foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. Featuring a minimalist interface, it also boasts many features for metadata support and high-quality audio output. The theoretical maximum sampling rate and bit depth for audio output are both far in excess of the capacities of even professional-grade audio equipment. To maximize the audio fidelity of consumer-grade equipment, it provides noise shaping and dithering. It features a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. While the core is closed source, the author provides an extensive SDK under the BSD license, which also includes the source code for most of the components. Since version 0.9, foobar2000 supports Windows 2000 and later releases only.

Features

Core & minimal installation

• Unicode support.
• Tabbed playlists.
• Gapless playback.
• Low memory footprint.
• Customizable context menus.
• Basic single- and multi-file properties editor.
• Command-line support for named actions supported within the player.
• Media library featuring high-speed searching and arbitrary meta-data field names.
• Native cuesheet support, including internal cuesheets tagged into certain formats.
• Support for many tagging formats including ID3v2Reads all, but writes v2.4 UTF-8 only., APEv2, Vorbis, ASF and others.
• Rebindable application- or system-wide keyboard shortcuts for any action supported within the player.
• Playback of MP3, MP4, M4A, AAC, Musepack, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WMA, AU, SND, AIFF, 8SVX, IFF, and WavPack.
• Standard user-interface which integrates seamlessly with Windows and provides a minimal learning curve for new users.
• Titleformat scripting language, commonly called Tagz, which allows the user to change what metadata is shown by the player in various locations like the playlist.The official name of the language is now "Titleformat syntax," but the name Tagz is still commonly in use. The language gave rise to the Advanced Title Formatting used in Winamp 5.
• Extensive component API which allows developers to change or add almost any feature, including the user interface, decoding of unusual audio files, output to unusual devices, visualizations, and DSP effects.

Normal installation

• Replay Gain support.
• Audio CD support, including secure CD ripping.
• DSP plugins for equalization, audio limiting, and channel conversion.
• Album list component, displaying a customizable, hierarchical view of media library contents.
• Converter component which allows transcoding from any playable source to various formats.Output formats are extensible through third-party command-line encoders. Prior to v0.9, the Diskwriter component handled transcoding.

Full installation

• Transparent reading and playback of ZIP and RAR archive files.
• Advanced Masstagger component, capable of complex manipulations of metadata fields using Titleformat scripts.
• ABX comparator, allowing for scientifically-valid distinction between subtle differences in two variants of one track.

Additional components

• Convolver DSP component for impulses.
• Batch binary comparation of decoded output.
• Null output component for testing speed of decoding.
• CD burning component which uses Nero Burning ROM.
• Autoplaylist component for dynamic playlist generation and updating.
• Playback of Apple Lossless and Monkey's Audio, including .APL links.
• Playback statistics for individual files, for data such as last time of playback and times played.
• Kernel streaming and ASIO output components, which can bypass theoretical problems involving Windows' KMIXER.DLL.

Third-party components

• Last.fm support.
• Apple iPod support.

See also

• Comparison of media players

Notes

External links

Official links

• Main Page - foobar2000.org
• Forums - discussion and support
• foobar2000 Knowledgebase at Hydrogenaudio
• #foobar2000 on Freenode - discussion and support

Components

• List of components for v0.9 from the foobar2000 Knowledgebase including third-party components.
• Third-party Component Listing, including components for all versions of foobar2000.

Other

• Complete manual (for latest version)
• ShSc.info Wiki A new user guide and FAQ (0.8.3 version)

• User-compiled list of important foobar2000 sites

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