So I’ve been through a week of study, paperwork and music. So over the past week, I’ve been trying out Foobar2000, to see what else Foobar brings to the table other than low resource usage.
Layouts & Customization
Setting up Foobar isn’t exactly difficult, but when it comes to customization, it can get a little tricky. Setting up the layout is a piece of cake with the “Scratchbox’ menu, where you can design and create your own layouts of any feature you have installed, and of the seemingly limitless amounts of plugins you can download.
I enjoyed setting up the layout, because I set it up the way I want it, and the way I would look at a media player. Library to the left, Playlist in the middle, Info to the right. Out of all the music players I’ve dealt with, this has the most customizable layout I’ve ever seen. And I like that.
Preferences
Now this is where it gets difficult. Preferences. Foobar2000 wastes no time and doesn’t stop to sugarcoat any of the options, which I actually find great, but some people find intimidating. You can do anything from changing the way songs are displayed, changing file associations, Adding/Removing or Changing DSP’s, to changing the buffer and bit-rate of transferring music over your network or on to the internet. (It can even run through proxy servers!)
The Sound Difference
People claim the audio playback is “Better” than other media players like Winamp or Windows Media Player. This is not exactly the case:
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 the other mainstream players are capable of doing the same by now.
I don’t personally believe that Foobar, or any media player produces “better” or “worse” sound, and can’t tell the difference between two songs played on different music players. I can however hear differences between 128kbps, 192kbps and 320kbps audio, but then can’t tell the difference between 320kbps and lossless audio.
I like Foobar2000. For the ability to customize any option you feel like, the huge number of plugins available to use; that can do anything from send your music track to MSN/Google Talk to change sound cards that audio is being outputted to with a keyboard shortcut. For the simple interface, For the low resource usage.
Foobar2000 is now replacing my music players on my windows based computers.
David.
-Blaynos.
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