Some people require very little from their audio player. If it can handle MP3 and WMA files, playlists and a simple media library then they’re happy. Sounds like you? Then Windows Media Player probably provides everything you need. If you’re a little more demanding, though, you may be interested in foobar2000. It’s a lightweight, yet powerful audio player that’s packed with interesting features, and has a wide range of add-ons available to add even more useful capabilities.
The program handles the audio basics very well. There’s native support for all the audio formats you’d expect (MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, Musepack, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, Speex, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU/SND, CDDA, WMA, Matroska), for instance. Point the Media Library at your Music folder and it’ll import all your current albums, then monitor the folder and add others as they appear. And you can also play or rip from audio CDs, where you get considerable control over the encoding process.
The default foobar2000 interface is a little busy, but that’s even more configurable. You can go from having everything on the screen (library, playlist, current track properties, visualisations, more) to just a simple track listing, or combine just the elements you need, either by clicking on a predefined layout or setting up your own. The program’s also excellent at tagging (you can select multiple tracks and edit all their tags at once), and its more advanced features include full Unicode and ReplayGain support, along with gapless playback.
The real fun, though, comes when you start to add foobar2000 components. There are extensions to add support for more file types, burn audio CDs, or manage your iPod. Others will help create Last.fm playlists or display Winamp visualisations, and one even tries to simulate 5.1 surround sound through any pair of headphones (the results understandably aren’t perfect, but they’re worth a listen).
Verdict:
The time-saving tagging tools are useful, but it’s the add-ons that really make foobar2000 stand out from the crowd. Go give them a try
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Audio, Video & Photo
Specifications
Changelog
Version 2.25.7
Fixed drag&drop glitches on Windows 10 with multiple monitors having different pixel densities.
Regardless, this is still a bug in Windows 10, not in foobar2000.
Fixed Default UI preferences groups & columns drag&drop glitches.
Fixed incorrect formatting of written EXTM3U playlists.
Fixed incorrect truncation of specific long filenames in File Operations.
Fixed unnecessary reopening of remote files being played.
Fixed playback marker in playlists not being correctly retained in some conditions.
Improved internal IMA ADPCM WAV decoder (fixed rounding errors, fixed incorrect output duration).
foobar2000 now refuses to open 25-bit WMA lossless files on Windows 10 – which would otherwise decode incorrectly.
You can work around it by feeding WMA files to foo_input_ffmpeg component.
