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Topic: What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does? (Read 20433 times) previous topic - next topic
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What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

It's been a while since I've seen a thread like this, so I figured I'd float a simple question out there: What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

For me, one such feature is the fact that I can confidently use foobar2000 as a basic mastering step when converting from high sampling-rate and/or high bit-depth down to CD audio or MP3. This is thanks to foobar2000's wonderful dither, limiters, resamplers, and streamlined conversion process.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #1
Foo_facets, title formatting, custom tags and the possibility to do whatever i want with them, moving/renaming files to my own presets with the push of a button, the unlimited tagging capabilities, the customizability, the performance.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #2
It manages and presents my music collection in easiest and best way that I'm aware, while handling many aspects of it
It's "customization" (not Canar's favourite term ) offers that to many different user' tastes

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #3
i first got into foobar around 2005-2006 because it was the only player i could find with native cue sheet support.

obviously the main reason now is title formatting. it's so simple yet so powerful at the same time.  just the simple things like playlist sorting, grouping and column display. i couldn't live with out it.

just recently, i've got into the whole customisation thing via 3rd party components but if they stopped working tomorrow i'd happily go back to the default UI. although they are nice, they're not essential.

also the properties dialog is great. i tag my files manually (sad i know) but foobar is by far the easiest way to tag an album. i can type out the track details quicker than it would take to use an online service and verify the spelling.  and the converter/file operations is another great feature. again using title formatting to create a new folder structure based on tags. so yeah, i like title formatting.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #4
I could mention so many things - but there is one central feature that many years ago caught my attention and let me switch from winamp:

Custom tags and the ability to create any possible view by title formatting.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #5
Foobar allows me to organize my large collection easily and access my music the way I want to, something that no other player has been able to do so far.

I also love title formatting, and being able to present the detail and information I want, how I want it.

Since I got foobar, I've been able to greatly streamline my encoding process by automatically going from FLACs that I rip in EAC to mp3 (at V0 for archive and sometimes V4 for my ipod), and then easily copy those files from my untagged/sorted folder into the appropriate subfolders. I can't imagine how much time it saves me than doing it all by hand.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #6
Bear in mind that the only time in the past several years that I even considered using another music player was when I was briefly stuck on a Windows 98 system when I was between modern computers, but we shall not speak of those dark days. So I don't know for a fact that other music players won't do this.

But the thing that makes foobar2000 a killer app for me is the ability to (for certain values of 'easily') easily make an auto-updating playlist that takes into account a song's rating, when a song was last played, the phase of the moon, etc. and finally delivers unto me the "no repeats except stuff I like a lot" shuffle-playing experience I have always wanted ever since I got my first CD player with a 'shuffle' function.

(Also it's lately given me a chance to seriously brush up on my Jscript, but that's just a coincidence  )

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #7
Foobar2000 doesn't crash so often as other players do, no other reason needed.

I don't know others experience, but for me it is the only player that does everything it promises on a steady basis without crashing itself or the system.

Thanks,

Rozzo

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #8
If this was a few years ago, I'd have said grouping in the playlist. However, most others are capable of the same by now.
A few years ago, i would have said id3v2.4 tagging, although by now most are capable of the same (except WMP, lol).
A few years ago, I'd have said replayGain, although by now, most are capable of the same, or something similar.
A few years ago, I'd have said gapless mp3 playback, although by now most are capable of the same, or something similar.
Shuffle albums/directories?

If anything, I keep using foobar2000 for the same reason everyone keeps copying it: it's features are just plain well thought out.

And more than anything, I can find those features because foobar has the sane menus.
I swear if you can find me a media app with comparable features and a more sane main menu/context menu, I'd use it. But you won't find one. fb2k seems to be the only app I know that assumes it's users know how to right-click and select multiple items: which is great because I'm not a slack-jawed funyun. Every other app either scatters crap all over it's main menus (hi iTunes) ("tools" menus are utterly pointless, if somethings not a tool why would it have a menu item in the first place?), or dribbles "toolbars" with 10,000 16x16 useless blotches of color that I'm supposed to derive meaning from somehow (I'm looking at you mediamonkey).
elevatorladylevitateme

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #9
I guess my answser is "everything". I tried many media players in the past years, but never found one that made me think that maybe, some day, I'll stop using foobar2000.

It does everything I need, and in a simple way. Every other player have their custom UI and custom menus that are awfully shiny and hard to navigate, and are bloated with many unwanted features. foobar2000 can be customized to do *only* what you need, and you can do them without thinking about where you have to click, because its interface is really well thought, and well integrated into the system.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #10
I got laid because I use foobar. 

Seriously, the reason I stick to foobar not only because of how good program is (which is damn good) but because.. LOTS of things, and what I learned while using it.

As a music player, I believe other program might suit me better since I have to adapt myself to use it and not the other way around, I have to sacrifice some features when using foobar as player, but I was willing to do it and I don't have any regret doing so.

As a tools, There might be other program that do things foobar could do too.. Yet I still use foobar.

So, "What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?"

Experiences.. I guess 

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #11
I was eager to find a way that made it easy for me to tag my songs with my own customized info. I used Helium MM back then which did the task somewhat well, but still was very slow and was still somewhat limited in it's functionality.

Then I (for the 3rd time or so) found out that foobar2000 actually did this and did it well, and also it was extremely lightweight.

Immediately I fell in love with ColumnsUI and it's flexibility and panels. Also I started ripping my music to FLAC after being comfortable with foobar2000. For some reason everything just feels easier with foobar2000 around. Also I'm totally in love with the addition of autoplaylists.

Another thing I love about foobar2000 is it's media library - 5 years ago in my Winamp-age, I still used file-handling to create playlists and organize my music (even though Winamp had a ML then).

There are still room for improvement of components and foobar2000 core and I have listed my ideas with links to respective threads in my "About me"-page.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #12
Mostly? Like q-stankovic, "Custom tags and the ability to create any possible view by title formatting".

And Foobar is clean, lean and secure. By "secure", I mean I trust it not to mess with my files because of crappy code or some hidden "feature".

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #13
I'd say the most important aspect of foobar are the powerful library management features: The easy and well-arranged tag editing, the file-operations, etc.
But when I think about it a bit more, the DSPs are at least equally as important to me.

I guess it's the whole package, foobar does about everything I want. Some players feature gap-less playback, some replay gain, with some you can edit tags easily and some got DSPs. But none can do it all, except for foobar!

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #14
What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

I must say that I haven't used (or even tried!) other players for so long that I am unable to answer this question  



What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #15
But when I think about it a bit more, the DSPs are at least equally as important to me.

Add to that, I don't think the DSP's are flexible enough. They supports presets, that's great but they should be selectable from the Main Menu. When that's possible, I'll add the DSP functions to my list of things that foobar2000 does incredible smooth.

Another great thing about foobar2000 is that it has this cool skin I haven't really seen anywhere else. I don't know what it is but it blends perfectly with my Windows
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #16
I use foobar for 2 reasons .

1 - It's the only player that can handle a large library without my computer grinding to a hault.

2 - Like shakey_snake said, it seems to be the only player that has a sane menu system.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #17
Sure....for all the reasons mentioned in this thread, but also..... for the EYE CANDY   

I've got it setup just the way I like it, and for me, it looks better than any media player I have seen 

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #18
I would say everything... but now for me for some things it has really a valid contender, MusicBee, especially for managing portable devices (see MTP...  ).
The foobar converter is still unbeatable but i say this because the really things that i miss are embedding covert art while converting and especially a portable device manager (excluding the really good but iPod only foo_dop). I know that with a device in USB mode you can do near all (Convert directly to (but is very slow) or use File Operations) but a proper manager would be better.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #19
It's the perfect audio program for power users - tons of awesome components, settings for virtually everything, it's just perfect!
I have always said my number one reason for never switching to Mac (also because I don't like Mac) is because foobar wouldn't be supported unless I ran some VMware or something.

Foobar rocks. Point made!

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #20
Custom Tags - I like how foobar allows me to efficiently manage custom tagging schemes on not just one but large batches of files at a time. Either manually from the properties editor, automatically from the filenames, or a mixture of both.  Other players offer some basic functionality in this regard but nothing comes close to foobar when it comes to large batch tagging IMO.

Custom Interface - Different people use their computers in different ways. Furthermore different people use different features of foobar with different priority.  I particularly like to use playlist grouping with embedded album art (NG Playlist, EL Playlist, SCPL, etc.).  While a few other players offer this sort of playlist in addition to skinning, nothing comes close to foobar with regard to flexibility. I can easily use custom tags and crude titleformat logic to overhaul the foobar interface into something simple that suits my particular needs (which occasionally change over time).

Wine Compatibility - While foobar is developed exclusively for the windows platform, its clean use of API calls make it compatible with wine. This allows me to bring my custom interface onto Mac and Linux.  I often bounce between different platforms at both work and home and I appreciate the ability to bring foobar with me.

Community - While many people in this forum are quick to smack down inexperienced users and wild questions, the community on this forum help to develop and explore foobar in ways unparalleled with any other player, even WinAmp.  I regularly read through these forums and try to help others solve their problems and by doing so I keep finding new and interesting ways to use my own foobar.



So to sum things up: I love foobar because it allows me to listen to my music the way I want to like no other player and keeps giving me new ways to do it.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #21
What foobar makes unique for me is what foobar2000 does (its functionality) and how it does that (its style), in short it is a combination of all.

After some experiences with other players (e.g. Windows Media Player, Winamp, MediaMonkey, Sonique) I tried 1by1, a directory player, and then became acquainted with foobar and fell in love with it:

  • No fear of adware, spyware, malware, no fear of user statistics which are collected in the background and send to the internet "to make the software better" (foobar monitors its media library but not me, it respects my privacy and is not interested in user behaviour)
  • Since the day I am using it I never had a crash, beta versions included,
  • the program is developed further continuously.
  • A clearly structured user interface with a practical integration of functions into context menus instead of main menu items with an excessive number of entries
  • No colourful buttons or obtrusive button images (please never change this) but elegance by means of simplicity.
  • A highly configurable design (I don't speak of theming, but user defined columns, status bar information and so on)
  • Instead of a tiny little player window a GUI which can be maximized (very important for me)
  • Full tagging, converter, Media Library organizing options
  • Great plugins which enrich foobar's value for me
  • Possibility to get in contact with the developers of foobar or of third party plugins
  • Very good forum here on Hydrogenaudio; I never had a question which remained unanswered.
  • So much more...

My English is not very good, for each post I need to look up most words in the dictionary but I hope it became clear how gratefully I am for this software.

Music is the most important thing in my life and I do listen, organize and sometimes even produce some parts of it (Converter, Resampler, DSP and VST functions) with foobar2000.

So nothing more to say than thank you.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #22
Speed & Customization
Continuous development
Great forum help
Easy to backup (One folder only)
Simple auto-playlists query language
Excellent third-party components & support
Easy add/remove components without leaving residues behind

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #23
It organizes my library, rips and encodes music and manages my iPod in a minimal, sleek interface with a very low hard drive and memory footprint. Good 3rd party plugins coming from a great community  too.

And as a result it improves quality of life, mends broken relationships and improves sex life.

What does foobar2000 do for you that no other player does?

Reply #24
And as a result it improves quality of life, mends broken relationships and improves sex life.

ABX results, please.
 
elevatorladylevitateme