Ok so I switched over to Foobar2000 and...

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Pretiacruento

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
490
...so far, so good. I'm not an audiophile per se but I do like quality sound, which is why Foobar2000 is so praised among audiophiles.

Recently I was coming back and forth from Quintessential Player to jetAudio, and I decided to give Foobar2000 a try... Right now I'm running Foobar2000 with the fooAvA 1.05 skin... it sure looks pretty nice but that's not the only thing I'm looking for in a media player.

I'm having a bit of trouble setting up Foobar2000... so many options and so many plugins... I don't know where to start :S

Do you guys have any recommendations/tips for me? Maybe a good set of plugins that'll improve the audio quality, or a more user-friendly skin?

Thanks a lot!! :)
 
The player itself isn't going to make a damn bit of difference in sound quality...btw.

To many options and to much complication is why I went with MediaMonkey and never looked back. Everything you want in foobar2000 but easy to use.
 
I never left Winamp....I'm very simplistic in my audio needs.....I'm not the type of user who will make play lists or anything, I right click and play according to what my mood is.

Seen foobar mentioned a lot....one thing I like about Winamp is the milkdrop visual plugin...I like playing that while having an album play. Anything just as sexy looking in foobar?
 
criccio said:
The player itself isn't going to make a damn bit of difference in sound quality...btw.
Click to expand...

I hear ya, that's what I always thought. QCD or jetAudio or any other media player can do the job just fine... I just wanted to actually try it out a little to see if what they say about it is true.

I don't have super-ears or anything but so far, sound-wise, WMP plays MP3s with the same sound quality, as far as I'm concerned...
 
There's really nothing that's going to improve sound quality. If you want something to play with, try foo_tube or play with the built-in EQ. The sound quality, however, can't go up.
 
I didn't mention it; I'm using onboard audio (Realtek HD) and I have my rig connected to 2 of these (they look pretty similar)... So I'm usually blastin' whatever I feel like listening to
headbang.gif


Ok so, so far my "Foobar2000 audiophile placebo" theory is correct... Ok I'll try that phide, I'll see how that goes... thanks!!
 
criccio said:
The player itself isn't going to make a damn bit of difference in sound quality...btw.

To many options and to much complication is why I went with MediaMonkey and never looked back. Everything you want in foobar2000 but easy to use.
Click to expand...

MediaMonkey FTMFW.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I never left Winamp....I'm very simplistic in my audio needs.....I'm not the type of user who will make play lists or anything, I right click and play according to what my mood is.

Seen foobar mentioned a lot....one thing I like about Winamp is the milkdrop visual plugin...I like playing that while having an album play. Anything just as sexy looking in foobar?
Click to expand...

same here.
i´ve been using Winamp since a looooooong time ago
 
MM is indeed teh win... Not only is it very customizable (and very easy to customize), but the team behind it puts a ton of work into it, constantly. Recently Amazon changed the way sites/programs can query it's database for info & album art and MM had a fix for that within a day or two (since it uses Amazon to look up album art). It took them a few months to get a plug-in working for my iPod touch when Apple re-did the encryption w/OS 3.0 but when they finally put one out it worked w/o a hitch too.

I can't imagine using anything else at this point, it just works and takes a lot of work off my hands as far as organizing my music, w/o minimal fuss. I've got it set to organize my online purchases one way but ignore my CD rips (which are saved/organized just fine by EAC when I rip them), yet it monitors both directories and keeps the library updated and the smart playlists fresh w/new music. Whenever I sync my iPod I've instantly got a playlist w/music I've added within the last month, gotta love it.

I use it to convert my FLAC rips to MP3 as well and it couldn't be any easier, 'specially now w/multi-threaded support. It imports album art and all other tag info off the FLAC files seamlessly and I have the option of having it add the MP3 files to the library as well or not... Which I actually do, but I keep my collection straight with the use of MM's Filters (very simple, but very effective tool for organization).

Honestly, it makes stuff like iTunes/WMP look downright arcane in the way they force you to do things one way or not do them at all.
 
criccio said:
The player itself isn't going to make a damn bit of difference in sound quality...btw.
Click to expand...

I just compared foobar and Songbird. There was difference no doubt. I heard more distortion and skipping with Songbird and the seekbar wasn't as fluid to adjust. I was using Songbird with stock settings compared to a customized foobar with plug-ins. The advanced limiter and dithering help.

To the OP, here are plug-ins: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components_0.9
 
Pretiacruento said:
Do you guys have any recommendations/tips for me? Maybe a good set of plugins that'll improve the audio quality, or a more user-friendly skin?

Thanks a lot!!
Click to expand...
IMO eye-candy sort of misses the main point of foobar2000 - it really comes into its own managing very large music collections in a variety of formats, and it's designed to that end. In particular, other people's prebuilt "skins" tend to make it much more difficult and fiddly to use, and to customise according to your *own* preferences.

If I were you, I'd stick to the DefaultUI at first, until you're familiar with the main features - in particular, the way the database works and how information is presented in the playlists. Once you're happy with this, you can (if you feel so inclined) use ColumnsUI which is much more customisable appearance-wise - again though, it's my feeling that other people's designs are best avoided and you'll be happier configuring the interface to your own liking right from the off.

All of this presupposes you find it worthwhile, and the program itself isn't overkill for your purposes - I love foobar2000 and couldn't imagine using anything else, but I'd be the first to admit it takes a bit of effort to get the best out of it, and many people for perfectly understandable reasons won't think it's worth the time investment.

YeOldeStonecat said:
Seen foobar mentioned a lot....one thing I like about Winamp is the milkdrop visual plugin...I like playing that while having an album play. Anything just as sexy looking in foobar?
Click to expand...
If you install the foo_shpeck plugin, you can have Milkdrop with foobar2000. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQpVnjN4WoU
 
am i the only one that likes the simplicity and just LIKES the standard foobar stock skin? I've never changed it. Everything i've tried i don't like.
 
illuminate said:
am i the only one that likes the simplicity and just LIKES the standard foobar stock skin? I've never changed it. Everything i've tried i don't like.
Click to expand...

You're not alone on that. I rocked the standard skin, just changed the color to match the theme.

I did move to MediaMonkey though so I could sync it with my iPhone. Short from a sync issue where it wasn't removing songs from my phone, it works great!!
 
Version_3 said:
You're not alone on that. I rocked the standard skin, just changed the color to match the theme.

I did move to MediaMonkey though so I could sync it with my iPhone. Short from a sync issue where it wasn't removing songs from my phone, it works great!!
Click to expand...

Ya, i changed the colors too to match my system colors.

I tried media monkey, i just found foobar the fastest to navigate and the easiest. I don't need anything that foobar doesnt have. Foobar 2000 for me :D

At time i even run it in Wine, in Linux. But that's only when rythmbox is being gay
 
I took the plunge and installed MediaMonkey for a few days, pretty easy to set up to my liking... I found the UI a lot easier to handle than the stock Foobar UI (just a few clicks here and there and that's it! yay!!). I loved the way it handled my music library, pretty straightforward and also how it sync'd with my PMP, which Foobar lacks. Sound-wise, I couldn't find (or maybe my Google-fu is weak) any custom eq presets for MM, since I really like the custom Metal eq presets for Foobar I found when I first installed it, which is a big con. Other than that, I used it for a few days and I couldn't really tell a difference in sound between the two when playing music with eq off and stock settings in both Foobar and MM.

So far, I think Foobar is all right but nothing to write home about... I don't like the fact that in order to have Foobar running with decent/good sound output you need to install and tweak a few audio DSPs (somebody correct me if I'm wrong here), the same thing goes for the UI (columnsUI comes to mind) and extra functionality... maybe I'm used to "decaf" media players like QCD and Winamp and the transition is a little rough on me lol



Thanks a lot for your replies, guys!! I really appreciate it!!
 
I'm not sure where you are getting your idea that you need to tweak EQ's to get good sound ouput. If you have good quality encoded music and a good DAC and speakers, you shouldn't have to touch any EQ.
 
criccio said:
I'm not sure where you are getting your idea that you need to tweak EQ's to get good sound ouput. If you have good quality encoded music and a good DAC and speakers, you shouldn't have to touch any EQ.
Click to expand...
I agree. I believe using any form of EQ is a way of making up for inadequacies in audio equipment. On the other hand, if you are happy with the way it sounds that's all that matters.
 
criccio said:
I'm not sure where you are getting your idea that you need to tweak EQ's to get good sound ouput. If you have good quality encoded music and a good DAC and speakers, you shouldn't have to touch any EQ.
Click to expand...

I meant audio DSPs like the ASIO support for instance, that's not included in Foobar... I know EQ settings alone won't improve the sound quality overall, but still :p
 
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