[exander]

I've been reading a lot of posts about how great the sound is on Foobar. Is there really a noticeable difference between Winamp and Foobar?

 

[deadlierchair]

Quote:

Originally Posted by exander I've been reading a lot of posts about how great the sound is on Foobar. Is there really a noticeable difference between Winamp and Foobar?

The key to Foobar is that you have thousands of options that you can tweak to make the sound better for your individual system. The task is a little daunting at first but if you spend a few hours reading and checking things out you will not be disappointed. Also, this probably doesn't belong in this forum, it belongs in the Computers as Dedicated Sources forum. Good luck with the foobar!

 

[Drakemoor]

I honestly can't hear any difference when using Foobar and i can't hear any difference with kernal streaming.

 

[fr4c]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drakemoor I honestly can't hear any difference when using Foobar and i can't hear any difference with kernal streaming.

um what is your setup?

 

[morphie]

There is 1 rule here, nothing is better than the original recording. No matter how much you tweak your foobar settings it will never sound better than a FLAC on winamp with no plugins/equalizer. Them being both software means the reading of the file is done perfectly by both, tweaking one's setting means you transform the sound and lose in quality. You can use foobar if you want, but you will not get a higher quality sound, only a more practical player.

 

[Rotareneg]

Quote:

never sound better than a FLAC on winamp with no plugins/equalizer

If you've got a crappy soundcard that only runs at 48 KHz (like my SBLive) that's not entirely correct. Resampling output plugins for WinAMP can do a better job of resampling from 44.1 to 48 kHz than just letting the OS/drivers/hardware do it. The difference is easily measurable, but as far as being audible I havn't tried testing and won't make any claims.

 

[recephasan]

Using the digital out to a toslink-coax converter, then to my modded ART DI/O from a Chaintech,

foobar with Kernel Streaming sounds much better than Winamp. Foobar with Directsound also sounds better than winamp.

However, I cannot tell the difference using the lineout.


Winamp rocks for watching videos!

 

[merc82]

Does foobar2000 sound better than other players?
No. Most of "sound quality differences" people "hear" are placebo effect (at least with real music), as actual differences in produced sound data are below their noise floor (1 or 2 last bits in 16bit samples). Foobar2000 has sound processing features such as software resampling or 24bit output on new high-end soundcards, but most of other mainstream players are capable of doing the same by now.

source:http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ.html

I'm just starting to use foobar myself. Winamp is still my main player though I'm stuck on the last 2.x release. It's gotten too large since then.

 

[ATAT]

The sound quality increase that people seem to get in foobar is mostly placebo.. not much real audio difference. THIS however, does not mean that foobar is not a more preferrable player (to me it is).. my setup for foobar simply is amazing for what i want it to do , quick searching for my albums, ratings, all my data in a nice database to call, freedb for when i rip to flac... pretty much everything i want or need is in foobar (or 3rd party modules) .. its always nice to flip on the simple surround on my e2cs (those beatles tracks ... ). In the end foobar rocks not because the sound is "better" but because you get what you want, and nothing else, pretty much everything is removable / installable. want to remove the artist name? go ahead, you can... for me when sound quality is the same.. customizability outweighed any other considerations

w00t

 

[saturnine]

For me, using a EMU 0404 with ASIO output plugins, Foobar and Winamp sound exactly the same. With my old Audigy2ZS, Foobar sounded better with the kernel streaming plugin. It really depends on your system and tastes.

 

[Duncan]

Thread moved to the computers as sources forum

 

[Drakemoor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ATAT The sound quality increase that people seem to get in foobar is mostly placebo.. not much real audio difference. THIS however, does not mean that foobar is not a more preferrable player (to me it is).. my setup for foobar simply is amazing for what i want it to do , quick searching for my albums, ratings, all my data in a nice database to call, freedb for when i rip to flac... pretty much everything i want or need is in foobar (or 3rd party modules) .. its always nice to flip on the simple surround on my e2cs (those beatles tracks ... ). In the end foobar rocks not because the sound is "better" but because you get what you want, and nothing else, pretty much everything is removable / installable. want to remove the artist name? go ahead, you can... for me when sound quality is the same.. customizability outweighed any other considerations w00t

Thats exactly how i feel about it. I don't have that good a setup but i would have thought it would be enough to detect a change that was worthwhile noticing although i really couldn't hear the difference. A weird thing i have noticed is that when using new software, for some reason it does seem better, most probably because it's dfferent. I've been using Foobar for a while now and i used a bootable linux CD and used some generic media player for about half an hour and for some strange reason it sounded better, even though i knew in my head that it wasn't possible. I will definatly continue to use Foobar mainly because it's reassurance that you'll get a decent sound and i can't stand to use WMP now because it's so slow

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drakemoor I've been using Foobar for a while now and i used a bootable linux CD and used some generic media player for about half an hour and for some strange reason it sounded better, even though i knew in my head that it wasn't possible.

Actually, depending on how you have Foobar2000 and your soundcard setup, it may actually have sounded better due to the superior volume control algorithms that Linux/ALSA uses.

 

[stackofhay]

FWIW, I use my laptop on long trips and have found that WinAmp (with Eq enabled), uses about 1/3 the CPU cycles of Foobar2K with all DSP options disabled.

They both are fairly efficient, but the extra CPU cycles needed by Foobar can mean the difference between making a cross-country trip, or not, on a single set of laptop batteries.

Again, FWIW.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Do you have ReplayGain and dithering turned off? Those can eat up CPU cycles.