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Foobar2000

foobar2000.org

71–80 of 193 posts

Re: Foobar2000

#71
post #64

Bit of a tangent but it's kind of infuriating to me that I still haven't found anything better than Winamp (or Foobar for that matter) on a modestly powerful Windows machine. Even 20 years ago, I could literally just right-click on an entire folder sitting on my external hard-drive, and it would immediately enqueue all of those files into Winamp. I even had a bunch of Winamp plugins that could automatically handle my…

>Even 20 years ago, I could literally just right-click on an entire folder sitting on my external hard-drive, and it would immediately enqueue all of those files into Winamp. VLC? Right click on folder > Play with VLC media player Works with any media file. Takes like 2 seconds to open my Youtube local backup folder with +10k videos

Have you used VLC? It's powerful and compatible, sure, but the UI is janky as all get out.

Re: Foobar2000

#72
post #60
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharings platforms still exist, they just get less mainstream exposure, for obvious reasons. They are also more exclusive and generally require more effort than back in the days.

It's still extremely simple to get music without having to put up with snobbish exclusive communities. Most basic solution is getting JDownloader and just copying a YouTube link with a song or playlist. If you want album releases, I could list half a dozen publicly accessible sites off the top of my head that don't require you to sign up and don't require you to beg somebody for an invite and don't require you to ful…

I don't know where you get that snobbish vibe from (maybe my comment, in which case it wasn't intentional), but of course it's easy to just use yt-dlp or whatever. The places I frequent come with curation, organization, quality control and a community of people who deeply care about music which is something I value a lot.

Seeding, uploading and staying in it for the long haul is a lot more work than just buying a Spotify subscription and certainly not for everyone, but as someone who is constantly disappointed by the selection available on streaming services and also need local files for DJing, I couldn't imagine living without it.

Re: Foobar2000

#73

The author on why Foobar2000 is not open source: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,31222.msg270982.html#...

>The SDK is there to allow people to add whatever features they want. If there is something they can't add with what the SDK provides, then either it requires changes breaking component compatibility (which only I could do even if the source was open), or person trying to implement the feature is doing something seriously wrong (happens very often). "Implementing that feature would break component compatibility" is n…

The maintainers of foobar have always been very opinionated, for better or worse.

I recall it pushed away a chunk of the community at least once in the past.

It's just one of those types of projects.

Re: Foobar2000

#74
post #72
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still extremely simple to get music without having to put up with snobbish exclusive communities. Most basic solution is getting JDownloader and just copying a YouTube link with a song or playlist. If you want album releases, I could list half a dozen publicly accessible sites off the top of my head that don't require you to sign up and don't require you to beg somebody for an invite and don't require you to ful…

I don't know where you get that snobbish vibe from (maybe my comment, in which case it wasn't intentional), but of course it's easy to just use yt-dlp or whatever. The places I frequent come with curation, organization, quality control and a community of people who deeply care about music which is something I value a lot. Seeding, uploading and staying in it for the long haul is a lot more work than just buying a Spo…

I got the snobbish vibe from being in these communities and wasting my time on them. It's just another form of gatekeeping.

Re: Foobar2000

#75

Bit of a tangent but it's kind of infuriating to me that I still haven't found anything better than Winamp (or Foobar for that matter) on a modestly powerful Windows machine. Even 20 years ago, I could literally just right-click on an entire folder sitting on my external hard-drive, and it would immediately enqueue all of those files into Winamp. I even had a bunch of Winamp plugins that could automatically handle my…

On a mac you could give my new app a try:

https://plastaq.com/minimoon

Re: Foobar2000

#76
post #26

It's great to see that fb2k is still around and well :) It's remarkable how they've kept the same UI since its inception, 21 years ago. It was clean, simple and intuitive back then, and still is today. Same goes for the website, now that I think of it. A true testament that simplicity trumps trend-chasing. It was my main music player after Winamp released the awful version 3.0, and I never looked back. I don't use Wi…

A remnant of simpler times. Foobar and VLC, any other software that has always worked and remained pretty much the same?

Re: Foobar2000

#77
post #26

It's great to see that fb2k is still around and well :) It's remarkable how they've kept the same UI since its inception, 21 years ago. It was clean, simple and intuitive back then, and still is today. Same goes for the website, now that I think of it. A true testament that simplicity trumps trend-chasing. It was my main music player after Winamp released the awful version 3.0, and I never looked back. I don't use Wi…

Despite somehow liking WinAmp 2 more than WinAmp 3, I could never understand why do people consider WinAMP 3 awful. Nevertheless I just switched to foobar2000 on Windows and DeaDBeeF on Linux because their UIs just are perfectly bullshit-free practical pragmatic tools and I came to feel I want a tool rather than a show.

People got used to a fairly simple and efficient UI. Version 3 was a bit of an abrupt change. A bit like today when your favourite social network completely revamps its UI for no apparent reason and makes it look fancier without adding any interesting functionality (and usually removes a couple).

It's hard to come back from that.

Re: Foobar2000

#78
post #74
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you get that snobbish vibe from (maybe my comment, in which case it wasn't intentional), but of course it's easy to just use yt-dlp or whatever. The places I frequent come with curation, organization, quality control and a community of people who deeply care about music which is something I value a lot. Seeding, uploading and staying in it for the long haul is a lot more work than just buying a Spo…

I got the snobbish vibe from being in these communities and wasting my time on them. It's just another form of gatekeeping.

You do you. After the takedowns of its predecessors (Napster, Oink, What.cd) some quite literal gatekeeping is required IMO.

Re: Foobar2000

#79
There is certainly something intangibly attractive on this era and style of software. On top of my head I'm thinking fb2k, mpc (and its forks), virtualdub, utorrent (the original 1.x series), irfanview, kerio firewall (classic 2.x series), putty, even maybe mirc and notepad++ to some degree. Small programs, classic Windows style controls, emphasis on staying out of your way, somewhat minimalistic and barebones but still remarkably powerful and capable. These to me represent the golden age of Windows.

Of all these programs (and there were many), fb2k is the one that I still use on regular basis while almost all the others have faded away.

Re: Foobar2000

#80
post #71
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even 20 years ago, I could literally just right-click on an entire folder sitting on my external hard-drive, and it would immediately enqueue all of those files into Winamp. VLC? Right click on folder > Play with VLC media player Works with any media file. Takes like 2 seconds to open my Youtube local backup folder with +10k videos

Have you used VLC? It's powerful and compatible, sure, but the UI is janky as all get out.

Yes I'm using it every single day
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