Foobar2000
Encyclopedia
foobar2000 is a freeware
audio player
for Windows
developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft
. It is known for its highly modular design
and extensive SDK
which allows third-party
developers to do such things as completely replace the interface
. While supporting a large number of audio file format
s, it has many features for metadata
support and file organization, and it has a converter interface for use with command line encoders. To maximize the audio fidelity of consumer-grade equipment, it provides noise shaping
and dither
ing. It features a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. While the core is closed source, the SDK
is licensed under the BSD license.
Since version 0.9.5, foobar2000 supports Windows XP
SP2/SP3 and later releases only. This version features a revamped default interface, with embedded support for album list, album art, spectrum visualization
, and some other features and improvements.
The name foobar
is derived from a common placeholder
name used in computer programming.
The developer of foobar2000 recently spun-off its code-base to create a simplified audio player called "Boom Audio Player".
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
audio player
Audio player (software)
An audio player is a kind of media player for playing back digital audio, including optical discs such as CDs, SACDs, DVD-Audio, HDCD, audio files and streaming audio....
for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft
Nullsoft
Nullsoft, Inc. is a software house founded in Sedona, Arizona in 1997 by Justin Frankel. Its most known products include the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. In recent years, their open source installer system, NSIS, has also risen in popularity as a widely used...
. It is known for its highly modular design
Modular programming
Modular programming is a software design technique that increases the extent to which software is composed of separate, interchangeable components called modules by breaking down program functions into modules, each of which accomplishes one function and contains everything necessary to accomplish...
and extensive SDK
Software development kit
A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
which allows third-party
Third-party software component
In computer programming, a third-party software component is a reusable software component developed to be either freely distributed or sold by an entity other than the original vendor of the development platform...
developers to do such things as completely replace the interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
. While supporting a large number of audio file format
Audio file format
An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. This data can be stored uncompressed, or compressed to reduce the file size. It can be a raw bitstream, but it is usually a container format or an audio data format with defined storage layer.-Types of...
s, it has many features for metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
support and file organization, and it has a converter interface for use with command line encoders. To maximize the audio fidelity of consumer-grade equipment, it provides noise shaping
Noise shaping
Noise shaping is a technique typically used in digital audio, image, and video processing, usually in combination with dithering, as part of the process of quantization or bit-depth reduction of a digital signal...
and dither
Dither
Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize quantization error, preventing large-scale patterns such as color banding in images...
ing. It features a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. While the core is closed source, the SDK
Software development kit
A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
is licensed under the BSD license.
Since version 0.9.5, foobar2000 supports Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
SP2/SP3 and later releases only. This version features a revamped default interface, with embedded support for album list, album art, spectrum visualization
Music visualization
Music visualization, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated imagery based on a piece of music...
, and some other features and improvements.
The name foobar
Foobar
The terms foobar /ˈfʊːbɑː/, fubar, or foo, bar, baz and qux are sometimes used as placeholder names in computer programming or computer-related documentation...
is derived from a common placeholder
Metasyntactic variable
In computer science, programmers use metasyntactic variables to describe a placeholder name or an alias term commonly used to denote the subject matter under discussion or an arbitrary member of a class of things under discussion...
name used in computer programming.
The developer of foobar2000 recently spun-off its code-base to create a simplified audio player called "Boom Audio Player".
Core features
- Audio formats supported natively: MP1, MP2MPEG-1 Audio Layer IIMPEG-1 Audio Layer II or MPEG-2 Audio Layer II is a lossy audio compression format defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 alongside MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer III...
, MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
, MPCMusepackMusepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 kbit/s...
, AACAdvanced Audio CodingAdvanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
, Ogg Vorbis, FLACFLACFLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
/ OggOggOgg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...
FLAC, ALAC, WavPackWavPackWavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format developed by David Bryant.-Features:WavPack compression can compress 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .WAV file format. It also supports surround sound streams and high frequency...
, WAVWAVWaveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
, AIFF, AUAu file formatThe Au file format is a simple audio file format introduced by Sun Microsystems. The format was common on NeXT systems and on early Web pages. Originally it was headerless, being simply 8-bit µ-law-encoded data at an 8000 Hz sample rate. Hardware from other vendors often used sample rates as...
, SNDSND (file)A SND file is a digital sound file format that was created by Apple Inc.. Data stored in such files are commands for the Macintosh Sound Manager including wavetable instruments and sound samples. Thus it is some kind of improved midi format...
, CDRed Book (audio CD standard)Red Book is the standard for audio CDs . It is named after one of the Rainbow Books, a series of books that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats.The first edition of the Red Book was released in 1980 by Philips and Sony; it was adopted by the Digital Audio Disc... - Customizable user interface layout.
- Advanced tagging capabilities.
- Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
- ReplayGain support - both playback and calculation.
- Gapless playbackGapless playbackGapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks without intervening silence or clicks at the point of the track change. Gapless playback is common with compact discs, gramophone records, or tapes, but is not always available with other formats that employ compressed...
support. - Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
- Media Library with automated folder watching.
- Built-in Windows Media streaming.
- Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.
- Ability to read within ZIPZIP (file format)Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
, GZIPGzipGzip is any of several software applications used for file compression and decompression. The term usually refers to the GNU Project's implementation, "gzip" standing for GNU zip. It is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding...
and RAR archivesArchive formatAn archive format is the file format of an archive file. The archive format is determined by the file archiver. Some archive formats are well-defined by their authors and have become conventions supported by multiple vendors and/or open-source communities....
.
Features added using optional official components
- Audio formats supported through official components: APEMonkey's AudioMonkey's Audio is a file format for audio data compression. Being a lossless format, Monkey's Audio does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as AAC, MP3, Vorbis and Musepack....
. - Playback statistics.
- Kernel streaming support.
- ASIO support.
- WASAPI output support.
- Integration with Apple iPodIPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, including album art support and automatic transcoding of audio formats not supported by iPod. - CD burning support.
- Ability to read within 7z7z7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...
archivesArchive formatAn archive format is the file format of an archive file. The archive format is determined by the file archiver. Some archive formats are well-defined by their authors and have become conventions supported by multiple vendors and/or open-source communities....
. - UPnPUniversal Plug and PlayUniversal Plug and Play is a set of networking protocols for primarily residential networks without enterprise class devices that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence...
media server. - Last.fm scrobbling and virtual radio stream playback.
External links
- Home Page - foobar2000.org
- Forums - discussion and support
- Components - Repository of all first-party and some third-party components
- foobar2000 Knowledgebase at Hydrogenaudio
- [irc://irc.freenode.net/foobar2000 #foobar2000] on freenodeFreenodefreenode, formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are all accessible from the domain name [irc://chat.freenode.net chat.freenode.net], which load balances connections by using the actual servers in rotation...
- discussion and support - How-To Guide - Details on how to use customizations and other features