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foobar2000?
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100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
The answers to all your questions are yes. It supports MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU and SND out of the box, with more from downloadable addons, like M4A (Apple lossless) and APE. UI is snappy and clean. It works perfectly with the media buttons on my BlackWidow. The only version is the full version, and yes, it is free. Hope this helps!
It may look plain, but you can customize the heck out of it (Screenshot of my ugly setup just to give you an idea). It can pretty much do anything you would ever need it to do with music.
From the FAQ:
> 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.
http://www.foobar2000.org/ Foobar is music library and player program loved by many audiophiles. It's ridiculously fast with extensions it can do pretty much anything you could think of. I was even able to get it to sync music while I was still using ios devices.
There is also a site called Keygenmusic.net which collects the music from cracks and keygens.
On the left side bar you'll find many known keygen release / crack groups and by clicking on one you get a list of available songs and in which crack it was.
Do keep in mind that you may need specific add-ons to your music player in order to play them, since the music is in *.xm, *.s3m and even *.midi format.
The setup I use is Foobar2000 with DUMB module encoder and MIDI Player. Those add-ons can be loaded from here.
Foobar2000 hands down. I've been using it for years and years. Probably the most lightweight audio playing program around with tons of customization.
Here's a screenshot of what it looks like and the CPU it takes up.
I don't trust web-based audio compression tests, especially since its so easy to ABX in your own controlled environment. With foo_abx, you can select the music you like, know the exact compression settings, number of trials to make it statistically significant, fast seeking from A to B, etc.
With that said, its a good thing for Tidal to raise awareness and make people think about the sound quality of their streaming music.
Lol. Here you go buddy:
http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ#other_questions
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.
Right, but Apple Lossless does use the m4a container and the component I was referring to supports ALAC. Squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares, I guess.
Replay Gain. Your ears will thank you.
Foobar2000 can tag, play and re-encode files with replay gain information.
If your files are MP3s then you can use mp3gain to apply it losslessly.
Stupid loudness war ruining music, but at least you can fix it somewhat using the tools above.
Or, if you're more technically inclined, foobar2000 with the ipod component. If you want eye candy, you can customize every aspect.
Coming from foobar2000, the firefox of music players, I can't support your opinion. The amount of plugins and customization is awe inspiring. I use Monkeymote to control the music playing from my computer using my phone. Groove feels unabashedly minimalist and there's so much you can't do with it.
Yep. Back in 2004, I bought $50 of music from the itunes music store. Lost the files in a computer failure/reinstall of OS. Apple wouldn't let me download the files again, even though I paid for them and authorized my computer. That was the last time I ever bought anything from itunes, and I switched to foobar2000 shortly after and got into torrenting.
Easy to set up, tons of features and very customizable. For the enthusiast that likes ease of use.
For those users who want 100% control over every option imaginable. Can be a little overwhelming in the beginning.
If you are not only keeping a music library, but also series and movies.
Once you chose a player you like, use the WASAPI output plugin and make sure that your output device has enabled "exclusive mode". This way the DAC automatically detects the appropriate bitrate and sample rate of your music and prevents any other software from interfering with the bitstream. Please note: as long as a WASAPI enabled library is active, other programs on your PC cannot make any sound; you need to close the audio software before anything else is allowed to make a sound again.
How do you like your HD700? Seems like the demo session went well :)
Mute the in-game music, alt-tab out of the game, play the music you want, go back to the game. A bit hackish, but it works.
However, if you want control over your music without switching away from the game, there's two options I can recommend.
If the game you're doing this with is on Steam, you can use Steam's media player via the overlay. If you're not using Steam but you have an Android device, you can play the music through foobar2000 and control it via foobarCon.
There's probably other ways to go about it, but these are the ones I've used before.
Like playing with plugins and customization: foobar2000
Want something looking like WinAMP: AIMP
Have a huge music library and want to control it: MusicBee
foobar2000. It is fully customizable both in terms of interface and functionality. It has built in tools for detecting duplicates and dead files. Additionally, you can get third party plug-ins to mass tag multiple songs according to preset or custom macros and do almost anything else.
Treuer Nutzer seit mehr als 10 Jahren. Ich habe auf Linux leider nichts gleichwertiges gefunden ehemals mit Amarok/Banshee gearbeitet, aber da wird es mittlerweile besseres geben.
/r/FOOBAR2000
My opinion will be confirmed by this posts upvote count.
(Install the Wasapi Plugin to remove windows volume buggery)
Also can use milkdrop with the Shpeck Plugin
If you add the Columns UI to foobar2000, it lets you pick from a couple default layouts that look pretty nice. That's what I used on Windows for a long time.
Edit: My current, needlessly "techy" setup on Linux: http://imgur.com/a/K02hC
In case anyone happened to be curious.
Wow noone's just told you to open up the music files?
Assuming you're running Windows, navigate to C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\ .minecraft\resources
There are 2 folders which contain the music, one titled 'music' and one titled 'newmusic'.
You will need a player with support for .ogg, or a plugin for Windows Media Player. I highly recommend using Foobar2000, an open source media player. You can download that here: http://www.foobar2000.org/
No need for a mod, just logical thinking! Just remember to disable music ingame, now you can listen to all the tracks you want for as long as you want.
I love foobar2000 on windows. It took a little while to set everything up since it's so customizable, but once I got it exactly the way I liked it I couldn't go back to anything else.
It's a good thing then that there is a new international standard developed to measure the true loudness of audio, EBU Tech 3341. There is even an open source library implementation of the standard libebur128.
This standard is already incorporated in the music player Foobar2000, it replaces Foobar2000's old replaygain loudness algorithm which had very similar in results. The new standard is generally considered to have better results overall different types of audio content than the old one.
There is an awesome plugin for foobar2000 that will do this automatically for you, sorting the tracks in you music library by a certain artist by lastfm popularity. It has other great features as well, but this is its main feature.
Unfortunately it only works well if the track titles are accurate. For classical music, track naming is so complicated it probably wouldn't work well.
I have always preferred the robustness of foobar for managing my files, when I was still playing local files a lot. But I also think that iTunes is a convenient way to deal with files. Foobar is a lot faster though and with the masstagger component, it really becomes a powerful file manager.
As for FLAC and OSX, I have opted for ALAC, since foobar plays ALAC while iTunes don't.
Heh, this would be my exact reaction as well. I mean, the audio player I use wouldn't make any distinction as long as the tagging was correct, but... it's just... wrong.
Download Foobar audio player, grab the USF plugin and then download the original PD music files.
Et voilà! Instant PD soundtrack!
It doesn't have to be a standalone offboard DAC, WASAPI will work on anything and ASIO is available for a number of internal soundcards (most notably Creative stuff).
It's possible this would actually improve sound quality if you had your systemwide sample rate/bit depth locked to something weird or your audio interface's drivers are doing shitty postprocessing you can't turn off but in general yeah, only special snowflakes need apply.
Or to quote the download page of the Foobar2K ASIO output component:
>Please note that this component is meant for systems where ASIO is the only available output method. It is highly recommended to use the default output modes instead of ASIO. Contrary to popular "audiophile" claims, there are NO benefits from using ASIO as far as music playback quality is concerned, while bugs in ASIO drivers may severely degrade the performance.
- Made playback over HTTP automatically retry dropped connections.
- New ReplayGain playback mode picking album/track gain depending on current playback order.
- Improved handling of malformed AIFF files.
- Prevented “Open” etc dialog lockup when last used folder is on a nonworking net share referenced by raw IP.
- FFmpeg updated to 2.6.1
foobar2000 will also sync iDevices. Assuming you don't have too much protected stuff from the iTunes Music Store, you should be able to get rid of iTunes entirely, if you want.
As far as converting files, this isn't CSI. There's no way to magically put data back into a file that wasn't there in the first place. If it sounds like crap as mp3, it'll just sound like crap as any other format.
You might have more luck using foobar2000. THere is a really active plugin development community.
It's a pretty awesome player, I made the switch from winamp to foobar a few years ago.
And it apparently already has a Last.fm plugin named audioscrobbler.
http://www.foobar2000.org/download http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_audioscrobbler
What you need is Crossfeed.
It is essentially a transcoder like you said, except it tries to mimic how speakers sound by changing the amount of crossfeed based on frequency. (not sure how i could explain this better so here is the wikipedia page)
The best Software Crossfeed IMO is the Meier Crossfeed Foobar plugin here
There are also Amps with build in Crossfeed, like the iCan Se that i own.
I like its crossfeed or "3d sound", it moves everything a bit forward and doesnt effect the soundstage of songs with good imaging as much as the Meier plugin.
But i never heard another crossfeed amp before so i have no point of comparison except the software crossfeed.
Is very light, very customizable and great once you get used to it. Has skins as well.
It does wonders on surround with the channel mixer DSP.
Was the only worthy audio player that could replace my winamp.
I personally prefer foobar2000. Now it may look unsightly out of the box, but once you have it customized to your liking, you'll never look back. Try the /r/foobar2000 subreddit, skins by br3tt (I personally use TECH). Have a look at the component/plugin repository for features such as lyric displaying and CD Audio burning. What I can't live without now, aside from the appearance is a DSP that converts stereo audio to surround, which makes a huge difference for me. Current appearance.
If he doesn't have Spotify premium sure. But Spotify premium is 320 kb/s and there is plenty of evidence that shows it's nearly impossible to tell a difference between 320 kb/s and FLAC unless you have seriously high end gear, a professionally trained ear and only the perfect type of music. It's 99% placebo effect. There is a plugin you can use to test for yourself http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx if you can't correctly tell 95% of the time then you are just guessing.
Yeah foobar is the preferred player but in conjunction with Wasapi output any player SHOULD be the same quality wise. Foobar just makes wasapi easy
I've been using the Shpeck in foobar as an XY oscilloscope for the past year or so, so maybe you have it setup incorrectly.
Step 1: Download both of the following
Step 2: Install Shpeck by dragging and dropping the zip folder onto the components menu.
Step 3: Extract the zip folder called "Winamp.zip" to anywhere you please (I prefer the foobar installation folder as it's out of the way and easy to find)
Step 4: Navigate to the Shpeck page under visualization in the foobar preferences menu and configure the Winamp directory. This will be the Winamp folder from the previous step.
Step 5: Under available plugins a selection called "Advanced Visualization Studio v2.82 / Advanced Visualization Studio" should appear. Select it and press start. A window should pop up called "AVS", right click inside it and select X-Y Oscilloscope from the drop down menu. Once you press play on your music, it should be displaying an XY Oscilloscope!
(The oscilloscope that I included is setup to match my color scheme, but it can be edited by right clicking the AVS window and running the AVS Editor)
Hopefully this was helpful, if you are still having issues with getting it to work I'll be happy to help.
After having read your post I went to try and find something that would help. This is what I found.
R128Norm - EBU R128 Compressor/Normalizer DSP.
It doesn't have any settings or gui. Just enable it via DSP Manager.
I've only had this for about a half an hour. So far it seems OK for me.
You can try adding ABX comparator to Foobar2000, see if that's what you want.
You can find a decent overview of how to set up foobar here.
You need to use blind testing software which means you don't know what you're listening to. If you're just playing different files and thinking "Oh yes, I can hear the difference", it's meaningless, the placebo effect is too strong.
What codec? What encoder?
Since you're using foobar you can use this component for proper ABX testing: http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
Flac to ALAC?
You want foobar 2000
Make sure you install iTunes and this pack for foobar as well!
http://www.foobar2000.org/encoderpack
And that should handle it all and preserve the quality :)
Foobar2000 uses very little processing power and is open source. I've been using it for at least 10 years and have never even considered using anything else. Here's a screenshot of what my set up looks like. Mine's pretty basic but you can customize it to whatever you want it to look like.
You can get it here for free.
I use foobar2000 to convert in the opposite direction (ALAC to FLAC), but I believe it is also capable of encoding ALAC so long as iTunes is installed and you have qaac (included in the encoder pack).
http://www.foobar2000.org/encoderpack
For video conversion, again I've never used it but Handbrake would probably work best for you.
Foobar can also do this, on top of being a great open-source music player. There are tons of great programs that are better than using a web-based converter.
I hope Zisteau looks into this before doing much more work.
If you don't like MediaMonkey, which has a portable version, look at FooBar2000. It is small and does what you are asking: and there are plugins too. Try the portable version first.
Portable software is software that does not have to be installed, thus keeping your system clean.
If it's properly tagged, foobar2000 can do it easily. You just have to drag all the files into a playlist, right click them, select File Operations -> Move To -> ..., then specify the file name pattern. If you only want to group by genre, it will be %genre%\%artist%\%album%\%filename%.
Step 1: download and install Clementine and foobar2000 (both of which can add/remove songs from iPods)
Step 2: decide which you enjoy better
Step 3: uninstall iTunes and never ever speak of it again.
I installed Foobar2000 and intend to use it as my primary music player instead of Winamp in the future.
I won't live with it if i don't like it, but i have high expectations since everybody else seems to love it.
Are you using this component? If not, then there's no other way, as far as I know, to play YouTube videos through Foobar. If so, then you should check the documentation to get it set up properly.
Your 24/96 content is just mastered differently than your 16/44.1 content. Downsample, do a double blind test (original vs downsampled 16/44.1). There is a foobar2000 plugin for that.
The only way to honestly answer this is with ABX testing, where you hear two randomized samples (one in each bitrate) and then a third, X, that you try to match to either A or B. If you only succeed in matching 50% of the time then you are just guessing. Try a tool like http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx so you can test yourself blind.
I tried once and could not tell the difference between 320 MP3 and FLAC. I think I had to go down to 96 MP3 before I could start to tell the difference, and even then it was only in specific sounds. A cymbal crash took on a subtle warble in the lower bitrate that I could pick out.
Try it yourself. In reality, save your hard drive space and encode in 320 MP3 and you'll have better quality than you'll ever need.
Change log:
foobar2000 change log - version 1.3.9
New high-quality but slow resampler based on dBpoweramp/SSRC code, as an alternative to fb2k's PPHS resampler. Prevented clobbering of certain exotic M4A tags. Smooth scrolling in Default User Interface list controls. Beta 2: made smooth scrolling disabled by default as it stalls visualisation updates. You can enable it in advanced preferences. Added missing menu command for the new ReplayGain playback mode. Added oversampled peak scanning in ReplayGain scanner. Beta 2: Added tweaks for ReplayGain peak results display, in advanced preferences. Fixed 96 kHz AAC & ALAC playback. Added whitelist of HTTPS domains to suppress certificate validity checks on, for home media streaming uses [beta 3]. Added readable error messages about “Add location” failures [beta 3]. Improved detection of total duration of Constant Bit Rate (CBR) MP3 files [beta 4]. More robust recovery from network errors when playing MP3 & AAC internet radio streams [beta 5]. Removed “LegacyDisable” key in file type associations handling as it's been known to cause problems with modern Windows versions [beta 5].
Get Playback Statistics. You can then add a new column using %added% which will give you what you want. But keep in mind, this will be useful to all the files you add after you've installed Playback Statistics as it won't know when the files were originally added to your library.
Here's my Columns UI (another must have component) setup: http://i.imgur.com/cn3ig56.png
No problem, you're on Windows right? I'd go with Foobar2000 if you want something that's effectively no-frills out-of-the-box. It's quite fast and responsive, and doesn't distract you if you can tolerate a plain, minimal interface*.
In any other case, I'd go with AIMP. Fairly fast piece of software, and the interface is actually quite pretty.
Both are very small, they don't come with the same kind of bloat that iTunes does (as far as I'm aware) or hog system resources.
VLC is also alright, as /u/dneronique mentioned. If you already have it installed, there's no harm in using VLC to play music on a laptop/desktop, even though it was built for video playback.
^(*It's actually very customizable and extensible, but getting to know the nuances of Foobar such that you can customize it will cost you your weekend to learn.)
scrollbars are windows theme elements
right click the toolbar and uncheck the things you don't want
in preferences>simplaylist>groups in the columns section for whatever preset you're using add/edit it. make sure you right click a column in your playlist and enable it from the groups section
i believe the spectrum is shpeck, i could be wrong but that's a common one to use
the toolbar in that picture is what it looks like on windows 8
You should check out Foobar2000, it can organise your collection by genre, album, artist etc. The software itself looks quite dated but it's light on resources and in my opinion, better in terms of audio quality than any other player I've used.
Foobar is my go to player on all my machines no matter what version of windows. Incredibly lightweight, very customizable and handles very large media libraries with easy. Out of the box, its ugly and doesn't do much beyond play music but there's a massive amount of customization that you can do with skins, plugins, etc.
MusicBee is what i've been using lately. Ton of options and features built in, lots of themes/skins you can use and it's not nearly as heavy as Winamp/Mediaplayer/iTunes(you bloated POS). Does pretty well with large libraries as well
Assuming you prefer functionality over being purty, foobar2000 is pretty amazing. Of course, if you like the way iTunes works.. that's all that matters. fb2k has awesome extendability and customizability, but honestly if you don't like tinkering you probably won't find it that great.
If I can recommend Foobar for you; It is the Reddit standard for iTunes/music playback, and once properly customized, much more appealing and user-friendly. Takes up virtually little resources too.
edit: Thanks to Reddit's downvote society, apparently I can't recommend Foobar. For all you Reddit noobs downvoting me, how about you do a little search about how much Reddit loves Foobar?
This is a solution that doesn't involve getting locked into iTunes, if you are on Windows:
You can download foobar2000 (nice minimalist music player) and get the dop plugin component that lets you manage your music library the normal way - you can sync it or just add an album (which I guess is the case here)
For iPhone 4 you need an additional file (mentioned in the wiki) which is iPhoneCalc.dll - google it and you can find a download link (if you can't, tell me and I can upload it somewhere).
After unzipping, you'll get a foo_dop.dll, which you should drop into your Program Files/foobar2000/components folder. The iPhoneCalc.dll goes into your Program Files/foobar2000 folder.
You still need to install iTunes 9.1 or newer for the plugin to work (no need to start it, just have it on the machine) but from this post I guess you already have it.
A further step is required for the plugin to work for iPhones. After putting foo_dop.dll and iPhoneCalc.dll into the correct places, open up foobar2000 and go into "File > Preferences", then look under "Tools" for "iPod Manager". Click on its "Mobile Devices" tab and check "Enable mobile device support", then restart foobar2000.
After you've got everything set, open foobar, and under File menu, you should find the iPod submenu. Select "Load library" and it'll give you an "iPod View" playlist which contains all the current tracks. You can then drag your music folder into foobar2000 or just go "File > Add Folder..." and make sure it's added into iPod View. Then "File > iPod > Synchronise..."
foobar2000 is pretty cool, but I understand if you don't want to meddle too much with it. Anyway if you can't find a simpler solution, go for this one, it's guaranteed to work.
The fact that it's a self-test is not the issue. The issue is whether it's a blind test or not. You can definitely run a blind test alone, there's software that allows you to do that.
Hearing a difference between lossless (FLAC in this case) and 320Kbps is incredibly difficult if not downright impossible. I guess it might be possible if one has excellent hearing, has the right audio equipment, and uses the right track, but that would be an extremely rare case.
Anyone can test using foobar2000 and its ABX component:
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
A YouTube video how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5njCrqCN9k
Also, as far as MP3 is concerned, LAME's V0 and V2 are in my opinion the two most useful encoding presets. I consider CBR320 to be a huge overkill and a waste of space. Either actually compress by using at least V0 or even V2, or don't compress at all, and keep it lossless.
Yup it's possible.
First install the Playback Statistics component
After that you can use the added formatting fields shown here to make a new custom columns
for showing play count the pattern is: %play_count%
Clementine looks okay, but it looks way too bloated. Foobar2000 is a lot more minimalistic. My favorite setup on Windows is like this. Compared to that Clementine is way less minimalistic.
For whole-library database/playback, MediaMonkey. It's tremendously fast and responsive - especially compared to the massive bloatware that iTunes has become - and tremendously customizable, with a ton of different ways to navigate, sort and filter. You can also sync wirelessly to your mobile through the app (you might have to get the pro or 'gold' version for that). For quick, one-off playback, Foobar.
To play FLAC (or anything else really) I recommend Foobar.
For the rest, here is a rough step-by-step guide.
>1) Enter control panel. If on windows 10, you will have to search for it.
>2) Click hardware and Sound
>3) Under "Sound", Click Manage audio devices.
>4) With the Modi plugged in and powered (it is powered over USB if you do NOT have the Modi 2 Uber), you should see some kind of USB device in the list.
>5) Click it, and the "Set Default" button should un-grey. Click it.
>6) Now go into Properties. Click the "Enhancements tab". Check "Disable all enhancements". Then click the "Advanced tab", and sets default format to 24bit, 44100Hz.
Hello. I'm using foobar 2000 with musical spectrum and i made an screenshoot of the settings tab i made on musical spectrum so i can chromakey the background of it. Settings: http://i.gyazo.com/dc33d514b2f2382ee54e54f5ee9bb4e9.png Foobar2000: http://www.foobar2000.org Musical spectrum: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=97404 (Sorry if i made any mistakes but english it's not my first language :D)
See for yourself! Download foobar and this component, rip a song in 128 & 320 and do the test.
I can't tell the difference between 320kbps mp3 and a FLAC. I doubt Spotify Premium (which I listen to most) would be any different?
By default, you need to click the 'play' button to start playing your queued items, as double clicking any items (whether in the playback queue or not) will clear the queue. However, the foo_keep_queue component prevents the playback queue from being removed when changing song manually, so is a potential solution for that issue.
>i really really need to be able to put a couple of albums/songs to the queue and go back and forth
The fooar2000 playback queue was intended to have rather limited capabilities, so if you're looking to do what I think you are, creating a playlist may be a better option. Certainly if you're looking to go back to a previously queued item, the playback queue is not what you are after as items are removed from the queue once completed playing.
To have just a little more control over the playback queue, you might like to give the foo_queuecontents component a try.
^(Edit: Clarified playback queue behaviour and possible solution.)
- Download and install foobar2000.
- Download and install the USF player component.
- Download the Paper Mario USF here.
- Open the Paper Mario USF in foobar2000 and enjoy the highest fidelity Paper Mario soundtrack.
From here, Foobar2000 can also be used to convert the soundtrack to the audio format of your choice.
The best way to ABX test file formats is to ensure they're both played at the exact same volume on the same gear. People often mistake differences in volume for differences in audio quality. Foobar also has a plugin for abx testing
You have mismatched tags on some of the songs. For example, some might have Lynyrd Skynyrd listed as just the artist, others as the artist and the 'album artist'. If you load the mp3s into a good audio player with tag editing on your PC, you can correct this. My personal choice is Foobar - small footprint, great functionality, easy to use and absolutely free. Load the mp3s into it as if to play them, select all, right-click the file list and go to properties. Anything labeled <<multiple values>> could be causing this problem. Some fields, like track name, obviously will always say this, but your issue is most likely in one of the artist fields, or possibly the album title. You cannot make changes to files that are on your phone, so you'll have to copy them to your PC first (or edit the ones already on your PC) and then replace the ones on your phone.
I've very glad you're being receptive to this. Many people get defensive when they hear doubts about their listening "ability." So, if you're willing to undertake it, here are the steps you need to take:
- Download foobar
- Make sure you select ABX comparator in the optional components when installing
- Get a FLAC/lossless file of the Mastodon track you wish to test ^(Icanprovideittoyouifyoudon'tfeellikererippingaCD)
- Convert that file to 320/256/192/whatever in foobar (you may have to download LAME, I forget)
- Select both tracks, right click > ReplayGain > Scan per-file track gain
- Select the lossless & mp3 file, right click > Utilities > "ABX two tracks"
At this point, the FLAC file will be option A and the mp3 file will be option B. You can play A and B, and you can play X and Y. Switch between each as much as you want. Your job is to identify whether X is file A or B, or whether Y is A or B. If you can correctly identify them 9 out of 10 times, congrats you have amazing hearing.
I still prefer milkdrop, but some other music players are capable of using it with a plugin. You still have to install Winamp, but from then on can use your preferred player. I use foobar2000 with the Shpeck plugin.
> What could they possibly add to a software to make music playback better?
They can't. You can process the audio and make it different, but it won't be better.
> And what about foobar? I've been using it for quite a while and works wonderfully.
As long as you set up the mixer/driver chain properly using WASAPI, you're good to go. It's bit perfect.
Use FooBar2000 or MusicBee or even MediaMonkey. Many people recommend Mediamonkey for it's versatility and ease of use. I use Foobar2k because of it's endless GUI customization (it's meant for more saavy users). I'd recommend for you either MusicBee or MediaMonkey!
For music/etc, there are several choices. iTunes, foobar2000, WinAmp, and many more that I don't remember at the moment are all good choices; it mostly depends on personal preference. (iTunes might be the best for you since you're used to it and it behaves more or less the same on Windows as it does on OSX.)
Are you running windows XP? Because ~~you shouldn't need ASIO4All with windows vista/7. ~~ Windows 7 includes built-in WASAPI support which will achieve the same results without the extra plugins/software.
Edit: ~~I run the same plugin you do, without asio4all in windows 7,~~ I use the WASAPI plugin for foobar combined with the built-in WASAPI support with foobar 2000 in windows 7, and as soon as I close foobar, the audio controller is given back to windows and all its other programs.
EDIT 2: Also, ASIO4ALL does not bypass the sound card. The way you describe your setup, you are still using the DAC from the sound card (on-board audio), which is mediocre at best. ASIO simply gives exclusive control of the sound card to foobar. This way, you bypass windows mixer and any software effects being added by any other programs. Now if you used ASIO with a DIGITAL OUTPUT (S/PDIF or HDMI) to an external DAC... you would have a proper computer audio setup.
EDIT 3: Had previously confused WASAPI for ASIO, which are pretty much 2 ways of doing the same thing.
Foobar2000. It'll work with your iPod, it'll scrobble to last FM, it makes playlists, visualizations, retrieves and edits tags... and all sorts of other things. For pretty much anything you can imagine wanting to do, someone has made an optional component to do it. And the best part? It opens instantly, indexes folders super fast, and takes very little memory.
If you've got a pc probably the most archival thing I've seen is Exact Audio Copy, plus foobar2000. EAC will allow you to rip and copy cds perfectly, and give a log of errors, and a cue file, so when you burn again (if you burn again) it will be the exact same CD. Foobar is a good pc music manager, and can get tags and album art etc. (I'm not sure from which database - I'm personally on linux now, so I don't use this). EAC can do many codecs, but I'd recommend flac, it's lossless and free, and a pretty common archival format.
Hi there,
A few ways to stop mid-playlist ...
Foobar itself has Playback menu > 'Stop after current'.
Playlist Attributes has a context option on right-click > 'Stop after focused track'. (This simply enables 'Stop after current' when it eventually gets to the track you select)
Stop After Queue can be used to queue a few selected tracks and then stop. It has to be enabled on Playback menu > 'Stop after queue' -*before- adding tracks to the queue, with *right-click > 'Add to playback queue'.
I'm not aware of any plug-ins like "Playlist Separator" that you linked.
Cheers
There are a few components that can add bookmarks to track positions.
- foo_uie_bookmarks (multiple bookmarks per track, many options)
- foo_skip (single, per track, manual)
- foo_playlist_attributes (single, per playlist, automatic for each track)
​
Yes! You can use UPnP Server. I've done this for years and it works great. Also increments your playcounts on your home library if that matters to you at all. I use the BubbleUPnP app as a renderer for the server, but you can use any renderer if you like.
Go to fb2k standard download page (http://www.foobar2000.org/download) and select whatever the stable or the beta.
Selecting whatever the stable or the beta, you would get a new download page - look near bottom of the page and find a link to download his simpler "Boom" audio player. Click that link and you would go to his "perkele.cc" website.
> I did not quote a single source.
Oh, sorry my bad, lets fix it to instead of mentioning the ratio of reputable sources, still an ad populum.
>i got an inexpensive DAC that is capable of rendering MQA to it's spec'd capability. Other than that I have no idea what you are talking about. I just want to give it a shot before talking shit
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ABX
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
Just test good old vorbis. Remember to convert your lossless to lossy using abx comparator (and the latest version of the encoder, also give a shot to the AoTuV encoder which might be even better).
Start with 60 kbps and keep going up until you can't abx it.
>I just want to give it a shot before talking shit.
There's a problem with that statement, it's pretty much resumed here:
''the classic "trust your ears" argument implicitly ignores the fact that to isolate your ears from other factors that influence your assessment of a product at hand, one needs to come up with a proper experimental setting, without which it is not only your ears that influence that assessment''.
Max Volume is always 0dB and everything else is below that (like -30dB)
If a song has 55hz at 0dB it will play at full volume, but if you also have an positive (for example +5dB) EQ at that frequency the sound would be positive wich doenst work and everything above 0dB will be cut off. This is Called "Clipping" and is propably what you are hearing here.
Instead of boosting 55hz you have to reduce all other frequencies by -5dB and have 55hz still at 0dB.
This is quite annoying so i would recommend this EQ Plugin instead.
There is a small checkbox that says "Auto" if you have that checked it will automatically reduce the volume by the highest band setting you have set, so for example, if your highest boost is 10dB it will reduce the overall volume by 10dB to prevent any sound from going over 0dB.
Also beware that the headphone driver is only capable of producing so much bass, if you boost it too much it will increase distortion and loose impact.
Not a dumb question at all, but here are a few answers:
- Android supports FLAC natively.
- For iPhone you can get the Foobar2000 mobile app.
- For Windows PC's Foobar2000 is what most everyone prefers to use.
- For MAC's a lot of people prefer to use Cog to play FLAC files.
Enjoy!
Alternatively, download the Barbri lecture videos using Video Download Helper. Then Convert the video files to an MP3 using foobar2000. Then go out for a walk and listen to the lectures while walking. You get to enjoy the outdoors, exercise, and study all at the same time. I suggest listening to the same lectures repeatedly and increasing the playback speed each time.
well that's not what i asked you to try, but i'm glad you were willing to put yourself to test regardless. what i asked is for you to try to differentiate them using a blind test via ABX comparator plugin for foobar2000, can you do that?
here's the link: http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
you simply load the two tracks, select them both and run the abx comparator (by right clicking>utilities), then try to differentiate between them 9/10 times consistently. if you succeed then we can know for sure that the smartphone dac possibly made some audible changes to the track, and that you were not just guessing. that's how double blind testing works in science.
The Playlist Attributes component has a 'Disable removing playlist' feature, among a lot of other cool features. I've run into the foo_jesus thing too, I wish someone could update that component.
http://www.foobar2000.org/components is where you can find most of the addons
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_audioscrobbler
sometimes when i don't play music continuously, it falls out of sync so you need to restart foobar, but like after a day or two of inactivity, and it saves the plays and submits them after restart
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dop
i have not used this component, i don't have an ipod, but if the standard of the other components is anything to go by, it is working well
edit: although now i looked at the page, it hasn't been updated since '11, newer stuff aren't supported :/
although the forums are still active, people get help and stuff seems to work
let me know how it goes, or if you have further questions
I'd recommend using VocaDB CSVs along with a tagging program. I personally use foobar2000, and it's really easy to mass tag, rename files, and convert tracks.
In foobar, tagging goes: copy CSV to clipboard > select all tracks > properties > tools > automatically fill values > match pattern to CSV format.
I also sort the files into a folder for each producer, and a subfolder for each of their albums.
Foobar2000 does this marvelously. Just drag the folder there, select all, right click - convert, and pick encoding parameters. You can do that to all of your collection at once, since it supports subfolders.
I think you would need to install lame encoder before you do that.
If you want customization, nothing beats Foobar 2000. It has tons of addons, and even more in the way of themes.
> AMD Athlon II Neo K125 - Windows 10 Professional 32-bit
Well factoring in that your CPU is only an older single core, I'm not too shocked that VLC is causing it to run high usage. It has very little cache to speak of which is likely its bottleneck. I'm thinking its the fact that you simply have a slow processor. I'd try cleaning out the computer and making sure a minimal amount of things are running in the background to free up processing power and RAM.
Edit - another piece of software you can try is Foobar2000. Its commonly used in the audiophile communities and is designed for very weak processors and is even compatible for Windows XP. I know you have 10 I'm just underscoring that they know weak CPU's are going to be used when supporting XP.
Well, this is a vs. thread where the OP asked for opinions, and I happened to introduce a 3rd competitor. I had 1 line about Foobar2000 which made a joke based on its name. I wouldn't say I'm completely wrong though based on screenshots of the base player. It's not like I went on a rant about the thing or what of think about its users...
Regarding your features:
- Milkdrop2 - I downloaded and tested it, It works, but I'm not sure what all it is supposed to do besides play the main visualizer (like if there are menus or anything, didn't spend a lot of time with it)
- Gapless playback - yes, click on the Advanced Audio Features image
- Real-time monitoring - yes, in Preferences > Library > monitoring folders > "continuously monitor" > I assume this is in real-time but I haven't tested it for reaction times
foobar2000 with an iPod manager plugin works great with the iPod Classic. At least my 3rd gen one. Used to work with the iPhone too, but support was dropped when the 4S came out if I recall correctly.
As with everything foobar2000, it's really lightweight. Still runs perfectly on my 2009 netbook. Haven't even looked at iTunes, Winamp or WMP since 2010.
Do you mean sampling rates like 16/24 bit and 48/192kHz? because that's specified on the specs page of any DAC, or do you mean file types like FLAC, ALAC, mp3? Because those are irrelevant to a DAC, you just need a music player on your computer that plays the types of files. If you're having trouble playing certain music files I recommend either foobar or musicbee
you can use UPNP to do this. Have the main system run the audio as normal, and have the two 'clients' playback the stream.
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_upnp
I do this for house parties.