned.

You know something is wrong with a player needs a damn plugin to scroll its list automatically.

 

[MazerRackham]

Originally posted by: Krk3561

Originally posted by: daniel1113
So clean.

whoa, how did you do all that to foobar?

Whoa! Yeah how did you do all that?

 

[daniel1113]

foobar + columns ui + panels (album art, track info, album list) + Apple buttons

It took me a good month or so to learn about everything and customize each plug-in to my liking.

 

[LS20]

why would i have to spend time downloading plugins and customizing the player just to do basic things i do with winamp? and my winamp has zer0 bloatware.

all i do:

-add files to playlist: drag&drop folders/files into it
-delete files from playlist: select (multiple) files in playlist, click delete
-move files around playlist: select (multiple files), click mouse and drag it up/down playlist to sort
-"J" button quick search to go through my 8000 songs (this is how i jump from song->song; album->album; artist->artist; etc)


edit: a volume slider, too

last i used foobar it didnt have a playlist this flexible so fugg it

 

[Goosemaster]

There is nothing "wrong" with foobar [debatable]
There is nothing "wrong" with itunes [debatable]

Foobar prioritizes function(ability) over form(ui).
Itunes prioritizes form(ui) over function(ability)

In the end you get:

-a practical program with limted potential (itunes)
OR
-and impractical program with rather unlimited potential (foobar)


Which is better?

Whichever is more important to you.

 

It doesn't have any features I can say are useful to me.
The sound quality argument is moot, a quick search on google will show you that.
I know where my well organized music is, and I know what I want to hear when I want to hear it.
No need for playlists, plugins, hours of customizing and a slew of features when I just want to hear my music.

 

[LS20]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
There is nothing "wrong" with foobar [debatable]
There is nothing "wrong" with itunes [debatable]

Foobar prioritizes function(ability) over form(ui).
Itunes prioritizes form(ui) over function(ability)

Which is better?

winamp. function, and form.

 

[Brule]

Originally posted by: SampSon
It doesn't have any features I can say are useful to me.
The sound quality argument is moot, a quick search on google will show you that.

A quick 10 seconds running each program tells me different. If you randomly turn on/off various features then I agree with foobar's FAQ on sound quality.