Getting a Friend to Swith to foobar from Winamp Options

[dannymichel]

im trying to get a friend to switch but im no expert. i was wondering if u guys could list out the things foobar can do that winamp cant

[tpijag]

You use Foobar2000. You made the decision to use it without, at first, being an expert at it. Is that not the nature of new decisions? Your perspective to your friend is important.

Your friend probably has good reasons for his choice. If it is important to you to show him how he is wrong, then why not take the time to delineate these reasons yourself?

In my opinion, the last thing foobar needs is another fanboy.

terry

[dhromed]

^ what tpijag said.

Don't be an evangelist; I'm not sure your friend will appreciate the nagging, if he/she's comfortable with Winamp. People generally aren't open to trying out new things for the heck of it, if they don't feel their current thing is lacking in some way. Let's be honest: all players play music, and if it's enough, it's enough.

I wanted away from Winamp because I stopped appreciating the general feel of its interaction, because my music list became too much to manage comfortably in a single playlist, and last, because the spectrogram visualiser became useless. People around me had been using FB for quite some time, but until that faithful day, Winamp fulfilled my needs perfectly.


= A few highlights, though, just the ones that stand out in my usage =
I must warn that I haven't kept up with Winamp's developments ever since I tried and rejected 5.5+

- better overall playlist functionality and interaction, such as selecting, sorting, editing etc.
- multiple playlists, in tabs. I have a main list, a Fresh list, and beyind that, any quick temp thing I like, such as single album for intense listening without having to worry about the track after the album's final track.
- superior tagging convenience (srsly)
- performance is better
- lots of layout customisability
- more better info display
- If you're into it: the spectrograph is better than Winamp's. Since 5.5, WA's spectrograph is strangely crippled. Spectrograms and -graphs amuse me greatly, and this was a selling point for me to switch to FB, or at least try it out.


= Reasons why one might not choose FB. =
I don't find these very important, but I can understand how another might feel:

- not quite as pretty-looking and not skinnable.
- it's centered around playlists, rather than the popular Holy Trinity [artist][album][track]-columns & a single Now Playing 'playlist'. Neither is bad, but it is a fundamental browsing/viewing difference and may be off-putting to people used to the other.
- lack of visualisers. Choosing FB basically means adopting a viewpoint of not finding visualisers important. There are some wrapper components for winamp's vis plugins, but I found them a waste of time, frankly.

[flakpt]

foobar gives you absolute control over everything related to your music:

- highly customizable layout
- support for the file formats that matter ootb
- advanced sorting options, playlist creation, album art and artist art
- tagging
- lots of components for extra useful functions, we're seeing stuff to post on twitter, connect to last.fm, everything is possible

I was a Winamp user myself for many years, one day made the switch to WMP, but there was 1 problem: i like to keep my huge mp3 collection clean, with only the tags i want, with replaygain values, no trash inside album folders (just folder.jpg and artist.jpg), etc.. and i like my mp3 to have all information inside their tags, without resorting to an external DB like WMP does..

All my tries to use foobar with ColumnsUI and PanelsUI back in the day were very frustrating, but when i finally tried DefaultUI + facets, there was no coming back

Another thing, i became slightly addicted to changing my layout on a regular basis, and what you can do with foobar in terms of customization, you cant do with anything else, not winamp, not wmp, not mediamonkey, songbird, etc.. and believe me, i've tried them all

This is just my general opinion, most users here have way more knowledge of foobar than me

[Canar]

lack of visualisers. Choosing FB basically means adopting a viewpoint of not finding visualisers important. There are some wrapper components for winamp's vis plugins, but I found them a waste of time, frankly.

foo_vis_shpeck. It rocks. It works wonderfully. Embedding Milkdrop in the Default UI is nothing but pure win.

[shakey_snake]

Let your friend use what ever software he wants. Jeez.

[Spirit_of_the_oc...]

Have a look at this page :

http://winamp2foobar.blogspot.com/

[C.R.Helmrich]

foobar gives you absolute control over everything related to your music:

- highly customizable layout
- support for the file formats that matter ootb
- advanced sorting options, playlist creation, album art and artist art
- tagging
- lots of components for extra useful functions, we're seeing stuff to post on twitter, connect to last.fm, everything is possible

For some users, none of these features are important. "The file formats that matter" is a highly subjective description. For me, they comprise MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA, FLAC. Both Winamp and foobar support all of these out of the box. By tagging you mean editing ID3 tags, for example, right? Winamp can do this too.

In case you want to know: I switched to foobar because it consumes less than 1% CPU when playing my audio files, and uses less than 3 MB of memory when minimized while playing. But that's the only reason why I switched.

Cheers,

Chris

[Bleedinguout]

I needed to switch my player because i tried the main few...MediaM,Winamp,itunes and every one had a few things i did not like so i posted a topic in a forum, stated my problems, and someone shot me here and so far i love it. I like feeling like i have some control over what everything looks like,and acts and i get that 100% with foobar. why on gods green earth you would try to convince someone to change without anything to backup your argument is beyond me, but for me the few problems ive had

media monkey....too glitchy, and a lil complicated to navigate through a large collection (im sure thats just a personal issue lol)
Itunes waaaaay to resource heavy, and no customization, NO FLAC SUPPORT
winamp....waaaaay to resource heavy, and the browser drove me nuts
theres more like everyone else said but those were my few major issues

[C.R.Helmrich]

winamp....waaaaay to resource heavy, and the browser drove me nuts

That's also how I remember it. Just installed the latest Lite version of Winamp to check. It actually also uses only 1% CPU and little more than 4 MB of memory on my PC. So I guess it's the things in the full version which are so resource-hungry.

[dhromed]

Self-quote!

[there is no] popular Holy Trinity [artist][album][track]-columns & a single Now Playing 'playlist'.

I take back my words, because until now I didn't know Facets provides exactly this.

[Slotos]

I personally switched because winamp was unable to resume playback from last position after restart. Well, it could for some bucks. Later I grew used to other features but that little annoyance was the reason to switch.

My friend switched after I showed him foo_looks. Now he appreciates tagging features and lossless support but at the moment of switching he cared only for eye-candy.

Do not search for something big. Small things matter the most. Showing all the "awesomeness" may render your friend "scared" of how difficult foobar2000 is to master, even though it isn't.

[onkl]

im trying to get a friend to switch but im no expert. i was wondering if u guys could list out the things foobar can do that winamp cant

So you don't know a reason yourself, but still want him to switch?


There's realy nothing expertlike foobar can do that winamp can't. If you don't need the playlist-scan-whole-music-folder stuff and like to use a separate program for mass-tagging, then winamp is in no way inferior.

[LANjackal]

Please for God's sake don't be an evangelist user. You'll end up pissing off/annoying far more people than you actually help. Just use what works for you and encourage others to do the same.

[Canar]

There's realy nothing expertlike foobar can do that winamp can't.

I am the author of a component that proves this statement false. Go away, troll.

[onkl]

Are you refering to foo_vorbisstream? That's a very specific 3rd party plugin and there are probably dozens of winamp plugins that don't have a foobar equivalentt too. This isn't a reason to convince somebody to switch unless he needs that special feature from a plugin not available for his current player.

[Canar]

Noise shaping. 32-bit DSP pipeline. Facets. Resampling and crossfading DSPs. Bug-free ID3v2 support. Ability to install and work portably. Extensive screen reader support.

I say again: go away troll.

[q-stankovic]

What shouldn't be forgotten is that foobar not only offers bugfree id3-tagging but is one of two players which can write any tag - that info is available everywhere: in columns, query search, library view, sort string, file ops, ... That is really unique!

[chrizoo]

What shouldn't be forgotten is that foobar not only offers bugfree id3-tagging but is one of two players which can write any tag - that info is available everywhere: in columns, query search, library view, sort string, file ops, ... That is really unique!

one of two players ... what is the second one ?

[q-stankovic]

Jriver Media Center resp. Jriver Media Jukebox. The latter one (wich is reduced to audio functionality) is freeware.

Please note that Media Jukebox's ability to write any tag doesn't mean that they are written in same manner like foobar2000. You won't be able to achieve full compatibility.

This post has been edited by q-stankovic: May 9 2010, 11:09

[chrizoo]

Thank you q-stankovic.

What bugs does winamp have concerning id3-tagging? The link you posted ( http://id3.org/Compliance_Issues ) states that all bugs mentioned there have already been fixed in subsequent winamp versions. However, the link mentions two id3-tagging bugs for foobar.

[shakey_snake]

chrizoo: perhaps you need to improve your reading comprehension:

but is one of two players which can write any tag

Winamp's tagging might be bug free, but it cannot read/write user defined tags in the TXXX and WXXX frames.


Further more the two "compliance issues" listed for fb2k there are bogus.
1) No where in any id3 spec does it define a "Album artist" tag, and fb2k was the first program to implement such a tag. And reading the spec, it doesn't even make sense to use the TPE2 (aka %band% in fb2k) as "album artist". Why Apple decided that was a reasonable interpretation of the spec, I have no idea.

2) "Compatibility mode" tags are just that, the FAQ, which documents the use of "compatibility mode," even describes them as "non-standard".

This post has been edited by shakey_snake: May 9 2010, 23:10

[chrizoo]

chrizoo: perhaps you need to improve your reading comprehension:

why would you say that?

[Edu Camargo]

I use foobar religiously... It is probable that your friend won't be convinced to switch from Winamp to Foobar when the purpose is just to play MP3 tracks, preview songs from Explorer or whatever might come into his/her mind. But I'll give my situation:

I've switched to Foobar. Why?

It has a powerful media library, that I manipulate the way I want;
Lots of configurable features, yet a very light program;
Customizable keyboard shortcuts;
A briliant sound output;
A wonderful mass-tag editor (the only thing it does not support is embedding album art, but I have a big brother for it, that is MP3tag);
It is a CD burner;
It is a CD ripper;
The layout can have the characteristics you want;
And many more things that I might be missing at the time...
And last, but not least, it is a roll model regarding accessibility with screen readers, allowing blind persons like me to execute the most common tasks, without head-aches with cluttered information on the screen.

I use Foobar for both pleasuring and casual purposes, and I sleep happy every night. My cousin saw me using it and converted himself automatically. I've mastered Foobar in a way that he don't even have to switch players for audio files. And I didn't need to give him any ideas to convince him to use it. Just for the fact that it is light and it truly plays music without any strain, won his heart. And now, we're both foobarized... But remember, it was all automatic.

And believe me, I have a laptop with Ubuntu installed, and not even Linux gave me options as perfect as Foobar... Ok, I found Aqualung very useful, but I didn't like the music manager.
Some people would recommend Amarok, but Amarok to be installed requires KDE libraries and they're not accessible with the Orca screen reader. I've heard about 'Play' for Mac but I can't say nothing about it, since I haven't touched yet. So for now, I can say with all of my heart, that Foobar is my player of choice, ever.

Thanks Peter for this amazing software. The ears will always be thankful.

[Meeko]

foobar and winamp are very good pieces of software for listening/managing music. I wouldn't set out on a crusade trying to get a friend to switch, just because. Customizing is about the only big difference I see between the two...if you want to customize and tinker, foobar is for you. If not, then either play music just fine.