Audiophile music player for Windows/Mac and your opinion...

[ZolaIII]

How is ReplayGain a deal breaker with classical music if you use it in album mode?

You know ignoring me won't really help you.

EBU R 128 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

foobar2000: Components Repository - EBU R128 Normalizer

foobar2000

www.foobar2000.org

Actually orginaly proposed reference point of 83 dB (pink noise) proposed by David Robinson whose correct one opposite to 89 dB he adopted later regarding ReplayGain. So much about faulty implementations. ReplayGain V 2.0 is based on EBU R128/ITU BS.1770 cut down standard (-18 LUFS instead -23) and becoming unified used one regarding streaming services. Guess that people really have to ruin everything no matter how simple it really is.

 

[tuga]

Any program that offers ReplayGain should follow it's standards. No matter if the user decides to use it or not. If they already mess up obvious things like that, then what else happens under the surface? I don't trust software like that. Foobar2000 is really transparent about what it does.

From what I understood of the thread I found earlier, JRiver has an option to 'analyse/calculate' ReplayGain and another to enable it. The topic poster had not 'read the manual' and seemed to have confused the two.

I prefer to use iTunes/Music for browsing and HQPlayer for upconversion and DRC EQ.

 

[PaperBoat]

All the bit perfect players have their own filter



https://www.youtube.com/live/NX9rnKBXV3s?feature=share

 

[SSS]

Audirvana 3.5.51 (the earlier one without subscription) works fine without any problems on my Windows 10 system. But I don't use streaming services, just only locally stored music files wav flac dsd mp3. Therefore other players might be more suitable when using streaming.

 

[sethr]

Has anybody else tried Strawberry Music Player? It's one that I have to file with Audirvana in that it definately has it's own audio signature (at least in Windows).

I'm a longtime user of Jriver... still the best all-in-one player despite the somewhat steep learning curve.

 

[PaperBoat]

Just done a trial of Bug Head Emperor... And I'm impressed with its sound quality... But it's definitely not "unbeatable" at all... Anyone can achieve that sound quality with a low buffer JRiver setup...

 

[Freeform]

Long time user of foobar2000. I love and hate it in equal measure, endlessly frustrating yet always there is an answer. I read people complain about its UI, how basic it all is and I can only think that they cannot have spent the time to learn how to set it up, which is understandable. It took me a lot of effort but once I had learnt, I knew it could do it all and, if not, there will be a 'component' (plugin) that will enable it. I know it well enough that I am reluctant to start again with something else. Now I am running a NAS and looking at serving to two or three systems around the house, with RPi
I do wish it wasn't tied to Windows and a PC though; It is too much like work!

Others I have tried:
LMS & Squeeze; I might return to it one day. Probably equally versatile and frustrating at the same time. I like that it is not tied to Windows or Mac.

JRiver; I couldn't see what it offered that could not be done with foobar2000.

MusicBee; My recommendation for people not like me. Does everything you need, not hard to learn, works out of the box, and is free.

[I have no interest in or experience of commercial streaming services. My tastes are far to left field for any of them]

 

[neRok]

MusicBee user here!

I used Winamp back in the day, when I would just right click on folders and play (and then maybe use shuffle). About 2010 I tried out Linux as my OS, but it failed at 2/~4 tasks I needed to do. These tasks were to rip CD's as good as Exact Audio Copy (I couldn't find a program with similar features), and play back music easily like I did in Windows. Foobar2000 was close, but not quite. So I went back to Windows and settled on MusicBee, because whilst FB2K has similar features and abilities, it has bad UI. MB is good to go.

Now 1 feature I have come to love in MB is Auto-Playlists. These are "programmatically" generated DYNAMIC playlists that can filter based upon metadata (tags). OMG, this has been a game changer! I have started adding so many tags to my music to take advantage of this feature. I have a tag to remove songs from shuffle mode, another to describe a track's type (with values such as remix, demo, cover song, interlude, instrumental, etc), the same for album type (EP, single, etc) and album version (eg "2004 Remaster"), and a date added tag. Then I have a playlist grouped and sorted by date added, so the newest albums in my collection are at the top. And another for unrated albums. And then I've got my shuffle mode playlist that filters out all the crap (songs I've explicitly removed, and ones you don't want to hear in shuffle like interludes), and it draws from other playlists with a weighting. So for example I can have 1 play-through play 5x 5 star rated songs mixed in with 4x 4 star rated songs and 3x 3 star rated songs. Or I can have it play 3 songs from my "old" collection along with 1 song from an unrated album and 1 song from a recent album. Or I could filter by genres, like I might have a "super heavy" playlist that removes certain genres, and I'm pretty sure it can use the "5x4x3" playlist as its source. There are so many possibilites! And like I said, they are dynamic, so when new albums get added to my library, they automatically propagate through the playlists.

Edit: One more thing, and I presume most library based players do this, but I often listen to shuffle mode for a while until a song really catches my attention, and then I can simple right click on it and "Play Album Now". So handy. There's also options like play artist, play genre, search artists, etc.

 

[Gorgonzola]

Foobar is great, but hard to organise your libary when it's very big like mine. That's why i use JRiver, that does everything right that Foobar does right, but have a better libary system. It's not free altough, but cheap for what you get. If you want freeware, Foobar is better than anything else.

Can't say I agree. Foobar2000 works fine for my music library of over 5000 discs.

I'm a Classical music listener 95%. What I find essential for easy management is making your meta-date as complete and consistent as possible. The physical location, (Windows directory & folder name), is actually secondary, though I do have separate folders for Classical and other major genres, (Popular, Jazz, Christmas, Film Score).

For meta-data management/correction I use Foobar itself, Tag&Rename, and MP3Tag.

I have used some customization of sort criteria in Columns UI Album List. That is, right-click>view brings up:

1. by Directory
2. by Composer/Genre
3. by Genre/Composer
4. by Genre/Album
5. by Artist/Album
6. etc.

As a Classical listener mainly, I most often use 'by Genre/Composer' ...
%<genre>%|[%composer%]|%album%[ ~ $if(%album artist%,%album artist%,%artist%)]|[[%discnumber%.]%tracknumber%. ]%title%[ = %length%]

This arrangement makes drill-down to your selection really easy.

 

[ptf]

PlexAmp. Started w/ Foobar many years ago. Moved to jRiver, but rarely use it anymore. Plex for the last few years. Now PlexAmp On MacOS, WinOS, iOS, iPadOS. Still using Plex on AppleTV, because there's no PlexAmp version. The core player in Plex is the same as PlexAmp, and has most of the same features. Plex & PlexAmp have a great user interface, and work well organizing, searching and playing my 2TB of flac files - maybe 1/2 are 24/96 and 24/192, the rest 16/44.1 ripped from my CD collection. Plex also allows access to my files anywhere I have internet or cellular connectivity, and will stream at native resolution if I have the bandwidth to stream at that resolution. PlexAmp can also be set to cache tracks on an iOS device while I have wifi and then play from the cache while driving or flying. intrigued by Roon, but very happy with Plex. Also usually listen to Tidal using Plex.

 

[coonmanx]

Kind of sad that Linux was not mentioned. I ditched Windows a long time ago. I usually just listen to internet radio these days but I do have a few CD burns on the hard drive as well. And for them I use Rhythmbox mostly. Works well.

 

[PaperBoat]

Kind of sad that Linux was not mentioned. I ditched Windows a long time ago. I usually just listen to internet radio these days but I do have a few CD burns on the hard drive as well. And for them I use Rhythmbox mostly. Works well.

Are you using direct ALSA or JACK?

 

[JktHifi]

Foobar using buit-in EQ, not from outside such as EQ APO, has to be exclusive audio access.

 

[PaperBoat]

Foobar using buit-in EQ, not from outside such as EQ APO, has to be exclusive audio access.

Foobar built-in EQ is an optional feature... You can install Foobar without the native EQ... BTW I'm using some professional DSP effect (Fabfilter plugins) for my JBL-IFI setup.

 

[JktHifi]

Foobar built-in EQ is an optional feature... You can install Foobar without the native EQ... BTW I'm using some professional DSP effect (Fabfilter plugins) for my JBL-IFI setup.

Can the Foobar exclusive audio access using it?

 

[VintageFlanker]

Have you ever felt that JRiver sounds thicker/ fatty than Foobar even if it's bit-perfect streaming?

No. I haven't.

By the way, my next review will be digital measurements of so-called bitperfect players: Audirvana VS fooobar2000 VS JRiver VS Roon.

Don't expect to see much of a difference.

 

[Eulipian]

Foobar is like a box of legos spilled on the floor....stepped on in the dark. I bought Media Monkey a decade ago and it updates regularly. It plays most anything and will fetch album intel from the intertubes and has lots of other functionality. It has some annoyances but I don't have to invent it to listen to my music.

 

[Sal1950]

In Windoz' Foobar2000
In Linux, Strawberry, super simple to get bit perfect and easy-comfortable to use.
Both great FREE players, why pay for anything else?

 

[PaperBoat]

Can the Foobar exclusive audio access using it?

Yes... I'm using IFI ASIO with VSTs...

 

[PaperBoat]

No. I haven't.

By the way, my next review will be digital measurements of so-called bitperfect players: Audirvana VS fooobar2000 VS JRiver VS Roon.

Don't expect to see much of a difference.

Foobar gonna win...