[nickchen]

I've noticed many of you use that strange foobar as MPx Player. So I checked this out and was kinda disappointed - visually, I felt drawn back to WIN 3.1 days, handling was ...not REALLY complicated, but somewhat cumbersome, loading time allright, sound allright as well.

So what's the hidden secret of foobar that I've overlooked, which makes it your favourite tool ?

I use the old Winamp 2.90 (http://www.oldversion.com and like it, because it's quick, non-Microsoft, supports skins and sounds right.

 

[RotAtoR]

If you're used to winamp and don't have any issues with it, do you really have any reason to switch? I say stay with what you find most useful. I happen to prefer foobar because of its extensibility, it can do and look like almost anything with the right plugins. You can have as many or as few features as you want, it's completely customizable. I find that once you have it set up how you want, it is much faster and more intuitive than winamp to navigate and use.

 

[nickchen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RotAtoR If you're used to winamp and don't have any issues with it, do you really have any reason to switch?

Thanxx for answering !

I did not intend to switch, I just was curious (I always am in respect of audio software).
Awright, I did not test any foobar plugins, looks like that was why the standard optic was so primitive. Guess I am not a plugin freak anyway in order to keep things simple & quick. Winamp plugins I use are only my conservative "Nemish" skin + MP4 plugin.

 

[ToS_Maverick]

why change to foobar?

- clean interface (i hate the sexy overloaded interface of winamp)
- plays ALL files and can encode it to any format, with commandline interface
- better playback quality (wave, DS, kernel streaming, asio)
- REPLAY GAIN
- clipping protection
...

Edit:
and if you don't like the standard interface, check out this.

 

[kyrie]

Essentially, I like foobar because it's infinitely tweakable, and faster/lighter/more efficient than winamp. Foobar is to Winamp what C++ is to Visual Basic.
Also, I don't listen to music with my eyes, so I don't care much how it looks. But it can be made to look good as well, using formatting strings and the foo_looks plugin.

 

[necropimp]

and it can look like winamp with foo_ui_gfx

 

[GokieKS]

The main reason I switched was because of the Unicode support, but I understand it's not a major issue to most people. I also like the included masstagging and conversion tools.

I actually like the asthetics of Winamp, but not enough to make me choose it over fb2k's features. I do use foo_looks, with the Foopilot_one look, but it's kinda quirky (main annoyance being the slow rate of scrolling while using the mousewheel), so I find myself using the normal interface more often than not.

~KS

 

[cosmopragma]

I'm using both players on a regular basis.
Bypassing Kmixer seems to be a mess with winamp, but I'm in the comfortable position of using an excellent RME soundcard as a transport for my DACs, the driver bypasses Kmixer anyway.
Both provide unique features.I really like the adjustable headplug crossfeed plugin for winamp and the Shibatch EQ.And my GF loves the lightshow.I personally could live without.
OTOH gapless playback is a must for classical recordings, many concept albums and live recordings.Foobar's Gapkiller plugin does actually work as expected, and I like the capabilities of the discwriter function for preprocessing files for different purposes, sometimes even using a (somewhat buggy beta) DSP bridge in order to use winamp plugins within foobar.

 

[geardoc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickchen I've noticed many of you use that strange foobar ...

The many good features are hidden in Foobar, and with such a simple, clean interface, you don't see what you don't need.

 

[Tim D]

No doubt the Winamp GUI is pretty classic but after using foobar its pretty much 'meh' to me. In fact I was quite dissapointed in the XMMS linux player because it copied Winamp looks.

One huge difference is just that foobar displays much more info per space. While Winamp takes a lot of space just to display your 'current' song, foobar has a gui that IMO makes much more sense for a large music collection or jukebox style presentation. YMMV.

 

[Svperstar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickchen I've noticed many of you use that strange foobar as MPx Player. So I checked this out and was kinda disappointed - visually, I felt drawn back to WIN 3.1 days, handling was ...not REALLY complicated, but somewhat cumbersome, loading time allright, sound allright as well. So what's the hidden secret of foobar that I've overlooked, which makes it your favourite tool ? I use the old Winamp 2.90 (http://www.oldversion.com and like it, because it's quick, non-Microsoft, supports skins and sounds right.

LOL this horse couldn't be any more dead if you stuffed it with a nuke and pressed the big red button.

I feel your pain when it comes to the GUI, the first time going to Foobar feels like someone decided to play some sick joke and design the single most obtuse application in the world. It does get better with time.

I tested foobar with Kernel Streaming and listened to music for a while, then switched back to Winamp 5.08 with an ASIO plugin, no difference in sound, if anything I think Winamp had something I liked more but that could easily be Placebo.

Even in the FAQ on the Foobar website the author says it doesn't sound any better than Winamp. So then some people on other forums say that the author just doesn't understand his own software........thats quite a questionable claim.

I recommend you get the latest Winamp, you can set it to look exactly like winamp 2.90. Then get the ASIO plugin from this page:
http://www3.cypress.ne.jp/otachan/

There is also the 123 decoder you may perfer over the standard decoder.

IIRC there have been improvments to the internal calculations from 2.90 to the 5.XX series that result in higher quality output but once again, this may be the realm of placebo.

I tried really hard to hear this difference in Foobar, and I have come to the conclusion that those who heard the biggest difference may have been using older versions of Winamp with lower quality decoders, I believe the versions pre 2.9 were especially bad in one review I read, or they didn't try ASIO.

Either way, just listen to them both and whatever you think sounds best use it reguardless of what others say.

 

[dano1122]

don't listen to these people who say it's awesome cause it's infinitely tweakable. it's a pain in the ass to infinetely tweak it and will consume a good deal of time. besides this point, the main and easiest to benefit from advantages of foobar are kernal streaming and a higher quality resampler (both of which produce a better sound), winamp probably has plug-ins like these, i'm not sure, so it may not be that big of a deal. but they do come bundled in with foobar special full edition. foobar also has plug-in support built in for burning, converting, etc. it also has an, imo, really nifty album list program and tabbed playlist feature built in which make organizing your files easy. the MAIN ATTRACTION to foobar is because of columns ui, which is a highly customizeable user interface for foobar, you can do almost anything with this feature such as create a program with 4 panels, one with playback history, one with album art, one with track info, one with tabbed playlists, one with your album list. so there you have it. foobar, it's worth it for me, but the general public will frown upon it because it doesn't come "ready to kick winamp's ass out of the box". there are many pre-configured foobar's and pre-configured columns ui scripts available, you can ask about those or search for them on hydrogen audio foobar forum.

 

[JWFokker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Svperstar There is also the 123 decoder you may perfer over the standard decoder. .

The MAD decoder plugin for Winamp is better in my opinion. While the 123 decoder is better than stock, the MAD decoder does an even better job and gets even closer to true 24 and 32 bit decoding. The difference between stock and a third party decoder is subtle, but perceptible if you listen closely. Obviously, better speakers or phones will be more revealing of the improvement. It's got auto attenuation too, so there's no clipping here either. If you still use Winamp (I do), you can get the MAD plugin here:

http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/

 

[Svperstar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JWFokker The MAD decoder plugin for Winamp is better in my opinion. While the 123 decoder is better than stock, the MAD decoder does an even better job and gets even closer to true 24 and 32 bit decoding. The difference between stock and a third party decoder is subtle, but perceptible if you listen closely. Obviously, better speakers or phones will be more revealing of the improvement. It's got auto attenuation too, so there's no clipping here either. If you still use Winamp (I do), you can get the MAD plugin here: http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/

I was going to post the MAD plugin also, but was too lazy to seach google for 2 seconds, thanks for linking it

I like the MAD plugin and its autoclipping but the problem is it doesn't support streaming, and I listen to net radio to find new music quite a bit. It gets to be a chore swapping from decoder to decoder.

 

[nickchen]

Looks like this thread turns out to be very useful for me, thanx for the tons of answers !

Allright, I will take some time to take a closer look at foobar and all attached improvements - I give in that my first critical attempt was only 5 mins, then exitus! The Command line interface indeed seems to be interesting, i.e. to convert the new MP4s down to MP3 for car audio purposes without "detour" of wavefile (something my beloved Soundforge tool can't handle at all).

Sound quality improvements are no real criteria to me, the sound of Winamp 2.90 with my high end Terratec is excellent (even my wife, who was a semi-professional violin player in big orchestra, isn't able to hear differences between CD-audio and its 192kbit MP3 counterparts). In my opinion, sound quality depends 90% from hardware and only 10% from player software. Using the cheap onboard-sound and then tinkering with codecs & plugins was something I gave up years ago.

Dear Winamp-buddies, I don't think that I'll ever switch to higher versions of Winamp than 2.xx. I tried out some of the newer and found the loading time inacceptable, 3 seconds of HD-crackling after doubleclick on a well configured 512 RAM 2660 P4 is ridiculus, same with my old SCSI 1800 P4 System. Generally, I don't care how much time programs need to load, with the only exception of the player THAT NEEDS TO BE THERE INSTANTLY.