[the terabyte]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

thats because foobar would be a gapless player

 

[pbirkett]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Distroyed 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.

I am sure there is a crossfeed plugin for winamp out there, although as I never used it on Foobar or my old Corda amp, then I dont really miss it here.

Quote:

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).

Never tried that. What I do know however, is that Foobar does not open playlist shortcuts. The playlists themselves, yes, but not shortcuts (.lnk) files. I for one, find this irritating at times (I have shortcut files to M3U's). Winamp has no such problems here.

Quote:

It's also loads a ton faster than winamp5.

Agreed, but another 2 seconds aint going to kill me

Quote:

Winamp is really just a decent player for beginners. Foobar is the next step up.

I dont know why you would say that. I am hardly a beginner at this. I have always preferred its interface (although i'll grant you, I have gotten used to foobar, like its interface also, and has some nifty features, which may be useful enough for me to leave it on my machine, but not really use on a regular basis). Winamp for me, has some nice features that foobar lacks, like visualizations and such like. I dont agree its just for beginners though, and I do genuinely prefer its sound.

 

[pbirkett]

Quote:

Originally Posted by the terabyte thats because foobar would be a gapless player

The ASIO plugin gives gapless playback. There is also many gapless plugins for winamp available.

 

[aerius]

With my craptacular SB Live value soundcard I have a hard time telling the difference between MP3 and uncompressed wavs, which means comparisons between foobar & winamp are pretty much meaningless to me. On my system they sound the same, so I go with the one that's easier to use, and that's Winamp. Foobar takes up too much screen space and ain't as intuitive to use.

 

[TheBigDu]

Why does nobody mention iTunes, I find its sound superior to QCD.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Distroyed 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.

For those who want as little processing of the sound as possible, the extensive plugins with foobar are no plus at all (I hate crossfeed, I don't use cue sheets, I use WinAMP v2.91 and not WinAMP 5). All I care about is using a quality plugin for decoding, and there's a large selection with WinAMP.

As far as Foobar being objectively better, even the author of Foobar disagrees with you. I'm sure what you wanted to say is that you like Foobar better... now that would be acceptable to everyone.

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch For those who want as little processing of the sound as possible, the extensive plugins with foobar are no plus at all...

Define 'little processing'. I don't like effects mucking up sound either, but I still run files through Replaygain and SSRC Resampler (48KHz, to avoid SB Live! issues... likely 96KHz once my AV-710 gets here) before they hit the output jack. Or do you mean things like crossfading and EQ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch ...I don't use cue sheets...

And may I ask why you don't use cue sheets? Do you not like them? Or just use single tracks? Or do you just play CDs? I can't come up with a sound quality reason of why they'd be worse, and since they're so easy to create with EAC, there's really no reason that I can think of not to use them. However, please enlighten me

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch As far as Foobar being objectively better, even the author of Foobar disagrees with you. I'm sure what you wanted to say is that you like Foobar better... now that would be acceptable to everyone.

Oh, come now. Surely you've learned by now that there's an invisible 'IMO, YMMV' at the end of all posts?

(-:Stephonovich

 

[pbirkett]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich And may I ask why you don't use cue sheets? Do you not like them? Or just use single tracks? Or do you just play CDs? I can't come up with a sound quality reason of why they'd be worse, and since they're so easy to create with EAC, there's really no reason that I can think of not to use them. However, please enlighten me

I use M3U's... is that not the same as a cue sheet? If it is, then I have had no problems with these in winamp...

 

[Stephonovich]

No, M3U is simply a playlist, whereas a cue sheet describes the exact position of each track on a disc, as well as subcode informatino, if desired. Remember, there are no physical tracks on a CD, it's just one long data stream. Cuesheets are what tell it where the tracks are. Here's examples from my personal collection...


M3U
Guns 'N Roses - Civil War.mp3
Metallica - Welcome Home (Sanitarium).mp3
Nirvana - All Apologies.mp3
P.O.D. - Set it Off (Tweaker Remix).mp3
Edgar Winter Group - Frankenstein.mp3
Jimi Hendrix - Foxy Lady.mp3


CUE
CATALOG 0075596274227
PERFORMER "Dream Theater"
TITLE "Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence (Disc I)"
REM REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN -8.55 dB
REM REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK 0.999969
FILE "Dream Theater - Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence (Disc I).flac" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "The Glass Prison"
PERFORMER "Dream Theater"
ISRC USEE10140472
INDEX 01 00:00:00
REM REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN -8.28 dB
REM REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK 0.999969

As you can see, a cue sheet contains much more than just track names. It has a catalog number of the CD, the artist name/album title/song titles, replaygain information, ISRC information, and the actual position of the track, located in index. Note that most of these are optional; the only thing neccesary for playback is the index. The only thing that actually changes the sound out of these is the replaygain, which just brings the volume of the disc down. (to an attempted 89dB RMS)

(-:Stephonovich

 

[pbirkett]

Aha, thanks for the explanation

 

[AsuAmo76]

It's not easy to do resampling real time. Don't forget plugins were designed a while ago to be compatible with first pentiums. That's why I would prefer no-dsp, no-volume-control , no-anything settings for foobar.

For 44/16 cd wmp9 sounds better for me and winamp is in between. But it depends on phones, ic, amps, music. Foobar is the most neutrual though.

The different story is 96/32 resampling performed in cool edit pro. It takes 5-7 min per track on my pc, highest audio settings. The output file is 4.5 times greater than the original wav. But the quality can be compared to sacd. It could be the way to get higher level out from cd. I just started to move in this direction, but 3-4 tracks benefited from this approach.

I don't know how to play such files on regular dvd players. Audio track for dummy video? At least dvd burners are cheap now.

From algorithmic point of view, it's a bit easier to upsample to 88.2. However, the analog part is expected to be tuned up to 96/24 as standard.

Just few notes.

 

[e_dawg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pbirkett I am sure there is a crossfeed plugin for winamp out there, although as I never used it on Foobar or my old Corda amp, then I dont really miss it here.

I don't know if people were talking about crossfeed or crossfading, but since this particular instance was mentioned in the context of headphone amps lacking such a feature, I take it to mean crossfeed.

Winamp does have a good crossfeeding plugin called Speakers Simulator. Download it here. I might suggest reducing the % Crossfeed setting to around 35-40%, as I prefer a mild crossfeed effect to preserve as much width of the soundstage as possible; the default 70% is too strong IMO, and causes the soundstage to be confined to the center of your head. I do like the default Delay setting, though.

Those of you who like more than one DSP plugin for Winamp will also require a DSP stacker like MuchFX2 or DSP stacker. I like MuchFX2, but unfortunately it still uses the Winamp 2 skin.

What do I stack with the crossfeed DSP, you ask? Why, Shibatch Super equalizer, of course. While its graphical EQ section is not the most intuitive EQ to use (it only does attentuation, not boost, which is the better way to use a GEQ anyways IMO), its ridiculously flexible parametric EQ is to die for. If you keep the slopes shallow, you can literally flatten your headphones' frequency response so that it is in a totally different league wrt neutrality. Silky smooth highs, tight extended bass... I have spent hours using frequency response graphs and my own ears to tune my Grados completely flat. The difference is amazing. While I can't get the same transient response and extra freedom from colouration / transparency that $400 cans give you, I get the same frequency response characteristics, which gets you half way there. Easily the best bang for buck mod you can do.

Anyone who wants my SR60 .eq file as a starting point to flatten the response of their Grados is welcome to PM me. You can get frequency response measurements for most headphones from Headphone.com's Product Measurements section.