rb2013
Author of The 6922 Tube Review
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2013
- Posts
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In praise of foobar2000
I love foobar aka foobar2000 aka fb2k.
I love it for its simplicity.
All I want to do is play music I already own, and listen to that music undistracted.
The Filter tool is awesome for playing what I want and creating playlists for the occasion
... in a heartbeat - since I have my Library all tagged up the way I want it.
I disable Album Art even in fb2k.
I mean - what's the point?
A vinyl record (with its correct inner sleeve) is one thing.
Playing it on a turntable is ritualistic like smoking a cigarette.
(Which I gave up 12 years ago I hasten to add.)
With a cigarette you know you've got a lit one somewhere till you put it out.
(Unless you want to barbecue yourself and your family.)
Same thing with a record.
It spins till you turn it off.
And then if you care at all for it you must put the record away in its correct sleeve.
So Album Art means something if we are talking about LPs.
I would recognise any of my Album covers if I saw the same one somewhere else in the world.
I have a brain component that lets me do that - like everyone can recognise familiar faces.
(The loss of the capacity to recognise faces is "prosopagnosia". I would hate to have "lp-art-agnosia".)
But after 1980 and the advent of digits and CDs, the meaning of Album Art was lost to its rightful place in history - 1955-ish to 1980-ish.
So given that in fb2k I am listening to digits, what is the point of Album Art.
Anyway - it only gives the computer something else to do - a load which every audiophile knows is a menace.
And another "anyway" - what is the meaningful Album Art for a live and obscure classical performance - say.
I already know most of what I want to know about Artists and Music History - but I think about these things often and look them up all the time.
Doing so can create the desire to listen to something in particular.
So I take my brain with me to the Hi-Fi.
When I met my wife her bank account was riddled with Direct Debits and Standing Orders
because she loved salesmen coming to the door.
fb2k costs nothing.
And lets you think for yourself.
Now she is much happier.
And has more money for her other love (other than me that is) - the garden.
Three Cheers for Foobar!
I use an interesting system to tag music - the Windows file directory and name. I have a directory for each type of music - then sub for artist - then sub for album. Each WAV file name has the Artist - Album - Track number - Songname - track time. This is all automatically loaded by EAC (Exact Audio Copy) when a CD is burnt. There is an feature in EAC that does this from an online database. Other then the sub dir name - I never have to type a key. This 'tagging' system is impervious to corruption - unlike the ID meta tagging system (oh I have horror stories from my early years). Album art is loaded to the album sub dir, and named 'cover' - Foobar will automatically load it.
Now to transfer my collection to these 256GB USB sticks - simply copy and paste the entire genre directory - and wait a few hours as thousands of albums transfer. All with perfect structure and tagging. Easy peasy.
