FooBar2000 vs winamp vs mpg123(ha!)

GeneWitch

I'm just curious. i downloaded foobar2000 version .9 or whatever. i just found all the asio plugins and wavpack and all that junk. and i'm having a really hard time seeing how/why it is better than winamp.

Is it a smaller memory footprint? I have 2 gigs of ram. Does it sound better? I'm using ASIO, which supposedly bypasses the software mixers altogether. Both have the same file support that i have noticed. Winamp, in my opinion, has a much nicer layout.

I keep reading "or click here for the plugin for winamp, if you're still using that" and "foobar2000 works best for this"

What are your thoughts? are there any technical merits that would cause me to want to use foobar2000 over winamp? or is it all hype?

Pap

@Wikipedia said:

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft.

Need I say more?

appearantly it has extremely good sound quality. I have extremely nice Bose speakers setup on my computer and I can most definitely not tell the difference!

anyways, what gave you the idea is was better? If you like winamp interface use it!

stolen_username

Hmm.

I actually like the user interface more. The Columns UI plugin is better than the standard UI, but I find both easier to use than Winamp.
If you ever want to do plugin development, I think foobar2000 has a better API.
ReplayGain support is built into the player itself, so there's a consistent method by which you can apply ReplayGain to most file formats instead of just a few.
It comes with some nice tools for tagging and converting files.

If the memory footprint is any smaller, I don't think it's by a significant amount, especially if you start loading on the plugins. Also, I don't buy any claims of improved sound quality, unless you're comparing the usual plugin set for files that don't come pre-rendered (module files, game music, etc.). If you don't like foobar2000, I'd suggest that you not use it.

GeneWitch

it's not that i don't like it, per se. i was just wondering if i was missing something. I use modplug tracker to play all modules, and i use ASIO on winamp and foobar. foobar does sound "louder" but that may just be placebo effect.

I was just wondering if any of you knew something about why they're calling it the "winamp replacement" and whatnot. :-)

asuffield

$500 wooden knobs.

dhromed

I tried foobar way back, (maybe it's changed since then -- maybe not), but for some odd personal reason I always liked it better when my sound player (which is in view often) looks purdy. Winamp (5) looks purdy.

For movies I use VLC, which I naturally watch fullscreen and then the interface is moot.

There is no sonud quality difference. They take the data, decompress it and send it to the sound card. End. I'm assuming that between those steps, it's possible to implement a fucked solution that degrades the sound data as it is read, but I highly, highly doubt either program does that.

One feature I find lacking or misimplemented in Winamp is playlist organization. The media lib is rather cumbersome to use for quick organization. 1000+ songs in 1 playlist is getting impractical to scroll through.

skippy

@dhromed said:

I tried foobar way back, (maybe it's changed since then -- maybe not), but for some odd personal reason I always liked it better when my sound player (which is in view often) looks purdy. Winamp (5) looks purdy.

Ever looked at the CPU usage of winamp 5 using the new UI? It's like 15% on my laptop (1.8GHz). I compile too much to afford that much wasted CPU. Winamp classic it is :)

@dhromed said:

One feature I find lacking or misimplemented in Winamp is playlist organization. The media lib is rather cumbersome to use for quick organization. 1000+ songs in 1 playlist is getting impractical to scroll through.

Amen to that. I've been meaning to write my own media library tool, as I can't seem to find anything useful on the web. Really just a front end to a relational database to allow for extended configuration. ID3 tags, "genre" and "rating" just aren't enough to organize and group music.

asuffield

@skippy said:

@dhromed said:
I tried foobar way back, (maybe it's changed since then -- maybe not), but for some odd personal reason I always liked it better when my sound player (which is in view often) looks purdy. Winamp (5) looks purdy.
Ever looked at the CPU usage of winamp 5 using the new UI? It's like 15% on my laptop (1.8GHz). I compile too much to afford that much wasted CPU. Winamp classic it is :)

While the winamp UI may be slow, this is not a valid benchmark. CPU usage does not mean what you think it means, and it almost always useless for benchmarking purposes; a system showing 50% usage will get significantly less than half as much work done as it would at 100% usage, because the system is maximally efficient when fully loaded and minimally efficient at light loads (due to overheads in the multitasking stuff).

To correctly measure how badly winamp sucks, compile a project from scratch with each one running, and measure how long it takes to complete. The difference between the two times divided by their average (so that's 2 * abs(a - b) / (a + b)) is the number you are normally interested in (1 is bad, ~0 is no real difference, >1 is awful).

skippy

@asuffield said:

While the winamp UI may be slow, this is not a valid benchmark.

I wouldn't argue that my "benchmark" isn't really a valid one. Basically pulled that # out of my ass. It was a personal decision to not waste the extra cycles on a fancy interface that I have minimized all day anyway. (Even minimized the CPU usage was higher than classic skin, for some reason). Winamp is still my player of preference though. I'll give foobar a try, since it also supports global hotkeys.