comabereni
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2004
- Posts
- 1,024
- Likes
- 10
I'm mostly posting this for anyone sitting on the fence trying to decide what player to use. Foobar is, as my teenage sons say, the bomb. Download it and spend a night/day setting it up--it's worth it.
It wasn't exactly a piece of cake, but music files with Foobar sound vastly superior to Windows Media Player 9 and 10 and, in my opinion, WinAmp. By comparison, WMP sounds noticeably "muddy" and sloppy. I confess I never got the ASIO plugin working in WinAmp--maybe it would sound just as good.
FB sounded about the same configured for Kernel Streaming and ASIO, but I can't get it to play in KS mode since DL'ing and installing ASIO4ALL (which was necessary to get FB with ASIO to find my Chaintech AV710, i.e. the "ENVY24" device wasn't showing up in the list of devices prior to ASIO4ALL). Perhaps a reinstall of FB and, potentially, my Chaintech AV710 drivers?
Regarding music file formats: about 18 months ago I ripped my collection of CDs to 192K WMA files, long before I was aware of FLAC, APE, etc. I'm not about to put myself through that abuse again anytime soon--it took me something like 60 or 80 hours (I get the impression it would take a lot longer using EAC). I do remember I didn't get much sleep that week
. As I've gone deeper into this headphone passion/sickness, I was concerned I might be disappointed by WMA format, but I've found that 192k WMA sounds *really* nice. If you are coming over from WMP "automaton mode"--I think you really don't need to hurry up and re-rip your collection (at least if you ripped them at 192K--I don't like the way 128K files sound in comparison). I'll eventually try a few tracks in other formats, but, again, 192K WMA sounds nice, not "metallic", "lossy", or "noisy" as I was lead to believe it might. Perhaps having a decent amp with tubes smooths the sound out a bit, taking off what might otherwise be some WMA "edginess" (who knows??).
Before I forget, I was having trouble with other applications/windows which have associated system sounds taking focus from Foobar with the result that FB playback was muted and the FB window had to be manually selected before playback became audible again. My solution was to deactivate system sounds in the Control Panel and set FB to be "Always On Top" (don't know if the latter is necessary).
Having said all this, becoming familiar with Foobar so you can set it up properly and optimize it for best performance/personal taste isn't something you do in an hour or two. However, once you get the basics down, it is quite do-able. Installing and trying the various plugins is a lot of fun. And if you hate text and keyboard driven interfaces, there are some really neat GUI's available--I really like "Mithril".
Just thought I'd share some holiday weekend ramblings/impressions. I can't think of a piece of public domain software in recent times that performs as well as Foobar and associated plugins. Absolutely superior to WMP (sound quality), even though it isn't the Swiss Army knife of media players WMP is. Maybe that's why it's so good. It makes you wonder how long until, or if, MS will ever catch up or adopt the same technology.
--coma
It wasn't exactly a piece of cake, but music files with Foobar sound vastly superior to Windows Media Player 9 and 10 and, in my opinion, WinAmp. By comparison, WMP sounds noticeably "muddy" and sloppy. I confess I never got the ASIO plugin working in WinAmp--maybe it would sound just as good.
FB sounded about the same configured for Kernel Streaming and ASIO, but I can't get it to play in KS mode since DL'ing and installing ASIO4ALL (which was necessary to get FB with ASIO to find my Chaintech AV710, i.e. the "ENVY24" device wasn't showing up in the list of devices prior to ASIO4ALL). Perhaps a reinstall of FB and, potentially, my Chaintech AV710 drivers?
Regarding music file formats: about 18 months ago I ripped my collection of CDs to 192K WMA files, long before I was aware of FLAC, APE, etc. I'm not about to put myself through that abuse again anytime soon--it took me something like 60 or 80 hours (I get the impression it would take a lot longer using EAC). I do remember I didn't get much sleep that week
Before I forget, I was having trouble with other applications/windows which have associated system sounds taking focus from Foobar with the result that FB playback was muted and the FB window had to be manually selected before playback became audible again. My solution was to deactivate system sounds in the Control Panel and set FB to be "Always On Top" (don't know if the latter is necessary).
Having said all this, becoming familiar with Foobar so you can set it up properly and optimize it for best performance/personal taste isn't something you do in an hour or two. However, once you get the basics down, it is quite do-able. Installing and trying the various plugins is a lot of fun. And if you hate text and keyboard driven interfaces, there are some really neat GUI's available--I really like "Mithril".
Just thought I'd share some holiday weekend ramblings/impressions. I can't think of a piece of public domain software in recent times that performs as well as Foobar and associated plugins. Absolutely superior to WMP (sound quality), even though it isn't the Swiss Army knife of media players WMP is. Maybe that's why it's so good. It makes you wonder how long until, or if, MS will ever catch up or adopt the same technology.
--coma