Why Foobar 2000?

[jjhatfield]

So I'm an iTune's devotee, but I thought I owed it to myself to check out Foobar, since everyone around here thinks so highly of it. Also, I received my Echo Indigo DJ in the mail last night. After some initial problems with trying to stick the Indigo in the wrong slot (story of my life) I sucessfully downloaded the new drivers and got the sucker installed. First off, I love the Indigo, the sound is great (this is just unamped going straight to sr60's, though) but my favorite part is the analog volume control, just for the coolness factor.

I downloaded Foobar, which was quick, then downloaded the ASIO component and the ALAC decoder, dropped them in the components folder. Went to preferences and set the channels for the indigo, and viola, I was off and running. Now, in side by side comparisons with Foobar ASIO and iTunes, I can honestly tell zero difference. BUT, as I said above this is coming from inexpensive non-amped headset. When I get in my k701 and Headfive I'll do more extended comparisons to see if I can tell a difference.

What I'm trying to say is that it was pretty easy, and I might end up finding I enjoy Foobar more, because I love to fiddle with things, and I do like the fact that it starts up really fast and is clean and simple. But, I'm not a convert yet.

I do have a question:

I hear some people rip with a program besides Foobar. Why in the world would you do that? I mean, ripping is ripping, right? If I'm going to choose Foobar for its simplicity, I'd like it to be an all-in-one solution, albeit with lots of *.dll files.

Unless maybe another program rips faster, then I could see the benefit in that.

Currently I'm reripping all my CD's to ALAC, but if I get into Foobar I'll probably go open and rerip FLAC.

Thanks for your input!

 

[Elephas]

Try using ASIO4ALL.

I thought it made foobar ASIO sound better than iTunes on my previous ThinkPad T42 and Echo Indigo DJ.

 

[sonance]

Foobar is a very powerful app, but one that wasn't designed with ease of use in configuration. Here are the things I like about it:

- It is now running with either 44.1khz / 16 bit "bit perfect" output or sometimes I run it with high quality 24/96 up-sampling. There really is a big difference from the usual kmixer 48khz / 16bit butcher job done in default configurations of Winamp, iTunes or Media Player. Some sound cards have high quality 44.1->48khz resamplers and depending on your setup you may not hear much difference, if you have an X-Fi for example.

- Can be configured to be beautiful and fully configurable in its display options, downloads all the album art automatically. Beautiful is subjective, but here's an example:
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8669/fooniner7ku.jpg
Here's the new show off your foobar config thread: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=43077

- Corrects my id3 tags, renames and organizes my files.

- Has a searchable database, and a playlist generater ("Recent Rock Songs in High Quality", "Highly rated jazz / blues songs") that will automatically create an up to date playlist for foobar use or export to other portable devices that support standard playlists.

- I can control it via my phone / pda not just for playback control but also playlist manipulation.

- High quality plugins for resampling, ASIO, Kernel Streaming, Equalizing and all file formats for I/O. Other apps can do this, but the foobar plugins really do a good job.

- It can drive a small external display for a Hi-Fi component look when driven with a remote.

Winamp can do a lot of the above as can other apps I'm sure, but foobar has it all. The Hydrogenaudio community is awesome in supporting every use for foobar, I can usually find all the answers by searching there. The biggest downside is the very steep learning curve for setting it up right. Once working, it is simple to use and sounds great, or I wouldn't continue to use it.

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjhatfield I hear some people rip with a program besides Foobar. Why in the world would you do that? I mean, ripping is ripping, right? If I'm going to choose Foobar for its simplicity, I'd like it to be an all-in-one solution, albeit with lots of *.dll files. Unless maybe another program rips faster, then I could see the benefit in that.

Lol, not quite.

For one ripping is where 99% of errors will occur and there are hundreds of different optical drives which operate slightly differently.

The ripper of choice is EAC(Exact Audio Copy). For one thing it creates a 'Rip log' and you can make a Cue file.


Here is the rip log from a CD I ripped earlier:
Quote:

Originally Posted by Rip Log EAC extraction logfile from 28. September 2006, 16:59 for CD Epica / Consign To Oblivion Used drive : TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-W162L Adapter: 0 ID: 0 Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache Read offset correction : 6 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No Used output format : C:\Documents and Settings\Chri5\My Documents\flac.exe (User Defined Encoder) 320 kBit/s Additional command line options : -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -5 %s Other options : Fill up missing offset samples with silence : No Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Installed external ASPI interface Track 1 Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chri5\Desktop\2005 - Consign To Oblivion\01 - Hunab K'u ('A New Age Dawns' - Prologue).wav Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00 Peak level 96.6 % Track quality 100.0 % Test CRC D9047825 Copy CRC D9047825 Copy OK

That drive offset of '6' is for my drive, I don't know if other rippers have drive offsets?
I have a .dll installed for that drive too.

If you notice at the bottom, its made sure the 'CRCs' match. Thats called 'test & copy'.

 

[pheonix991]

Riboge!!! you better be folding for team 11314!!!!!

 

[jjhatfield]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chri5peed Lol, not quite. For one ripping is where 99% of errors will occur and there are hundreds of different optical drives which operate slightly differently. The ripper of choice is EAC(Exact Audio Copy). For one thing it creates a 'Rip log' and you can make a Cue file. Here is the rip log from a CD I ripped earlier: That drive offset of '6' is for my drive, I don't know if other rippers have drive offsets? I have a .dll installed for that drive too. If you notice at the bottom, its made sure the 'CRCs' match. Thats called 'test & copy'.

So I didn't really understand your post at first, then I started doing some research. I downloaded EAC and AccurateRip last night and started playing with it, and reading about it on the hydrogenaudio forums. I'm going to start reripping my collection in FLAC using EAC. Following some instructions over at hydrogen, I've selected all the options I think are best for FLAC ripping.

At first I was ripping in secure mode, but my rip speed would drop into the 1.0 or lower, which for my purposes is unacceptable. SO, I gave burst mode T&C a shot last night, and it was, obviously, much quicker.

My question for you, Chri5, is that I understand that ripping in burst mode is okay so long as the CRC's match after the rip?

EDIT: I just read somewhere else that Andre (author of EAC) himself uses t&c burst.

Anywho, having those log files will be great, and they say you will definitely know if the rip was bad by listening to it later (definite audible beeps and clicks and what have you).

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjhatfield My question for you, Chri5, is that I understand that ripping in burst mode is okay so long as the CRC's match after the rip?

Glad you didn't think I was being funny, but as you now know, you can go from one type of ripping to another...



Using Burst Mode coupled with AccurateRip is okay. If a song or two is ripped in error(according to AR) you can rerip just them in Secure Mode. Secure Mode is one of the main features of EAC, why other rippers seem faster because they rip at a Burst speed - BM is about 5 times faster for me than SM.

Why is time against you? As they say 'You only have to Rip correctly once', its my opinion that those extra minutes it takes to rip in SM & TnC only happen once, but you then have a perfect rip for infinite listens.


edit - My computer rips a5 5-6 in Secure Mode, not really noticed how long the 'Test' phase takes?

 

[Garbz]

Bustmode is no better than any other program. If secure mode is dropping that slow you either have a scrached disc, worn laser, (either of which cases I would not use burst mode), or your drive has been setup incorrectly.

I have a cheap Pioneer DVDRW which in secure mode rips at 4-7x. The differences is in the level of error corrrection and re-reads that are performed. You'll notice there's no error correction section in the extraction window during burst mode, and that you do not get a quality indicator at the end.

The thing about CD's error correction is that only one layer of it recovers the original bits of data. The next step of error correction is to approximate the damaged sample, and this is where the "quality" indicator drops during secure mode.

 

[s0matic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 003 You can do it in WinAmp to with the ASIO plugin. I perfer it to foobar because it is a lot easier to use.

Was fooling around w/ foobar today, but decided to go this route because I was too lazy to re-do my EQ setting

Took a good hour of A/B'ing Directsound vs. the ASIO winamp plugin, but I finally noticed a difference on my setup. Very subtle, but better sound nonetheless. I do need to adjust my head around it a bit, though I'm sure the new "sound" will grow on me in a few days.

 

[jjhatfield]

Garbz and Chri5, thanks for your input. I started a topic about this over in the Computers As Source Forum, and am currently working on getting my drive setup correctly. I'm running in secure mode and averaging 4-6x since I turned off caching (EAC detected my drive as a non cache drive, I don't know why I had it on), which to me is an acceptable speed. I am getting an error on the last track which complained of "too many samples", but I'll figure that out. Thanks!

 

[Chri5peed]

Disabling Cache is advised actually.

My Rip log I posted has all the recommended parameters. Burst mode is more suited to brand new shiny CDs out of the wrapping.