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foobar - Any Advice?

Quadaptor!

Quadaptor!

Active Member
I've gone through a bit of a journey (gawd I hate applying that word to hifi) with digital playback and I'm about ready to switch from my Windows based media player to foobar. I have my music library burned into FLAC files on my laptop and a SS backup hard drive. The files are all organized into a system that makes good sense to me. My playback systems (I have two) consists of my laptop directly linked to the USB C port on a Schiit Modi 5 on one system and the USB micro port on a Modi 3+. From what I understand, once set up foobar will work on both DACs without any further adjustments. Will the current organization of my FLAC files directly translate into the foobar environment? Also, can I download foobar onto the SS back up hard drive for playing directly from it? I'd appreciate any advice you all can provide in getting foobar set up and running with as few glitches as possible. As always, your advice and help is greatly appreciated.
 
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To get started...

Why do you wanna go foobar instead of the Windows player?

Foobar is extremely lightweit/basic, but can do amazing things, you just gotta tell/"programm" it what to do.

basic
1787329741129.png

personalized (by me)
1787329954880.png

something else
1787330167576.png

The possibilities are endless...but so might be the frustration.


It'll run from the start, you just probably can't work it the way you're used to. I have a love-hate relationship with that thing. It's great.
 
borchee said:
sibilities are endless...but so might be the frustration.


It'll run from the start, you just probably can't work it the way you're used to. I have a love-hate relationship with that thing. It's great.
Click to expand...
LOL - so true!
foobar is wonderful, once properly set up to your liking, but there's definitely a learning curve - with lots's of frustration along the way.
You pretty much have to figure everything out on your own. Not necessarily hard, but time-consuming.
I used foobar for many years, and still use it for tagging and format conversion, but have since moved on to HQPlayer as my main player.

One of the main advantages of foobar is to get away from Windows audio by setting foobar up for ASIO playback.
Your FLAC files are totally useable in foobar, and you can create and save them into playlists if you desire.
By installing foobar as portable you can put it on your external hardrive, or flashdrive if you want to.
 
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Do a portable installarion of Foobar, get it set up the way you want, copy that install to wherever you want it. It sounds like you have done the smart thing and organized your music files. Foobar has a Library viewer option "by folder structure" wich is excellent if your music is organized.
 
Yes, both outputs will appear in the output menu. Beware, though, the first time you switch outputs it defaults to full volume. If you want, I could share my theme file to get you started.
 
borchee said:
To get started...

Why do you wanna go foobar instead of the Windows player?

The possibilities are endless...but so might be the frustration.

It'll run from the start, you just probably can't work it the way you're used to. I have a love-hate relationship with that thing. It's great.
Click to expand...
Everything I've read says foobar is superior to Windows Media. How much, I don't know which is why I've put it off to last.

"The possibilities are endless....but so might be the frustration." This kind of reminds me of a Capt Kirk comment on sizing up an away team mission . But seriously, I'm into basic systems and if this translates into that then that's a good thing.

"love-hate relationship", oy vey!

Thanks much!
 
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lgdavis said:
LOL - so true!
foobar is wonderful, once properly set up to your liking, but there's definitely a learning curve - with lots's of frustration along the way.
You pretty much have to figure everything out on your own. Not necessarily hard, but time-consuming.
I used foobar for many years, and still use it for tagging and format conversion, but have since moved on to HQPlayer as my main player.

One of the main advantages of foobar is to get away from Windows audio by setting foobar up for ASIO playback.
Your FLAC files are totally useable in foobar, and you can create and save them into playlists if you desire.
By installing foobar as portable you can put it on your external hardrive, or flashdrive if you want to.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the good info!
 
Tromatic said:
Do a portable installarion of Foobar, get it set up the way you want, copy that install to wherever you want it. It sounds like you have done the smart thing and organized your music files. Foobar has a Library viewer option "by folder structure" wich is excellent if your music is organized.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your help in both posts. I'm a bit of an organization nerd and that quark served me well in my profession. I'm hoping to diretly export my FLAC file music library over to foobar, organization and all.
 
Foobar doesn't really care about how your files are organized/structured. You can tell it how to display them based on various things. You don'te have to export anything. Your music files are in a specific file on a specific drive - you just tell foobar this is his library, i.e. which folders it should include and monitor actively).

You can also tell foobar to re-organize your files/library another way.

On what principle is your library organized?...by folders/subfolders as in artist - year - album, for example.

Foobar is considered as a great player because it can, by adding plug-ins (either native or third-party), do just about every chit one could need. The visuals are also endlessly customizable with a lot of themes floating around.

I suggest:

- download it
- set the library
- create an album list panel
- set the view

or

- go deal with a theme you like...@Tromatic has offered to provide you with his, so go with it.
 
foobar will playback sacd/dsd with the correct plugins.

that's all i use foobar for. not because there is anything wrong with it but i've been using vlc for so long......
 
borchee said:
Foobar doesn't really care about how your files are organized/structured. You can tell it how to display them based on various things. You don'te have to export anything. Your music files are in a specific file on a specific drive - you just tell foobar this is his library, i.e. which folders it should include and monitor actively).

You can also tell foobar to re-organize your files/library another way.

On what principle is your library organized?...by folders/subfolders as in artist - year - album, for example.

Foobar is considered as a great player because it can, by adding plug-ins (either native or third-party), do just about every chit one could need. The visuals are also endlessly customizable with a lot of themes floating around.

I suggest:

- download it
- set the library
- create an album list panel
- set the view

or

- go deal with a theme you like...@Tromatic has offered to provide you with his, so go with it.
Click to expand...

My library is primarily jazz. It is organized into two master files identified a Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 1 contains music recorded circa 1955-1975. Phase 2 contains everything else that came afterwards. Within each master file I have content numerically and alphabetically ordered into individual subfiles. Each subfile represents a specific artists and each subfile contains numerically ordered FLAC files of their albums based on their chronological order of recording. All albums were burned from CDs.

So it goes like this:

Master File - 1 Jazz Phase I
Subfile by artist - 1 Pepper Adams
Album FLAC file - 01 Encounter 12_12_1968

To date I have 122 Subfiles ending with Larry Young. Needless to say but I have a "boat load" of (CDs) albums burned into FLAC files. So I guess I have themes and organization figured out. My next goal after foobar is to burn about a hundred LPs into FLAC files and add them to the library. But first things first.

Thanks!
 
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painttoad said:
foobar will playback sacd/dsd with the correct plugins.

that's all i use foobar for. not because there is anything wrong with it but i've been using vlc for so long......
Click to expand...
Several years ago I started burning my CD collection into FLAC files for playback from a hard drive for convenience. I don't stream and have no interest in "renting" music with a fairly extensive library that is far better curated to my taste than any streaming service could ever come close to providing. And I'm getting pretty good sound quality from my current playback system.
 
OK,

let's try this...

Download the attached file and rename it from 'theme.fth.pdf' to 'theme.fth'. I added the .pdf extension, because .fth files can't be attached. This is how my player is set - it may be to your liking or not; you can always change it.

Hopefully it'll work because I have an old version of the player installed. Either way, you'll probably have to download some components to make everything work.

- instal foobar
- open it
- click on FILE (top left corner)
- PREFERENCES
- DISPLAY
- DEFAULT USER INTERFACE
- IMPORT THEME.


Report back quckly - if you're in the states, I'm 6-9 hours ahead of your local time.
 

Attachments

borchee said:
OK,

let's try this...

Download the attached file and rename it from 'theme.fth.pdf' to 'theme.fth'. I added the .pdf extension, because .fth files can't be attached. This is how my player is set - it may be to your liking or not; you can always change it.

Hopefully it'll work because I have an old version of the player installed. Either way, you'll probably have to download some components to make everything work.

- instal foobar
- open it
- click on FILE (top left corner)
- PREFERENCES
- DISPLAY
- DEFAULT USER INTERFACE
- IMPORT THEME.


Report back quckly - if you're in the states, I'm 6-9 hours ahead of your local time.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I do loves me a check list!
 
I would chime in to encourage to get off of media player. Foobar is a very good recommendation. I prefer WACUP (a modern WinAmp clone). Music Bee is also very good. Be prepared, however, as these programs provide essentially near infinite configuration and extension like skins and plugins to add even more options. They come with oodles of choices and options and thus an enormous learning curve.

You can get all of them reading your library/libraries and playing music pretty quickly. But to me Foobar looks pretty awful out of the box. So be prepared to tweak EVERYTHING regardless of which one you choose. I find the learning curve is well worth the effort. Takes a while but hey you got all that great music to enjoy while setting it up. I've been running WACUP/Winamp for 20ish+ years. I can't live without it. Once you get off of media player you will wonder why you waited so long.
 
borchee said:
Foobar doesn't really care about how your files are organized/structured. You can tell it how to display them based on various things. You don'te have to export anything. Your music files are in a specific file on a specific drive - you just tell foobar this is his library, i.e. which folders it should include and monitor actively).

You can also tell foobar to re-organize your files/library another way.

On what principle is your library organized?...by folders/subfolders as in artist - year - album, for example.

Foobar is considered as a great player because it can, by adding plug-ins (either native or third-party), do just about every chit one could need. The visuals are also endlessly customizable with a lot of themes floating around.

I suggest:

- download it
- set the library
- create an album list panel
- set the view

or

- go deal with a theme you like...@Tromatic has offered to provide you with his, so go with it.
Click to expand...
All good info, but I just use Windows Explorer and drag & drop from there, or use "add Folder" to add the desired music folder.
I am mostly a Classical listener, but sometimes rock - mostly stuff from the 60s - 80s that I grew up with.
I have never used foobar's (or HQPlayer's) library functions.
 
lgdavis said:
All good info, but I just use Windows Explorer and drag & drop from there, or use "add Folder" to add the desired music folder.
I am mostly a Classical listener, but sometimes rock - mostly stuff from the 60s - 80s that I grew up with.
I have never used foobar's (or HQPlayer's) library functions.
Click to expand...
similar.

i have music on my server.

when on pc, i use windows explorer to open the music folder. right click on the album i want to hear for the context menu>play with vlc (or foobar. . . )...i did have to get into foobar settings to add it to the context menu whereas vlc adds it by default.

i've never seen any reason to complicate things with library options on any player i've every used.
 
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