- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
- Date added: January 11, 2010
- Total Downloads: 190,463
- Downloads last week: 720
- See full specifications
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 96 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: Seth Rosenblatt on January 11, 2010
This venerable and free alternative audio player has long been appreciated by hard-core customization enthusiasts, but Foobar2000 isn't just for early adopters or software jukebox fetishists. It doesn't mess with fancy buttons or bright colors, instead preferring a utilitarian, straightforward user interface to let the music speak for itself.
Foobar2000 uses tabs and panels to help the user navigate its plain, but functional, user interface. You can customize the interface using several layout options. Menu options and recognizable command buttons reside at the top of the window. Two panels, each with tabbed menus, reside on the left side of the window. From there, you can view the album list and the properties of a selected artist or song. You'll also find tabs for viewing a spectrogram, a spectrum, and VU meter of music currently being played. The largest panel displays track lists. Using the menu options, we were able to successfully pull music files from a CD, load them into the player, play them without issues, and save them as MP3s or WAVs. You can also display album art, and synchronize with portable players including iPods.
Though we would have liked to have seen a built-in help feature, the program does include a link that takes users to an FAQ page through the publisher's site. Both novice and advanced users will appreciate this program's easy navigation and straightforward style. Although many people might prefer a jukebox that looks more like iTunes, we highly recommend Foobar2000.
Publisher's description
From Peter Pawlowski :Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint and native support for several popular audio formats.
What's new in this version:
- You can make a fresh portable install in a separate folder for testing purposes, instead of overwriting your existing 0.9.x installation - no changes will be made to your existing install or to your configuration.
- Configuration of individual components is now stored in separate files. Reading of old configuration files is still supported so your settings will be preserved while upgrading from older versions; however you will not be able to downgrade back to older 0.9.x releases... see all new features
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 96 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 6 user reviewsSee all 6 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
Version: Foobar2000 1.0
"Great media player but limited to playing music."
Pros: Easy to install and use. Does what is supposed to and very configurable in terms of designing your own interface.
Cons: Limited to playing music. :(
Summary: Foobar is great but it could be better if it would be able to play videos. :)
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Version: Foobar2000 1.0
"Small, effective, to the point. A great app"
Pros: Easy to work with, makes great playlists. Sounds impressive.
Cons: Nothing at all. It plays audio files, and that's it.
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Version: Foobar2000 1.0
"Insofar, it is the best player I know"
Pros: It has a good repertoire if codecs, I can play whatever I want
Cons: For many people It could be the austerity of the intrface. For me it is OK as it is
Summary: Actually, it is the only one I use to listen to music. I have eliminated from my computers all other music players.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Foobar2000 1.0
"It's a minimalist's dream come true!"
Pros: Very little is required from a hardware point of view. When playing music, it only uses 11MB of RAM on my computer! Also when you make changes to your music folders, you will see the changes in foobar the instant you make the changes. See summary.
Cons: The visualizations could be better; they're too simple. Foobar may also take some time to get use to if you are switching from a fully-featured, shiny GUI, type of music manager, such as iTunes.
Summary: Also the global shortcuts makes multitasking faster and easier. I don't have to switch to foobar to change the song. I just press the shortcut key no matter which application I'm in. Also the search feature is really fast as well.
If you ... read more >> -
Version: Foobar2000 1.0
Pros: It uses almost no ram / cpu, always works, easy to use!
Cons: The only bad thing about it is that you can't watch videos with it...but there are other programs for that (like vlc)
- See all 6 user reviews Write review
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