[magicalmouse]

I have seen various comnments that suggest that foobar is (relatively) poor sounding compared with other players. My understanding is that all musicplayers are equal (as long as bit perfect).

Any comments?

 

[cmrheadphones]

I have seen various comnments that suggest that foobar is (relatively) poor sounding compared with other players. My understanding is that all musicplayers are equal (as long as bit perfect).

Any comments?

I'm in a minority in never having got on with foobar. Installed and uninstalled a few times. I just can't settle with the UI (even using columns). Then again I am a folder based user rather than library. I am using the latest version of Winamp with this setup https://www.head-fi.org/threads/a-short-audiophile-guide-to-winamp-w-maiko-wasapi.588677/

In terms of sound my understanding is you are right and Musicbee does support bit perfect playback from memory.

What I'm trying to say is I suppose it depends how you organize your music etc.

 

[Roseval]

Both are great pieces of freeware.
Both are capable of using WASAPI in exclusive mode so bypassing the win audio is possible.
Pick the one you like.
In my case it is MusicBee as I prefer its interface.

I have yet to see any proper measurement or any well conducted listening test proving that media players when configured not to use any kind of DSP, do sound different.

 

[mayurs]

Winyl for me has a noticeable improvement in SQ compared to Foobar. But the plugins and customisations possible in foobar are untouchable by most free players.

 

[manueljenkin]

I have seen various comnments that suggest that foobar is (relatively) poor sounding compared with other players. My understanding is that all musicplayers are equal (as long as bit perfect).

Any comments?

They unfortunately do. Post number 62 here, I compared a few software sound changes on my system: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/my-experience-with-different-music-players.923248/page-5

Don't take my word for it. Almost all of them are free. Make sure you install proper drivers for your dac, configure them in asio/wasapi and check for yourself. Let me know if you need any help configuring them.

 

[manueljenkin]

Winyl for me has a noticeable improvement in SQ compared to Foobar. But the plugins and customisations possible in foobar are untouchable by most free players.

You should try musicbee. It's from the same audio library as winyl and hence sounds equal. Actually better since it can push the whole song to ram (winyl has a fixed short buffer). There is a big supporting community for musicbee and has lot of plugins, and quite a lot that foobar doesn't even have.

For some reason the software volume is set to 50% by default on musicbee. Make it 100%, then set up asio, and buffer full song to RAM.