[pbirkett]

I'd never really thought much about the comparison between the two players until Lan alerted me to the ASIO plugin for Winamp 5. However, after trying that, it definitely surprised me the conclusion I was coming to.

At first, I tried the ASIO plugin with the upsampling turned on to 88.2KHz. And indeed, it did seem to sound better than Foobar with SSRC 96KHz Kernel Streaming. What changes did I feel it brought about? Well, I think Winamp's bass seems a bit punchier and more present, and the sound is warmer without losing any detail (and perhaps even to my ears, having more detail).

Wondering whether it was the upsampling mode in TOP that was giving me the improvements, I decided to leave the ASIO mode in 44KHz. The upsampling seems to change the sound VERY slightly (pretty much like in Foobar), however, I still preferred the sound to Foobar even without the upsampling.

Now, personally speaking I never really found Winamp that inferior to Foobar, but I always used Foobar safe in the knowledge that I had made the right choice, and just used Winamp when using streaming radio stations or playing a game.

However, I now feel Foobar sounds a little weak in comparison to Winamp which has a slightly nicer sound to these ears. Both players are good, have some good features, but Winamp has definitely become my preferred player again.

Now, I am pretty sure that I am probably in a rather huge minority here, since most audiophiles seem to simply accept that Foobar is better, but I now have to say that with the ASIO plugin, I definitely do not agree.

I would be interested to hear anyone elses opinion or impression though.

 

[Jasper994]

I'm actually doing a similar comparison but I have yet to come to a conclusion of which I like better.

 

[fewtch]

Are you dealing with lossy files? If not, they should sound identical if all other factors are equal (same sampling rate, bit depth, etc). With lossless stuff, all these programs do is send the data on to the soundcard (unless you specify further processing) so there's no reason why they should sound different.

Edit -- noticed you said you were upsampling... this could change things a bit with different upsampling algorithms. More a question of plugins than the programs themselves tho.

 

[Stephonovich]

I've compared Foobar to QCD, and found Foobar to be superior. This was using lossy files (MP3 mostly, and a few Ogg), and QCD had the MAD plugin installed for MP3 playback. Foobar just seems tighter overall. Oh, the only upsampling taking place was to 48KHz to avoid the suckiness of the SB Live! from overpowering it. (AV-710 coming... AV-710 coming... repeat ad infinitum...)

Never used WinAmp 5, mainly because > 2.95 is bastardized, and not WinAmp. Tried 3 briefly, and hated it. It's trying to match WMP, and I hate that. It should have just stuck with being a good, small, unobtrusive audio player.

EDIT: Discovered 5 is an update to 2, whereas 3 is a complete re-write. May have to look into this. But I doubt it. I like Foobar's simplicity. You can't beat a 96ms load time

(-:Stephonovich

 

[lan]

have you ever tried winamp ASIO resampling on LOW or HIGH? Do you hear the details are kind of mushy in comparision to TOP? i believe the extra cpu power used in TOP goes toward better quality resampling.

 

[amol]

i keep on switching foobar and winamp , with foobar's resampling done to 192khz and slow mode, winamp's resampling set to 96khz and winamp runs Shibatch's MPG plugin to 64 bit floating

, and i have yet to find a difference, all i can say is that winamp sounds a little sharper than foobar, while foobar sounds smoother, the level of details being exactly the same on both of them. This is with mp3s.

For lossless like .APE or .wav, i find foobar superior to winamp.
I think the change we find is mostly related to the placebo effect.

 

[pbirkett]

Hi Fewtch. I am dealing with lossy files but I still perceive a difference (mostly Musepack files TBH).

Lan, I've not tried the lower levels yet. I notice the top one causes quite a hit to the overall system performance (my cursor become a tiny bit stuttery and the visualisations (i know i know) are jerky). This is with an Athlon 2600+ CPU.

Amol, sure the differences are not big but the overall nod goes to winamp for me.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

I like the more advanced tagging and converting options of foobar, though I kinda miss making winamp skins from time to time. Even the foobar creator says the sound quality of the two should be equal, so I don't worry about that. I also like how much easier it is to use my uber-long play-list in foobar. I never tried winamp 3 or 5 BTW, only good ol' 2.8+.

 

[some1x]

64-bit floating is useless because there are no 64bit sound cards. Most good sound cards only support 24bit.

 

[lan]

With various input and output plugins, it's possible that the quality is different. The only for sure situation where foobar and winamp are the same is lossless file playback with NO processing/dsp whatsoever. Different mp3 decoders have different qualities. The different resampling settings have different qualities.

amol, It doesn't make sense to decode to 64bit floating point unless you have some other processing later. If it's going straight to the output, then 24bit integer is the ideal setting.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch Are you dealing with lossy files? If not, they should sound identical if all other factors are equal (same sampling rate, bit depth, etc). With lossless stuff, all these programs do is send the data on to the soundcard (unless you specify further processing) so there's no reason why they should sound different. Edit -- noticed you said you were upsampling... this could change things a bit with different upsampling algorithms. More a question of plugins than the programs themselves tho.

I'm using Foobar2000 v0.8 ASIO out at 44.1kHz/24bit and Winamp 5.02 w/MAD plug-in to up the bitdepth to 24 and ASIO out set to 44.1kHz.

Currently using Josh Groban's - Alejate which I ripped with EAC and compressed with Monkey's Audio.

There are slight differences in the sound. Winamp seems to be more upfront with less space surrounding the instruments. I can't say one sounds better than the other but they do sound a bit different.

That said, I much prefer the Foobar interface.

 

[Distroyed]

Upsampling changes the sound, but it doesnt always sound better. I dont know why everyone makes this assumption.

The big plus with foobar is the extensive plugins. Crossfading is simply an awesome feature for those of us with headphones who lack an amp capable of such a task. Foobar loads cuesheets properly too... something winamp can rarely do due to the way it reads the files (it does it half-ass so it's easier to skip within a track). It's also loads a ton faster than winamp5. Winamp is really just a decent player for beginners. Foobar is the next step up.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

I've never gotten what the big fuss over crossfading is all about. Is it so bad to have a tiny gap between the songs, I mean isn't this how they are on original CD's? Or does that bother the heck out of people as well?

 

[the terabyte]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron_Dreamer I've never gotten what the big fuss over crossfading is all about. Is it so bad to have a tiny gap between the songs, I mean isn't this how they are on original CD's? Or does that bother the heck out of people as well?

i know i find it irritating on a lot of the albums i listen to because the tracks are mixed to flow into each other already and with a gapless player it sounds perfect; crossfade just messes it all up.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Hmm, I've not had that problem before, say on a CD where the songs would flow together perfectly on CD, they do so in foobar normally, without crossfade, at least to my ears.