Foobar or JRiver

[Old Listener]

I think this is what is meant.

Yes. My mistake.

 

[ernestcarl]

FWIW, I have an older version of JRiver running on a very old laptop. Not upgrading that particular device as there is no need to. I also keep foobar, vlc, gimp etc. around Even though I use paid programs like powerdvd and lightroom. Sure you can stick to a dedicated program, but no one is forcing anyone to use only one software.

There are some things I absolutely hate about JRiver -- lack of development in their image management capabilities, lack of features in the basic audio room correction (distance adjustment is not a real replacement for delay and is a pain to get right with the stupid sliders, not enough xo filters), don't like their headphone crossfeed -- basically the more features packed in, the more to complain about. But I use it often enough which mitigates some of the annoyances.

Foobar, though... it's FREE!, really don't have much to complain about that, and also works with most of my vst plugins just fine.

 

[dmac6419]

I was a foobar user but I switched to JRiver. JRiver is much easier to use but foobar seems much more flexible. Unfortunately JRiver keeps releasing new versions. I wouldn’t have a problem with that except they charge $20-$25 per upgrade. That’s BS. I’ll be switching back to foobar.

I use Volumio on a Raspberry Pi to play music on my stereo and headphones. JRiver/foobar is only used in my office.

Martin

You don't have to update J River at all unless you want to,if it ain't broke why try to fix it.

 

[Martin]

You don't have to update J River at all unless you want to,if it ain't broke why try to fix it.

Good to know. I’ll keep using 25.

 

[ernestcarl]

Well, some people update only every two to three years or so. That's what I do with PowerDVD, for example -- all of my BD discs still work with version 17 -- haven't yet jumped into the UHD bandwagon as I'd have to upgrade my theatre projector and older HDMI cable wiring as well. With the new subscription-only Adobe products... (more and more software are going this route) that's a whole other issue.

 

[vavan]

There are some things I absolutely hate about JRiver

oh, and it doesn't have rew peq filters import capability

 

[captain paranoia]

and also works with most of my vst plugins just fine.

That just reminded me to download and install the VST interface plug-in for MusicBee...

 

[Rockfella]

Just a new finding (I probably live under a rock) Sound cloud sounds way better than Jriver/foobar (for most recordings probably because the songs are new?)

 

[dmac6419]

Just a new finding (I probably live under a rock) Sound cloud sounds way better than Jriver/foobar (for most recordings probably because the songs are new?)

HuH

 

[mcgo]

I love fb2k since it works exactly how I want it to and does not force anything, especially those horrible “index all your files” db type deals. And I appreciate Peter’s way of thinking about software. No bloat!

My happy mode of operation is to have “playlist tabs” up top, which I name and curate, usually one tab per artist — though I also use additional artist tabs for CDDA, VinylRip, DSD, VinylDSD, 24bit, Boot etc. if need be (aah choice!) Then I have the main view group by album, which is usually sorted by year, manually or otherwise. Down the bottom left I’ll show cover art and to the right of that I have waveform minibar, which is nice. Stock colors and fonts.

Necessary components for me are usf decoder (n64), openmpt (amiga mod), monkeys audio (ape), sacd (iso/dsf), upnp mediarenderer, and wasapi. Pretty lean!

And the funny thing is, this is all on Debian Linux via WINE! It works 100% - gold level compatibility. Even drag and drop to playlists from file explorer works. Audio output is via ethernet/UPNP to my upmpdcli/MPD server on pi4. No native player can match this. I’ve looked.

Actually, "Stop after current" in the playback menu was my feature request. Been using it ever since. That is a long time, roughly 16 years.

Wow, I use that feature all the time to nicely end my listening session. Thanks!

 

[majingotan]

Wouldn't ever trade Foobar2000 to any music player since it's the leanest music program I've ever used using 0% of my 2.5 GHz dual core laptop and only 14.2 MB of RAM playing ALAC files

 

[NTomokawa]

Other: MusicBee.

I never understood how Foobar2000's "playlists" worked. Musicbee is the first software that allows me to treat albums as playlists.

 

[Sal1950]

To me my library of music should look like a cascading menu. Easy to visually scan and find the desired artist. Nice simple Linux players like Strawberry, Cantata, or DeaDBeeF fill the bill just right. Add bit perfect streaming out to my multich pre/pro and I've got all I need.

 

[Rockfella]

Wouldn't ever trade Foobar2000 to any music player since it's the leanest music program I've ever used using 0% of my 2.5 GHz dual core laptop and only 14.2 MB of RAM playing ALAC files

View attachment 42525

This (low on resources) is probably the best feature of foobar.

 

[garson]

Wouldn't ever trade Foobar2000 to any music player since it's the leanest music program I've ever used using 0% of my 2.5 GHz dual core laptop and only 14.2 MB of RAM playing ALAC files

This (low on resources) is probably the best feature of foobar.

XMPlay easily beats this. Playing WV file (I don't have alac at the moment).

 

[Rockfella]

XMPlay easily beats this. Playing WV file (I don't have alac at the moment).

Try with ALAC and update if possible thx.

 

[garson]

Try with ALAC and update if possible thx.

Sure. Here it is, nothing has changed, which I expected.

Most resource intensive I have is new wavepack DSD which bumps up memory usage to ~6MB.

 

[majingotan]

XMPlay easily beats this. Playing WV file (I don't have alac at the moment).

Only 52 process? Mine’s more than 3x than that but then again I use a lot of the services and some other startup program that keeps my work teamviewer stuff, calendar, other syncing stuff schedule working reliably.

 

[garson]

Well I pretty much just use Firefox and listen to music. And it is my old Windows 7 x64 computer.

Upper comparison we made is not apples to apples. So I "installed" latest foobar version (portable), with minimal installation (unchecked Optional Features). I just added ASIO output to match what I have in XMPlay.
Here are some results:
Foobar playing alac file (it is better then what majingotan has on Win10 but still a lot behind XMPlay)

But I see that in case of asio output there's another process ASIOhost32.exe (not sure why?) that is spawned by foobar.
That one is 1.8MB.

This is all with default foobar settings, meaning no read-ahead and full file buffering. So to match what I have in XMPlay (500MB of buffering), I added that in foobar and tested again with alac.
Now foobar goes to 29MB.

If we compare file sizes of some plugins, for example APE, foobar's (foo_input_monkey.dll) is 330KB and XMPlay's (xmp-ape.dll) is just 32KB.
Foobar's asio (foo_out_asio.dll) is 179KB and XMPlay's (xmp-asio.dll) is just 9KB.
Maybe these is one of reasons for lower resource usage of XMPlay.

 

[Fleuch]

Did anybody try Audirvana for Windows? The ears have it, but the specification suggests it is value-for-my-money compared to JRiver.