I love quite a few things in foobar, I suppose a few would be:
- Customizable.
- Almost everything can be put on global hotkey.
- Colums_UI allows me to make it look how I want to be, simple and pretty .
- It now supports MilkDrop.
- Tabs can be used for playlists and all those panels.
- Format support.
- Gapless playback

That's about all I can think of at this moment in time . But all-in-all it's a great program and I'd recommend it to anyone who is compitant at using a computer. The ONLY thing that ever has put he off is the lack of a kind of media library, but even that is managable. It can search well, it can generate playlists based on artist or genre, or even both. Playlist Tree aids also in this, along with that wonderful Database Explorer.

I love it for many reasons, all given by others.

I HATE it because (the fact that) I cannot run it on my Linux box. (avoiding WINE)

yes, but foobar does not have a shade mode like winamp and also does not have an equaliser. i say all these because i have tried foobar only 3 times and i am not aware of the plugins etc...

and as for memory usage, it shows 27.020 at the task manager. so? it is even higher than winamp 5.08.

I'm using Foobar2000 for "flexible Tagging".

I have designed a system of Freestyle Tags for my personal joyride with
Foobar2000 like %similarto%, %subgenre% and a lot of Special Tags for indexing
CD-Boxes, Bootlegs and Live-Albums and many more attributes of an Album or
a bunch of single-tracks.

Foobar2000 displaying these "non standard"-Tags in ColumnsUI and offers
me much more possibilities using the Database in Combination with Albumlist,
DBexplorer and creating Special-Reports out of the Database quickly in
DBexplorer. Thanks for Quicktag which helps me to personally tag my stuff
and home-recordings.

In a few days i will coming up with a Tutorial on german AudioHQ-Site. Actually
only a simple description of the word and idea of Flexible Tags exists there.

IMHO Flexible Tagging, Personalized Tagging or better "Freestyle Tagging" offers
the most Possibilies to indexing an archive. iTunes and most of the other
database-oriented Software with their limited "standard report engines" didn't
meet my requirements because they use only the limited "out of the Box"-Tags.
So i decided to go with Version 0.7x of Foobar2000.

Only Foobar20000 offers this sort of indexing, it's a sort of "unique selling point".
Formerly i was a satisfied Winamp 2.x user before replacing Winamp with
Foobar2000 in 2003.

you sound a bit misinformed about fb. and is memory even an issue these days? besides, you can control exactly which plugins get loaded, so minimize memory usage

Man, foobar rocks, fun to mess with
and best of all (i'm a resources freak) its LITE !
Thanks

replaygain, masstagging (guess by filename) and the CLI transcoder did it for me.

I have to rerespond. I now use nothing but foobar2000. With the winamp api emulator, I can now minimize fb2k when I need to and use Sysmetrix to control it (all I need while minimized is the basic abilities, especially pause). It now looks and acts the way I want it, and I've learned so much from both fb2k and the forums that I'm now ready to tackle the restructuring of my music files and the vast power of fb2k's database. So if nothing else, fb2k has made me a more conscious music collector. That alone, in my opinion, is well worth all the initial hassle of learning TAGZ (which is easy to learn, btw, if you have any programming/logic experience), searching for plugins, and dealing with crashes.

Edit: Oh, fb2k does have an equalizer, heavymetalwiseone. Do a little more searching in the DSP.

You must be using the wrong plugins.

I now use foobar because I suspected winamp to make my system crash.. And with the use of this reader, I have found more and more interesting functions with a huge and very sympathetic community, which is very active and adds marvelous components to the basic installation.

I've already converted some friends to the "god" foobar, and I think that without the sound itself (which hadn't a real improvement when I changed) the abilities given by foobar make it really a must-have software.With all the things that I'm learning about this software, I'm jumping from good surprises to other good surprises.


Edit: The masstagger is really powerful, I organized more than 9000 files in less than a day, the freeDB is ... incredible (I was to lazy to tag my files when I encoded my files and it has allowed me to tag properly them afterward).
Channel mixes manages perfectly my subwoofer, making a richer sound, more dynamic.

But, even the 3rd party plugins site is quite hard of use, not always simple to find a great plug-in. The Tagz documentation is not as important as it could have been.. On the other hand, the foobar community is always helping people with formatting problems (it's really nice to have such support).

First post!

I downloaded Foobar2k about a year ago and decided to get rid of it after a while, but then yesterday for some reason I decided to download Foobar2k again. Now Winamp is gone. The main thing for me now is the small memory footprint, as my computer is aging...

I just wish I knew how to customise it better, but the columns UI config I downloaded yesterday suits me fine for now. One day I might have to make a custom one in photoshop and ask someone here to make it for me......

PS The icons in foobar2000 are the best around!

It takes as little while to learn, but it's satisfying having your own config, even if (as in my case) it's simple or if you've just modded someone else's to meet your own needs.



I agree.

My perfect player has atleast 3 functions in the main GUI: play,pauze and volume control. foobar misses 1/3 of the functionality .

I go for winamp

well, with volume control, you can solve the missing part :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....opic=28665&st=0

I don't understand peoples obsession with volume control. As I sit here typing I am in reach of six different location (three software/ three hardware) where I can adjust the volume control. I only really need one. I'm assuming everyone knows how to add the sound icon to the taskbar, or how to operate the volume control on their speaker/amp, or am I missing something?

...and ReplayGain eliminates most needs of a "volume control".

Sometimes I want to put foobar to play anything in "background" so I want sometimes just put foobar to lower volume.

Why I use foobar2000? It has just about everything, it dooesn't eat CPU cycles nor memory.

I like foobar because it could be highly customized.

But in China, another player, called ttplayer, which doesn't have English version, also be used widely. That player also use little memory, lower CPU useage. But more important, it supports display lyrics, and search missing lyric through internet automatically.

You can try this player if you can read chinese.
download it here:
http://ttplayer.91.com/index.htm

I'm not takeing advertising. Just to show foobar has a driving competitor in China.

foobar is great because:

* Small memory footprint
* Formatting strings
* Gapless playback
* Tabbed playlists
* Doesn't try to shove ads down my throat
* More stable than 10 or so others Ive tried
* excellent support here on the forums

Thanks to all who have worked on it over the years.

Exactly, since i became used to replaygain, i only use volume-control for changing the *general* volume (i.e. do i generally want the music to play at high or low volume?). But 95% of the usual reasons for adjusting volume (loudness difference between tracks) is gone.

I think most people who are new to fb2k and miss the volume knob, are not aware of the above - they expect that they have to constantly adjust the volume, just like with other players - but with replaygain, there is no need to.

Besides of that, i find it much more easy to:
- long for the volume knob which is mounted right in front me
- adjust it

instead of:
- grab the mouse
- hover the mouse to the bottom of the screen to display the taskbar
- click the fb2k-symbol to open the fb2k-window
- adjust the mixer volume pixel-by-pixel and "by proxy" (by using the mouse instead my fingers directly)
- click in the window which i was using before changing the volume, so that it comes back into focus

Without a volume-knob in reach, i would still prefer a keyboard-shortcut, because it is just faster and more direct than digging out the windows-mixer.

its free, plays most everything after install, no reboot, NO SPYWARE, has a bad ass comminity built around it, dev acualty help when you whanta make somthing or i fuck it up, it can be custimized billions of ways, it uses sooooo little resources, dont come with anything i didnt need.

sooo foo crew ull get to goto heaven for sure for creating this app and if i did have to pay some for it i would

tata
Triggz Out

I like and use foobar2000 because it is remarkably powerful, yet never feels bloated. Quite the opposite, in fact -- it feels very fast and responsive. Much kudos to the programmers. Other players feel like walking up hill through treacle on a cold day and the thought of using Winamp or WMP makes me shudder.

Some software is special. foobar2000 is up there with the likes of Raxco PerfectDisk, or nLite, CrapCleaner, Exact Audio Copy, LAME (v3.90.3), Sygate, etc. VITAL software!

There are far too many features to know where to begin appreciating them. But this is no cluttered player. I don't even know how they do it.

It's not perfect though. After uninstallation it can leave a lot of crap in your registry. What would be good is if we had some kind of registry cleanup option to remove dead entries. It's no big thing, especially since uninstalling isn't something I do often, only when updating to a new version. I like a cleanup in between.

hmm.. to come up with an alternative to that.. isn't there a preamp function (in the .9 beta) that allows you to amp RGed/Non-RGed files?
i'm not sure if you can link that to a global hotkey, but i'm sure the devs could fix that if it isn't the case

regardless.. i use it for non-standard tags, the awesome copy/paste tag info (i've recently started keeping lossless music, and am thus copying the old lossy filetags to the new files ), and the tagging functions in general

I specially like the way the new beta works. Some options that were a little obvious (like "don't ReplayGain files that already have info") have been defaulted to make things easier. I also love the new converter and ripper. Peter has really trimmed the program for this release! It works so much better now, and it was already perfect!

I started using foobar2000 after stumbling upon this site (I'm a long-time reader!). I thought it was quite good and I'm not usually put off by software which needs a bit of configuration. EAC also comes under that...!

I now like to manage whatever CDs I copy to my computer in WavPack format with embedded cuesheets so foobar2000 is basically my only choice. At least it gets me away from WMP, right?

I like the new beta quite a bit compared to 0.8.3, even for my limited uses. All I can say is keep up the good work! I'd like to see where foobar is when it reaches 1.0 and if it gains popularity in the 'mainstream'.

Because it has a lot of professional features like resampler, dithering, noise shaping, and good sound quality. And kernel streaming fixes my WDM mixer problem.

beside all what has been said before:
- it gives me the best overview of my music files (~5000)
- once configured, it's MY player
- i don't need visual gimmicks for listening music
- it has a fantastic community and support

Agreed! I like the simplicity of the UI as well as what I mentioned previously.

I've been using foobar since 0.31 and fell love with it instantly. Ever since, I've forced my little brother and my friends to use it!

Like said so many times before:

* Small memory footprint
* Database (great for people like me, who have a big amount of music files ~10000)
* Formatting strings
* Gapless playback
* Masstagging (one of the best things, imho)
* Replaygain support/scanning
* .cue support out of the box (I just love playing music from images with .cue)
* One can configure it to meet ones needs (formatting strings, columns, etc.)
* Community!

Nice to finally register, after being a foobar user for such a long time!

Since my earlier posts I've decided upon probably my main reason:

Fantastic integration with EAC, WavPack and (when I need it) LAME.

Matroska !!! Foobar is the only reliable player for this format.

--> Small and easily upgradable (.dll's)
--> I can Use it at school (!!!! fantastic news!)
--> Customizable (it looks as good as you make it, and it's functional either way)
--> audioscrobbler/ogg/wma/mp3 support.
--> all under one roof (IE: no windows like winamp, no annoying tabs like WMP)
--> I just remembered the main reason, WMP tends to fault and hesitate with a large media library, foobar does not, it's bloody fast.

Like:

- Low memory usage
- Simple interface, with option to enchance if you wish
- Wide range of formats supported by default
- Gets the best sound quality of out low end MP3's
- Tabbed playlists - gotta be one of my favourites
- Speed! Winamp: 10 seconds + stupid load up sound. Foobar: 1/2 Second, thankfully no cat meowing

Dislike:

- Losing tabbed playlists on upgrading throughout the beta versions

Thats it, it really is an awesome player, Foobar and VLC together makes for one hell of a multimedia workstation!

Jack.

+
- dynamic compression and a lot of DSPs
- Low memory usage
- Customizable layout
- You can set a shortcut for every action (and global ones too)
- Many plugins
- Supports a lot of formats
- Masstagger
- ...

-
- "Play audio CD" doesn't work with my notebook drive (closes down with an error)

I was using Winamp for many years but forunately i stopped using it now! It's not the revolutionary player it used to be in 2.x Versions anymore. Since AOL bought Nullsoft, many things changed in Winamp to... worse! They actually lost the point and kept adding crap!

Anyway, when I first installed Foobar in my system I saw it's minimalistic view and I said: "What's this? Is this the player that beats Winamp?" Well... I don't know why but it somehow attracted me and I started playing with it! Soon, I realised that it is the best player in the world!!! And no...I don't miss Winamp, Foobar offers me what Winamp did and a bit more and the best of all... it does it MY way!

Now I can really tag in id3v2.....

Only been using foobar for a couple of weeks, but I'm loving it.

Reasons for using Foobar are;

* Proper gapless playback.

* Proper CUE file support

* The simplicity yet powerful feature set

* I rip all my CD's as an image and CUE and i love the convert feature to extract single files.

What i would like to see in Foobar2000;

* A video playing plug-in

* Better CD burning

first i chose it, because of how few memory it uses. now i bloated it with plugins, which i don't want to miss any more. so at first i was after low memory usage, but know i enjoy all those great features it offers.

if you're only after low memory usage you could go with 1by1, which uses even less.

i can't live without those great features! most important for me:

* plays all formats that ever came to me (except real audio)
* masstagger, massrenamer, freedb masstagger
* great playlist managment (tabbed...)
* very custumizable
* scheduler
* diskwriter, converter
* enqueue (foo_temple)
* dithering
* replaygain

been using fb2k for more then 2 years, i like the it, couse its down to what you need, no 50mb gui, great tag/string support, dsp, the gapless and crossfader are both super..!!, custemize your copycommand ) you can get almost any data available in your display, you dont depend on tags or whatever, foldername, path, filename, all the conversions are there. And i can add almost anything written in comments above.

IT ROX...

- from joy, natch.

Just converted from WinAmp.

Fb2k can actually play to all my speakers. Fb2k gives the cleanest sound I've ever heard. It has a small footprint, etc, etc, etc.

I'm in love.

That's why.

I like foobar, cause it has highly customizable interface
I dont like only the difficult for configuration inrerface - I hate to write config strings who I dont understand. I think the foobar2k developers can make interface easyer for customizing, without so many manually edited config files and strings, more GUI based options.

I switched over from winamp years ago because I prefered foobar's minimal interface and ease of use.
Since then I've grown to love it's robust variety options and limitless customization.

Because it's fast, straight to the point (minimal gimmicks), newbie friendly and yet fully customizable, many features, and the first unicode-enabled audio player for Windows I can found...

sound quality, low usage of memory, highly customizable

because i like wasting my time customizing something that isn't really mine

firstly it was .cue support. i was a winamp hog for years and i kept going back to winamp after using foobar, but i've been 100% foobar for almost a year now! it just grew on me. so simple and fast!

low usage of memory
gapless playback
burning from any format
you can make it look however you want
smooth
has plugins that no other audio player has

best answer yet!

Mostly because it looks the best. I have no special needs when it comes to music playback, so it comes down to visual appeal.

i like foobar because it isn't bloated like other popular players such as iTunes, WMP, Winamp, and others. it also has a nice interface along with a lot of plugins. i don't use a lot of em but nevertheless, it's a nice player.