Foobar Vs. iTunes Sound Qualities - Page 2

Check and see that stuff isn't enabled by default that is causing a difference. That could definitely perceive that a player sounds better than another.

WASAPI works good for any player than can accept it.

Bump. sorry for grave digging lol

 

Interesting thread. In the past I used foobar2k on win, but later I moved on mac and since I bought some idevices and ipod, itunes is my only best choice so far. on mac itunes is simply not laggy at all, and since I can't run foobar properly on it, I don't know how those 2 compare.

So, had anyone tried to compare these 2 software, with itunes running on osx and foobar on window? how's it turn out?

 

anyway, IMO the soundcard/dac/amp, the speaker/headphone and the music file play much bigger role in music quality than the software. of course the app certainly matter, it just don't seems to be that big (surely it's about itunes and foobar which is already good, not some chinese audio/video player with tons of useless feature and bad playback quality)

Foobar for Windows, iTunes for Mac. As far as convenience and usability goes, not just sound. If you have a Mac and more than one Apple device, iTunes is pretty much a must have, there is no replacement for it. foobar sounds great on Windows, iTunes on Windows certainly doesn't beat it, and I think the reason people have iTunes on their PCs is because they have Apple devices but no Macs or Macbooks. 

I think the main reason people use Foobar or winamp or anything like that is to get bit perfect playback using ASIO, WASAPI, KERNAL, etc... Because itunes does not have an extension for any of those drivers. I don't know really how those things work either though...like if you were using Foobar2000 and ASIO to listen to a track, and then paused it and opened a Google Chrome to watch a video, you might have to switch back to directsound.  This is speculation though...

 

It seems to me directsound is *way* simpler of a route.

 

Also, I didn't know the sampling rate could be changed in itunes or even Foobar for that matter.

I have Foobar and iTunes running on a HP Envy15 laptop routed to an external DAC then on to a dedicated headphone amplifier and I'd say the sound improvements are significant between Foobar and iTunes on a purely Windows based platform.

 

I may have some subjective biases tweaking my perception here and there... but with Foobar/ iTunes its an audible difference, not just an impression. I don't buy the big dynamic differences guys write about when switching from $400 DAC #1 to $750 DAC #2.... I think those differences are often hair splitting.... but Foobar does improve the sound. 

 

I don't really understand the behind the scenes stuff but think iTunes sounds a little grainy and congested compared to Foobar... It may have some to do with the better implementation of an Equalizer, some to do with Foobar having a smaller Memory footprint and so reducing jitter at the output but I can hear that difference.

 

From Foobar to JRiver... I can't really hear anything..... From JRiver to JRiver/JPlay I can't really hear anything.

I think JRiver is basically a good looking Foobar.... iTunes Look with Foobar Sound = JRiver.