• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Foobar or JRiver

Foobar VS JRiver

  • Foobar

    Votes: 105 53.6%
  • JRiver

    Votes: 54 27.6%
  • Other (Mention below)

    Votes: 37 18.9%

  • Total voters
    196

tades

Member
Joined
Aug 12, 2019
Messages
79
Likes
15
Location
Grenoble

Feanor

Senior Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 22, 2019
Messages
382
Likes
496
Location
southwestern Ontario
foobar for me. Because it's faster and allows to organize by folders.
By folders by which I assume you mean OS folders.

OS folders is fine if you are playing mostly popular music comprised of performers' albums, but it is pretty useless for Classical music. In case of Classical, subgenre, era, composer are as important a performer and album.

The great news is that Foobar also allow organization by metadata tags. Further, you can switch the display sequence of the aforementioned categories making easy & quick to drill down to the composition and performance you want to listen to.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,068
Likes
16,598
Location
Central Fl
OS folders is fine if you are playing mostly popular music comprised of performers' albums, but it is pretty useless for Classical music. In case of Classical, subgenre, era, composer are as important a performer and album.
I feel sorry for you folk trying to arrange a library of classical music. Ten thousand bands playing the same song over 100 years of recording history is quite a problem to sort. :eek:
 

Feanor

Senior Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 22, 2019
Messages
382
Likes
496
Location
southwestern Ontario
I feel sorry for you folk trying to arrange a library of classical music. Ten thousand bands playing the same song over 100 years of recording history is quite a problem to sort. :eek:
It IS a problem, Sal. (Though, parenthetically, apart from the lieder genre, Classical music isn't comprised of "songs".)

Maybe the biggest problem when ripping CDs or buying downloads is the inconsistency of metadata provide by reference sites. It's almost invariably necessary to update the metadata with a program such as MP3tag or my favorite so far, Tag&Rename.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,068
Likes
16,598
Location
Central Fl
It IS a problem, Sal.
Oh I realize that, I was being serious, not sarcastic.
You can call the 1812 Overture a song or whatever fancy name you want to give it. Fact is still that it's been recorded God knows how many times. But then who knows how many bands will have recorded Dark Side Of The Moon in another 208 years? LOL
 

maxxevv

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 12, 2018
Messages
1,872
Likes
1,964
Oh I realize that, I was being serious, not sarcastic.
You can call the 1812 Overture a song or whatever fancy name you want to give it. Fact is still that it's been recorded God knows how many times. But then who knows how many bands will have recorded Dark Side Of The Moon in another 208 years? LOL

A friend has 27 recordings of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. I have 6 versions of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.

The tagging with separate artistes, composers, years become very important. Sometimes, even that fails as you may have 1 artiste with 2 versions of the same composition with different orchestras and conductors.

One such example would be Karajan's 3 cycles of Beethoven's symphonies. All with the Berlin Philharmonic but different years.
That metadata differentiation is gonna be tough ....

And in some classical recordings, the recording year may not always be in the metadata.
 

Feanor

Senior Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 22, 2019
Messages
382
Likes
496
Location
southwestern Ontario
A friend has 27 recordings of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. I have 6 versions of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.

The tagging with separate artistes, composers, years become very important. Sometimes, even that fails as you may have 1 artiste with 2 versions of the same composition with different orchestras and conductors.

One such example would be Karajan's 3 cycles of Beethoven's symphonies. All with the Berlin Philharmonic but different years.
That metadata differentiation is gonna be tough ....

And in some classical recordings, the recording year may not always be in the metadata.
I don't know that there is a perfect solution to any of it.

Personally I usually define Artist as the combination of Conductor and ensemble, e.g. "Antoni Wit & Polish National Radio Orch" but that can get cumbersome if, say, you also add a soloist. For concertos, I usually use soloist, conductor & ensemble, e.g. "Sviatoslav Richter; Charles Munch & Boston Symphony" -- this isn't ideal if I simply want to find everything with Sviatoslav Richter.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,068
Likes
16,598
Location
Central Fl
I don't know that there is a perfect solution to any of it.
Most probably not. A friend of mine and I share a lot of recordings but like to plug in different tags because we like to use different search words/terms, and that's with easy-peasy popular music.
 

digitalfrost

Major Contributor
Joined
Jul 22, 2018
Messages
1,521
Likes
3,086
Location
Palatinate, Germany
While I'm not into classical music that much - I collect vinyl rips. I have multiple rips of the same catalog number/year done with different turntables and equipment. Similar problem.
 

maxxevv

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 12, 2018
Messages
1,872
Likes
1,964
I don't know that there is a perfect solution to any of it.

Personally I usually define Artist as the combination of Conductor and ensemble, e.g. "Antoni Wit & Polish National Radio Orch" but that can get cumbersome if, say, you also add a soloist. For concertos, I usually use soloist, conductor & ensemble, e.g. "Sviatoslav Richter; Charles Munch & Boston Symphony" -- this isn't ideal if I simply want to find everything with Sviatoslav Richter.

I think a good solution would include search terms, not just artistes + composers + year

Since listing more than 1 artiste as separate terms seems to be not available.

I've not seen anything that has the option of creating columns in the sorting that allows for custom search terms though.
 

MakeMineVinyl

Major Contributor
Joined
Jun 5, 2020
Messages
3,558
Likes
5,871
Location
Santa Fe, NM
I seem to be an outlier; I use Audirvana. I have almost all the other options on my computer but they don't work for me in one way or another. If I download a single file and just want to play it, usually I open it in JRiver, but I find it too bloated since I use none of the non-audio features. I know it can be set to audio-only mode, but I'd rather not use up space on my relatively small SSD.
 

changer

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 4, 2020
Messages
557
Likes
601
A question to MusicBee users:
I recently came from foobar because it does not play nice with my 2i2 interface on windows (clicks like static explosions harassing my speakers). I am now looking for frequency analyzer which is showing me the truth. I am not interested in bling bling, just the frequency response. Bakcround is I am building me some speakers and I want to casually explore what frequencies are in my sources, i.e. if I have to protect the drivers because of too muc sub base and so on.
I found an advanced spectrum analyzer comparable to the one in foobar. It fits my 'aesthetic' needs quite well, but although this is straight up and prosaic, it is not precise. Is there something more telling than this out there? https://getmusicbee.com/addons/plugins/168/spectrogram-display/
 

Berwhale

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Aug 29, 2019
Messages
3,933
Likes
4,922
Location
UK
Other - Plex (as of 2 weeks ago) - I stand alone (searched this thread....).

Well, Plex knows about the collection of FLACs on my NAS and it's all indexed. I just rarely use it to play music as most of my listening happens at my desk in my home office now days. The upgrade to Plex Music libraries (in late 2019) was pretty decent and made it much more useable as a music source.
 

Berwhale

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Aug 29, 2019
Messages
3,933
Likes
4,922
Location
UK
A question to MusicBee users:
I recently came from foobar because it does not play nice with my 2i2 interface on windows (clicks like static explosions harassing my speakers). I am now looking for frequency analyzer which is showing me the truth. I am not interested in bling bling, just the frequency response. Bakcround is I am building me some speakers and I want to casually explore what frequencies are in my sources, i.e. if I have to protect the drivers because of too muc sub base and so on.
I found an advanced spectrum analyzer comparable to the one in foobar. It fits my 'aesthetic' needs quite well, but although this is straight up and prosaic, it is not precise. Is there something more telling than this out there? https://getmusicbee.com/addons/plugins/168/spectrogram-display/

MayBee :facepalm: you can get a VST spectrogram working with the VST support plug-in for MusicBee? VST Effects Support - Plugins | MusicBee (getmusicbee.com).
 

Kal Rubinson

Master Contributor
Industry Insider
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
5,272
Likes
9,778
Location
NYC
Personally I usually define Artist as the combination of Conductor and ensemble, e.g. "Antoni Wit & Polish National Radio Orch" but that can get cumbersome if, say, you also add a soloist. For concertos, I usually use soloist, conductor & ensemble, e.g. "Sviatoslav Richter; Charles Munch & Boston Symphony" -- this isn't ideal if I simply want to find everything with Sviatoslav Richter.
My artists are discrete. "Antoni Wit & Polish National Radio Orch" are entered as "Antoni Wit; Polish National Radio Orch" which JRiver parses as two artists and can find them individually or together. "Sviatoslav Richter; Charles Munch & Boston Symphony" is, of course, listed as "Sviatoslav Richter; Charles Munch; Boston Symphony" and can be easily searched individually. Not a problem. FWIW, JRiver.
 

Ron Texas

Master Contributor
Joined
Jun 10, 2018
Messages
6,075
Likes
8,908
I just noticed Strawberry is available for Windows.
 

Chrispy

Master Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 7, 2020
Messages
7,751
Likes
5,910
Location
PNW
Foobar never had me looking beyond, it was such a huge relief over the sh*tpile that iTunes was....
 

enio nery

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2019
Messages
54
Likes
63
hi, new guy here. im really liking this page so far.it is do refreshing to see unbiased reviews=)anyway, i prefer JRiver because im taking advantage of its DSP studio. my speakers are full range than runs without any passive filters.so i do all the corrections in JRiver. the other cool thing about jriver. even if it doesnt have the plug in for your favourite audio streaming app. you can make the it the Default playback device so that everything you play passes thru it so your DSP corrections arent limited to one App only.
 
Top Bottom