Foobar2000 (freeware audio player)

Foobar2000 is an awsome audio player that can play MP3, Ogg Vorbis, MP2, AAC, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, VOC and SND out-of-the-box. Through supported plugins it can also play TTA, FLAC, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, Mod, SPC, TFMX, Shorten, OptimFROG, LPAC, WMA, AC3, PSF, NSF, XID, XA and Matroska. It can not only play, it can also make a library, transcode files, rip CDs, ... the list goes on and on.

I was a Winamp fan for a long time but I wanted something less bloated, with a better interface and more powerful playlist features--and I definitely found it in foobar2000! This is by far the best mp3 player, in my opinion, and it's only in fairly early development (as I write this the latest version is v0.9.1) so it's only gonna get better and better and it's already great.

Unlike Winamp, foobar2000 won't try to install other software when you install it or ask you to pay for a "pro" version, nor will it try to break your ear drums by playing a sound file when you first load it, and it has more powerful playlist options. It currently can't play movies like Winamp can but there are much better movie players out there than Winamp anyway) If you wanted a bloated, all-in-one app to play movies, music, etc, then you're better off with using something like Media Jukebox.

Foobar's Main Features

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:: Full unicode support.
:: Play music directly from compressed RAR, ZIP and 7-Zip archives without requiring the user to extract the files prior to playing.
:: Multiple playlists in tabbed windows.
:: Import .m3u (winamp) playlists.
:: Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists.
:: Music library.
:: Auto-play your CD's when you insert them into your CD-ROM drive.
:: Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger) - advanced tagging capabilities.
:: Support for transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component (requires external commandline encoder executables for different output formats).
:: ReplayGain support - both playback and calculation.
:: Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
:: Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.
:: Highly customizable playlist display.
:: DSP components.
:: Streaming Support.
:: Gapless playback.

To give you an idea of how light foobar2000 is compared to something like Winamp look at the system requirements for Winamp:

:: CPU: 500MHz Pentium III or comparable (1.5 GHz Pentium IV or comparable recommended)
:: RAM: 64MB (128MB recommended)
:: 15MB to 30MB Hard Disk Space

And now the requirements for foobar2000:

:: CPU: 200 MHz, AMD K5 or Pentium or equivalent (500MHz Athlon or Pentium III recommended)
:: RAM: 32 MB
:: 5MB Hard Disk Space

Screenshot of me using foobar2000 (click to enlarge):


Notice by default there's no Winamp like skins that get in the way of being able to see the song titles and navigate the interface. You can make it look beautiful with custom color schemes and if you want, there are some skinnable interface plugins in development.

Some Tips

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You can use the scroll-wheel on your mouse if you have one, to adjust the volume by hovering over the volume control (located on the bottom/right where it shows the dB (decibels).

If you want to be able to right-click on your files from within Windows Explorer to bring up a menu with an option that says "Play in foobar2000" or "Enqueue in foobar2000" then uninstall Winamp. Winamp seems to conflict and try to fight to even let you load files into foobar2000 even after you've associated your audio files with foobar2000. Once you've tried foobar2000 you probably won't see a need for Winamp anyway.

You can't currently enqueue a folder into foobar2000 from a right-click menu in Windows Explorer but you can just simply drag the folder into foobar2000 normally or, if you have your windows all maximized, you can drag the folder to the foobar2000 button on your task bar--making sure not to release the mouse button until foobar2000 automatically brings its main window into view--then release your cursor over the window to drop the files into queue. If foobar2000 isn't already open you can use this same idea by dragging the folder onto a blank area of the Windows toolbar and holding it there for a second, which auto loads the desktop, then drop the files over foobar2000's desktop icon.

You can download some equalizer presets here or here. Then just load them by clicking "View->Equalizer->Load Preset" from within foobar2000.

http://www.foobar2000.org/