1. Product Guide
  2. »
  3. Blog
  4. »
  5. foobar2000

foobar2000

foobar2000

A very technical, serious and obedient music player.


Summary
Our Score
Our Score
License Free
Link https://www.foobar2000.org/
Extremely customizable interface, small footprint, many extra components,  typical library capabilities, includes all necessary tools for building and maintaining a collection of music files.
Not very flashy design, no mini player, somewhat steep learning curve and requires moderate to advanced computing skill.
Details

foobar2000 is a bit of a special case: if you’re an average user with no particular skills in handling computers, foobar2000 will seem rather bland. Its features will appear to be very simple and perhaps limited or lacking imagination and style.

However, the story becomes very different if you’re an advanced user with perhaps some skill in programming or otherwise “understanding” computers. If you’re looking for a very technical, serious, obedient and not-dumbed-down music player and are not afraid of spending some time on setting everything up, then you will love foobar2000.

Its features include:

  • Small memory, disk and CPU footprint leading to very fast startup and reaction times;
  • Completely customizable interface;
  • Easily created and instantly updated library;
  • Direct access to metadata tags about every file, with stable batch manipulation of over 8000 files at once and automagic copying;
  • Built-in converter based on command-line encoders, just as customizable as everything else; and
  • A plugin system on par with Firefox’s.

The most powerful feature of foobar2000 comes by its own name: Title Formatting and the accompanying Query Syntax (think SQL queries). Basically, if you can think of something and you can turn it into a programming string, foobar2000 can do it for you.

Title Formatting is a scripting language centered around functions, return values and variables. Functions include maths, string and date manipulation, raw and semi-processed tag handling and control logic (if, then, else). You can specify the display value of each and every piece of the interface (and create new columns/fields as desired) by writing a simple programming string containing any of the functions mentioned. Processing tag fields is independent of the filetype and tag protocol (ID3, VorbisComment, etc), meaning you can write TF strings as if all your files were of the same type and format.

A very short and simple example of TF would be a string that displays a track’s Composer or its Main Artist if the former is not specified: $if2(%composer%,[$meta_sep(artist,’, ‘)]). Now take this example, and know that you can use similarly simple coding to have foobar2000 automatically:

  • Create folder structures and move + rename the files accordingly;
  • Display any tag or combination of tags as desired;
  • Render a tree view of your collection where the branching logic is under your control;
  • List specific tracks as if you were querying a database, either on-the-fly in the query box or persistently in auto playlists;
  • Write scripts (for plugins such as Masstagger) that can automatically parse, clean and reform thousands of tags at once; and more.

Having a very serious attitude toward file handling, foobar2000 is the best music manager and player I’ve ever used. Not only have I learned a great deal about the technical aspect of music and tag protocols, but I’ve also been able to make foobar2000 automatically do what would take me days of manual work in other players to make my music march at the pace of my own, very strict tag rules, folder structure and display wishes.

I absolutely recommend it to anyone who considers himself or herself a power user.

Boris Diedrich

Boris is a dedicated writer for our technical editorial team who specializes in putting complex topics into simple words. His goal is to provide his readers with high-quality and informative content. His articles are easy to understand and can be understood by professionals and laymen alike. He is a master at entertaining and informing his readers.

Click to rate this post!
[Total: 0 Average: 0]

Related articles