Hi, I'm getting ready to try foobar as a replacement for mediamonkey (which works well on my XP desktop but not on my vista laptop) and I have been reading the forums and the faq. I have a laptop with 2G ram, an external drive with about a 300G music library on it, and about another 75G internal on the lappie.

I'd like to integrate my music library the rest of the way into the ext HD from both my laptop and desktop, as a portable complete library... but with how much music I have now (growing all the time too) it has started to lag and the organization leaves a little to be desired.

Still has been better than winamp, itunes (ugh) and wmp. I was told foobar's even more efficient with a big library, though.

I have tried searching the site as well as google for some kind of beginner's guide to setting up foobar, but most of what I have found doesn't really make much sense. I don't want to end up messing with it without having any direction... I want to find a guide that tells me how to get everything set up correctly from the start, so that I can then play with it from there, if you know what I mean.

I want to be able to play, organize, and mass-tag easily...I don't need cover art or anything, just a simple list genre/artist/album/song/track #... simple as I can get it to be to begin with.

If anyone has any advice for a beginner, I'm all ears. I've used picard for my mass tagging up til now, mediamonkey for organizing, and super for mass conversion.

If anyone can post a simple step-by-step for this, or a link to one if it already exists, I would greatly appreciate it. I've heard some really good things about foobar and I'm looking forward to trying it out. I'm just intimidated by the sheer amount of steps it seems it will take to get it running. TIA guys everyone here seems very helpful.

Don't know of such a guide.

To get it running is just a few steps. Default install (with all extra features checked during install) makes foobar very usable. Install it, choose a theme (one with album list gives you an easy panel in the interface to manage your music), and add your musicfolders to the library. Let it scan all music and you are set to go.

Just play around and feel free to ask any question you have here on the forum. foobar's preferences have a HELP-button at the bottom, that will brings you to a relevant wiki-page.

There are a few plugins that are a must-have imho. (just download and save the .dll in the foobar components folder, then restart foobar)
foo_facets: Facets is a flexible media library viewer for foobar2000, based on linked lists.
foo_dbsearch: Interactive search for the media library and playlist.
foo_playcount: Collects playback statistics for your Media Library content.

When you are not satisfied about the installed theme/user interface, you can easily change it. Just click View > Layout > Create scratchbox and play around with your rightmousebutton. Apply when satisfied.

When you have questions about anything, feel free to post them here. There are more then enough people hangin around here quite often and like to answer any question someone has.

hey thanks for the reply!


I've just installed it...default install. I can't even figure out how to scan my library, but I'm sure I'll get he hang of it once I start reading the wiki a bit more.

And if anyone is a foobar expert and writes something for us new kids, let me know!

thanks again

Go to File/Preferences/Media Library and add your folders where your music files are. Save and close the Preferences window.
Then, Library/Rescan Media Library.

This is a useful site:
http://eolindel.free.fr/foobar0.9/

edit: i think it's a bit outdated, but it explains basic concepts. visit the foobar wiki, too.

Hi there ressa!

I am currently developing a website which, funnily enough, is partly a foobar2000 guide aimed at the beginner to intermediate. I have currently written the first half and a bit, and have aimed to be as beginner-friendly as possible. Have a look, and would you be able to let me know whether it helps you and where I could be clearer?

www.joncairns.com

Hope you find it helpful.

The guide is great! Thank you!

I just saw it, it's clear but "skin"-oriented (mainly about columns UI). It's an important feature but quite restricted compared to the range of possibilities given by foobar2000. Personally, I would say that Replaygain and Masstagging are two essential parts of this software (especially tagging). And as skinning requires good tags to have something nice, it's quite melted.

Thanks for the advice, I'm adding more each day so I'll put information about replaygain and masstagging. The thing is, my music was already neatly organised before writing it! It's good to hear what people would like though.