[pennylane]

When people refer to "foobar sounding better than winamp", are they referring exclusively to mp3s?

What about ogg?

 

[averydonovan]

Actually, it can make any format sound better other than MP3 if you have an AC'97 soundcard (very likely). In addition to it's better than Winamp MP3 decoder, it also has a built-in resampler that resamples everything to 48Khz instead of letting your soundcard do it, resulting in better sound quality. It also has kernel streaming mode, which some people have reported sound quality improvements on compared to using Direct Sound for sound output.

I mainly like it for it's lightweight interface, convenient track playback features, and it's global hotkeys for controlling playback.

 

[lan]

I think the better quality comes on a few fronts.

More modern components. If you added the same components to winamp they should be about the same. Foobar's MP3 decoder is more up to date and high quality. The resampling and kernel streaming in winamp are old now.

Added components. Some are better like EQ. Some are great to have like Advanced Limiter. Then there are value added ones, Crossfader, Gap Killer, Crossfeed.

If you just wanted basic player, then winamp with some upgrades can be fine. If you want the ultimate in playability then foobar is the way to go.