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Foobar = Wow!

M

MrSmegzabush

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 21, 2004
Messages
434
My roomate has a hobbie of organizing our massive mp3 collection, and he has used foobar for awhile. I DL'd it once and go this bland mp3 player, that I did not like. After months of him using it and setting up components in it to system that worked well, I decided to try again and use his settings and all I can say is that this foobar is unbeliveable. The functionality of it, its management of playlists, audio quality, ID3 and file renaming abilites, and its miniscure amount of system resources it requires to do all this has me in awe. I wish there were some other "pre configured" setups i could have downloaded in the past for this, and maybe there are. Say some that are more tuned to a HTPC setup, or one for a laptop. I frankly dont have the time nor patience to take the time out to script my mp3 player, but I know others do and hopefuly they share. I just wanted to ask and see if there are some foobar setups out there already, and I also wanted to write this as a testament to how utterly bad ass this mp3 player is.
 
Foobar is awesome. It does take a little tinkering and time, but yeah its customizability and functionality are definitely worth it. I'm not sure what you mean by preconfigured setups though... There isn't really anything to change going from foobar on laptop/desktop/wherever.
If you're talking about the appearance, then yeah there's tons of foobar formatting strings available online. The newer ColumnsUI also makes it a bit simpler to work with.
 
ur kidding right..no way in hell is wmp in the same region as foobar in relation to sound quality...anyone with a GOOD set of speakers can tell the differece..those using any midrange speakers (z-640 or equal) wont be able to tell the difference
 
They probably use the same DLLs to decode MP3s...

I thought Foobar was an ugly "look, I can use the forms generator and Visual Basic!" kind of program.
 
http://www.foobar2000.com/FAQ.html#FAQ_o7

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.
Click to expand...
 
modat said:
ur kidding right..no way in hell is wmp in the same region as foobar in relation to sound quality...anyone with a GOOD set of speakers can tell the differece..those using any midrange speakers (z-640 or equal) wont be able to tell the difference
Click to expand...

You are insinuating that I have low end speakers. You have no idea what kind of speakers I have. You are also insinuating that you have 'good' speakers.

Frangible said:
They probably use the same DLLs to decode MP3s...
Click to expand...
True.

Korgun said:
http://www.foobar2000.com/FAQ.html#FAQ_o7
Click to expand...
Thank you. Sit down, modat. Sit down.
 
Foobar with kernal streaming makes a huge difference in sound quality. I can definitely tell the difference between WMP and foobar.
 
I guess it depends on what DSP you are pipeing it through and how well it is configured to a particular song you are comparing.
 
Assuming the default of WMP running through kmixer I would imagine that Foobar with kernal streaming could sound better

I don't really know because I like Foobar better anyways, my soundcards aren't that great, and it really isn't worth the time (since if anything foobar is better or equal)
 
depends on what codecs you use. foobar has AISO (sp?) support and that sounds good, might be placebo effect however
 
anyone else love the stereo x2 feature on foobar? it's my fav feature, my main reason why i use foobar
 
DeViLdUdE said:
you guys don't like real one player??
Click to expand...
You're kidding, right? It's like being the only male at a Feminist seminar. Let's just be safe and never bring up Real products.
 
For mp3 players, its either winamp, or foobar. Now, its foobar by a long shot IMO. Altough you cant beat the ease of setup of winamp.

What i was looking for (early in thread) is a fully functional already scripted to look cool w/ all functions that somebody could download without spending days configuring.
 
foobar is a great audio tool for all purposes besides CD ripping. If somebody made a plugin that interfaced with the EAC executable, foobar would literally do everything audio related I'd ever need.
 
I use the Creative ASIO streaming audio plugin for Foobar2k. Sounds a little different. I don't know if it's better, but it seems a little louder and clearer. I like it a lot, plus I use a simple format string that looks different and nice.
 
GJSNeptune said:
You're kidding, right? It's like being the only male at a Feminist seminar. Let's just be safe and never bring up Real products.
Click to expand...

rofl.. He is right you know.
 
kernel streaming and ASIO bypass the standard audio mixing pipeline windows provides. I've read that the standard windows pipeline will ALWAYS resample audio to 16bit 44.1khz regardless of sound card capability. With ASIO and kernel streaming there is a possibility to send higher resolution data directly to the sound card and possibly produce a better signal.

you must also realize that you're relying on post processing algorithms to get possibly better sound out of a lossy source (mp3). While you might flesh out subtle nuiances this way, there is no gurantee that extra information is not introduced that wasn't in the original format (CD). Capability for direct playback of sound with floating point samples might help the decoder get the best possible quality. I have to wonder about upsampling given the original source is 44.1khz.

2ch 16bit 44.1khz -> (128/160/192/vbr)kbit mp3 -> magic decode algorithm (foobar and others) -> my choosen output format (32bit floating point 2ch high freq (48, 96, 192)khz)

I'm not bashing foobar (hell, I use it), I'm just posting some interesting thoughts.
 
is AISO a type of driver plugin and each sound card has its own? or..
can someone explain thanks
 
If you're using a Creative (or any other company's card), at least have foobar resample to 48khz to remove the need for internal resampling (which is painfully bad on Creative's cards, varies on others). I'd also opt to use kernel streaming.
 
ASIO is a protocol for defining the I/O of a soundcard, usually a professional soundcard. It standardizes the communication between software (the audio application) and the audio hardware. ASIO is incorporated into the drivers of a soundcard, and applications are written to work with this more or less universal protocol.

Okay, that's what it's REALLY intended for, but a side benefit is that it allows owners of better quality soundcards to bypass the OS-level control of soundcard mixing and volume control. Recent versions of Windows include the infamous "kmixer.exe" program which automatically resamples output audio streams to a nominal 16-bit/48 kHz. Most audio content is encoded at 16-bit/44.1 kHz, so this resampling messes up the sound somewhat. The reasons can be found by studying basic sampling theory, but I will save that for another time.

Essentially, kernel streaming and ASIO are two popular ways of bypassing the "kmixer.exe" program in Windows, allowing audio to reach the soundcard DACs unmolested. Other soundcards, like those made by RME Audio, have drivers written in a way that inherently bypasses kmixer, if I recall correctly.

Many programs offer kernel streaming or ASIO support. Foobar is one, Winamp is another. Surely, there are more programs out there with similar support.
 
i dont have kernal streaming available on my output options in foobar (only waveOut, DirectSound, and Null Output) and i dont know where i would enable ASIO. Can anyone point me in the right direciton?
 
For you winamp ppl, I'm just curious why you like it? It certainly is easier, I can understand that, but other than that, I don't see any great benefits.
 
BO(V)BZ said:
For you winamp ppl, I'm just curious why you like it? It certainly is easier, I can understand that, but other than that, I don't see any great benefits.
Click to expand...
Know yours root, man!
 
LCD/VFD support is important to me, and comparing with Foobar, the sound quality differences are nil.
 
foobar has better reproduction than winamp, winamp has good sound prod if u use output plugins which will give you floating 64 bit reprod .
 
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