Foobar is very flexible, everything can be configured.
Its minimalistic approach obvious appeals to the audiophile community.
Likewise its frugality on system resources.
If you use a dedicated low power audio PC, you can’t use a resource hog.
It is often recommended on audiophile forums as the best sounding player.
According to the developer Peter Pawlowski:
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/FAQ
Main features
- Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND... and more with additional components.
- Gapless playback.
- Full unicode support.
- Easily customizable user interface layout.
- Advanced tagging capabilities.
- Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
- Full ReplayGain support.
- Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
- Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.
Quick Setup
A lot of people struggle configuring it.
1 - Choose a layout
2 - Point to the folders containing your music
Foobar actively monitors your folders. It will take some time before a large collection is fully monitored.
Interface
If a slick GUI is your taste, Foobar probably won't fit in.
It gives you the Win95 feeling.
Put it in 'Vintage' mode and you are back to DOS.
There are a lot of skins available. DarkOne is one of them.
DarkOne by tedgo
Now all of a sudden you have a nice GUI.
A skin for classical music by Mike Le Voi.
WASAPI
Want to try WASAPI?
Download the plugin and compare it with standard Direct Sound.
Today Foobar also support WASAPI event mode.
As for the latest version of the component, two different output modes are available - push and event-driven; certain soundcards - especially USB devices - are known to cooperate better with the event-driven mode while certain other soundcards do not support the event-driven mode at all.
Headphone
Stereo over a pair of speakers or over a headphone are different things.
Over a headphone the sound stage is often too wide.
Try the Bauer stereophonic to binaural DSP. It narrows the stereo image.
Move it in/out of the DSP box during playback to hear the differences.
Hard-panned recordings (sixties with the guitar on the LEFT, the bass on the RIGHT) are excellent to demonstrate this DSP.
ABX
Is there a difference in sound between WAV and FLAC, 44.1 kHz and 96 kHz?
ABX them!
Need help?
Foobar 2000 for Dummies (Part 1) - General Setup - DIY-AUDIO-HEAVEN
The official forum is hosted by Hydrogenaudio Forums.