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Foobar2000 v1.0 Beta -- holy crap, it's finally here!
Foobar2000, if you were wondering, is a very light-weight music player. It's incredibly flexible thanks to its modular design and fully-featured developer kit. There are mods and plug-ins for Foobar that make it one of the most useful music players: if you're the kind of music buff that likes downloading 'quadrophonic gold remastered' albums in AC3 format from Torrent sites, then Foobar is the music player for you. If you have a large MP3 (or FLAC, AAC, MP4...) music collection and simply want to listen to it, Foobar is also the one for you.
There's all the usual functionality there too, like ripping CDs or fixing ID3 tags. My personal favourite is the keyboard shortcuts that you can set to work globally -- so even if you're playing a game like World of Warcraft, you can skip and pause your music using a finger-breaking keyboard shortcut. Handy. There's also a neat Windows 7 shell integration plugin, if you're fortunate enough to be using Foobar2000 AND Windows 7!
If you're one of those old boring types that's still using the antiquated WinAmp, or you're using the slow-and-disgustingly-bloated iTunes, give Foobar2000 a go -- you'll be surprised at just how good it is.
Official download (torrent) / MajorGeeks direct download (seems link was broken -- fixed now)
Comments
35
Subscribe to commentsTrevorNov 20th 2009 6:22PM
I'm one of those people still using Winamp Lite because it can always be on top of a window and only takes up about 15x100 pixels. I have FooBar installed for playing FLAC files but is there any way to get it down to Winamp Lite's size?
I think it can be minimized to the system tray but I like to be able to see what's playing and the time remaining without having to hover over a system tray icon. Any suggestions are appreciated.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 20th 2009 6:24PM
Hm, good question. There probably is, but I don't know what it's called.
But I know with that Windows 7 shell plug-in, you could reduce it to an icon on your superbar... How about that? :)
Do Dinh Thy SonNov 20th 2009 8:53PM
You can see some in the HydrogenAudio or either DeviantArt.They got plenty of theme and way to customize it
TrevorNov 20th 2009 6:45PM
Unfortunately I'm running Vista. I've Googled the question before but the closest thing I found was making Foobar look like the full version of Winamp which defeats the purpose. Bummer.
der_tuxmanNov 20th 2009 7:10PM
Yeah, "crap" is what I thought, too. I'll stick with Winamp, as it basically works and looks better.
BTW, I /know/ that I /could/ spend a couple of days installing panel plugins and stuff to make fubar (ehm foobar :P) look acceptable. But it is not worth the effort to me.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 20th 2009 7:14PM
Do you often spend time looking at your music player while it... plays?
I thought the days of visualisations were long-gone...
der_tuxmanNov 20th 2009 7:16PM
Not actually, but I like the Winamp icon in my taskbar or the narrow black bar on top of my screen more than foobar's boring grey window. I don't use Vis, the music I listen to gives enough kaleidoscope art to me...
Sebastian AnthonyNov 20th 2009 7:19PM
Ah-hah. Well, fair enough!
Issues like that really become nonexistent with Windows 7 though. I have a Foobar icon on my 'superbar' -- square icon, 32x32 I guess -- and I can access Foobar through that.
I agree, it's not pretty by default, but I spend so little time actually looking at it, it's not a problem.
I spend much more time looking through my music trying to find something to queue up :)
der_tuxmanNov 20th 2009 7:20PM
Winamp's Media Library is quite good for digging through your music collection. Especially if it is not too well sorted on your hard disk... :-)
Sebastian AnthonyNov 20th 2009 7:23PM
Again, the indexing in Windows 7 does that job for me -- there's a very neat/fast search box in the top right corner of every Explorer window.
Embrace the NEW!
der_tuxmanNov 20th 2009 7:25PM
As I don't like Windows 7 (because of its new "features") and don't like the Windows Explorer (XP+ forced me to buy xplorer²), this is not really something I'll take into consideration...
BTW I don't think it's good that you'll have to use your operating system for stuff like that which should actually be a part of your media player itself...
Sebastian AnthonyNov 20th 2009 7:32PM
Indexing is always a great idea! Until we get a new file system that doesn't necessitate that...!
I think this argument could go on for a while. I'm done!
der_tuxmanNov 20th 2009 7:35PM
Indexing is useless if you:
1) use the ability to sort files into folders and subfolders wisely
2) use a more advanced file searching system (grepWin?)
...
It was not intended as an argument. Sorry if it felt this way.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 20th 2009 7:50PM
I'm not sure indexing is ever useless. Do you know how file systems work?
Indexing speeds up a lot of things, not only searching for the right music files :)
der_tuxmanNov 20th 2009 7:58PM
Indexing stresses your hard disk with a cache you don't really need, too. ;)
fiendsanNov 20th 2009 9:24PM
dont understand all that winamp hate,
i use winamp (the latest version), i just install the plugins i really need (so no visualizations, no modern themes, no bloat), and it has all the functions of foobar, runs faster (starting up and playing and cpu usage), spends less memory (around 2megs while playing, plain foobar without anything spends around 8megs while playing), and actually sounds better (but that's maybe cause i tweaked winamp sound settings to my liking),
so good old winamp is at least for now and for me a much superior player than foobar, hell foobar is only really good when you install a bunch of themes and plugins and that just makes it incredibly "itunes like" bloated, so i dont think there is any comparison... the only real downside is that the original developer is no longer working on it ^T_T
shriahNov 20th 2009 9:35PM
If you don't like the deafult colors of foobar2000 you can change them. There is a themes manager in the preferences and its as simple as it can be.
saudrapsmannNov 20th 2009 10:51PM
I used third-party music players like WinAmp when I was stuck with XP. Since switching to Windows 7, I've tried other music players, but Windows 7's Windows Media Player is infinitely better. Instantly starts, looks great, plays fast, gives me no errors, and has way more functionality. Plus, the Compact look of it with the overlapping Play/Pause/Forward/Rewind buttons and album art display is just perfect, like I'm practically using my PMP. I think the hatred of Windows Media Player was called for a few years ago but today there's really no reason for it.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 20th 2009 10:58PM
Yep, the last couple of WMP versions have been pretty snappy. Personally I don't go in for all the album art/Internet-connected stuff -- but it certainly plays music and keeps your library nicely organised!
alstkiNov 21st 2009 12:11AM
Billy is still the best light-weight player I've ever used.
http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy