[apples]

Is there a real obvious difference between foobar and winamp in terms of music quality? I've been toying with both and i seriously cant see the difference between the 2 are, I have some crappy hd 497s by the way. Just wondering if im missing anything here

 

[Distroyed]

The creators of foobar themselves say straight out that foobar, by itself, as a simple audio player, is no better than any other when it comes to straight playback. The power of foobar lies in its dsp's, customizability, other plugins, minimal resource usage, no bloatware, etc etc. The average listener won't have any need (or idea) how to take advantage of these things that set foobar apart, but the more audio-inclined do.

 

[Zoide]

Yeah. AFAIK, if you're not using any DSP (eg. sound-altering "plugins"), Foobar will sound just like Winamp (though I suppose you'd have to be using the same MP3/ogg/whatever decoder for both, which I think is usually the case).

 

[reeseboisse]

And even then, Zoide, if the decoder is different, the difference would be negligible.

Just looking at the basics, Foobar sounds no different from Winamp. And why would it? It's decoding the same digital information, and outputting it the same way. It's just that Foobar has a vastly superior interface, more and better plugins, native support for more formats, etc..

Also, the mods should really move this to the Computer as Source forums.

 

[plainsong]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Foobar needs some decent skins. I only found one at Customize.org and it was butt-ugly! The program itself isn't so great looking so it needs to rely on skins. Desktop customization is the way to go. There's nothing wrong with interface beautification.

 

[MikoLayer]

have you tried columnsUI?

 

[sporky]

Despite how people here constantly praise foobar for its "quality DSPs", I still can't find anything that can match winamp's Enhancer v0.17 plugin. Its so good that I'm willing to sacrifice 24bit output in order to use it! The only advantage that foobar has in my opinion is superior kernel streaming support. As an Audiophile USB user, this means a lot to me. If I could only get ASIO to work at 88.2KHz, I'd be all set.

 

[papa_snap]

yeah, I definately recommend columns_ui too. About 50x more complex to set up than winamp skins (which are about as simple as it gets) but the combination of foobars powerful audio features + columns UI (I'm using the Plisk formatting - it rawks) mean foobar is the clear winner now (before I did miss having a nice interface).

Info here:
Permonic's thread on columns UI

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sporky Despite how people here constantly praise foobar for its "quality DSPs", I still can't find anything that can match winamp's Enhancer v0.17 plugin. Its so good that I'm willing to sacrifice 24bit output in order to use it! The only advantage that foobar has in my opinion is superior kernel streaming support. As an Audiophile USB user, this means a lot to me. If I could only get ASIO to work at 88.2KHz, I'd be all set.

I think most people here refrain from using DSP's like enhancer and effect DSPS because they alter the original sound, most people want the cleanest most neutral sound, not something that distorts it.