12 ms·

Foobar is one of the greatest pieces of software ever and Linux music software only dreams it can be as good as Foobar.

29athrowaway 5y ago
Doubtful. With Linux you can setup a streaming server and stream your music across different devices. You can automatically download covers and lyrics for each song and automatically organize and index your collection for search.
- jjulius 5y ago
  ... you can do all of those things on Windows and Mac, too.
- FranzFerdiNaN 5y ago
  > You can automatically download covers and lyrics for each song and automatically organize and index your collection for search. I did this in like 2008 already, on windows.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  I have yet to find a Linux app as amazing as mp3tag
  - rK5Q58 5y ago
    Idk what you mean by "Linux app" but I use beet[1] and it's superior to any manual tagger software I've used. [1] https://beets.io/ https://beets.io/
  - youngNed 5y ago
    I have to agree, and its a piece of software I think a lot about. It doesn't do anything particularly special, if you look at the list of features you could list off many others that do the same, and many do much more. I like cli software, and should be drawn to beets, but yet... but yet, i still paid 20 for mp3tag and i would do it again
  - deadbunny 5y ago
    Musicbrainz Picard is my tagger of choice, highly recommend it.
- hffftz 5y ago
arsome 5y ago
Foobar may have more customization potential, but for my preferred layout, Clementine or Amarok 1.x were comparable if not superior options.
- peruvian 5y ago
  I ended up switching to MusicBee (https://www.getmusicbee.com/ https://www.getmusicbee.com/), before switching to macOS. It's not as snappy but I liked the default UI and had all the batteries I needed. Also back then they had this concept of an "Inbox" for new albums, which was a special playlist of newly scanned music that you then could "move" to your library. It was good for vetting new albums before the era of streaming/YouTube.
  - monkpit 5y ago
    That’s a really clever solution to an annoying problem. Before music streaming, I would sometimes order 10+ CDs on Amazon and import them all (without knowing if I liked them, just on a hunch). Then I just ended up with lots of musical clutter in my library.
hlandau 5y ago
I've used Linux as a desktop since 2013 and to this day I still use foobar2000 as my music player under wine because I've never found anything better.
- ropeladder 5y ago
  Same. Deadbeef comes close but it doesn't support all my foobar2000 metadata.
  - stereolambda 5y ago
    Can people who feel similar share what metadata do they miss the most? Maybe I'm a caveman, but I feel mostly satisfied with artist/title/album, plus maybe the year at most. I came to use filesystem directories for genre/mood tagging and then also artist/album obviously. It's crude, but usable and easily portable. I'm not claiming this is all one can wish for, but I'm curious. For this kind of library I found Audacious (minimalistic, supports Winamp skins) and QMPlay 2 to be good. The latter supports and remembers your folder tree, has a very cool widget system and can be also used for videos (music or otherwise).
    - volkl48 5y ago
      I collect live recordings, so there's a bunch of less common stuff I use a good bit: Date performed, handle of who recorded it, tour, a personal rating system for the recording quality, additional artists (special guests + the like), and general comments I might want attached to the file. ("clips at 0:40" or "heckler in the quiet part"). I may have 20 copies of the same song, and I may even have multiple recordings of the same song on the same night from different people. At least for some artists, there's a huge number of show recordings out there. The guy who maintains the (unofficial, although known and tolerated by the artist) live archive for Nine Inch Nails is up to >1,000 recordings, for example.
    - ropeladder 5y ago
      Now that I think about it it may have been that there was info in foobar's media library database that wasn't supported, not necessarily id3 tags. Play count and last played date are some I'm partial to that I couldn't get working. I also use album artist a lot, though that's probably supported.
ibz 5y ago
Foobar2000 was my favorite as well back in my Windows days. But on Linux I think cmus does a great job. What exactly does Foobar2000 have that cmus doesn't?
- jcpst 5y ago
  Windows -> foobar2000 Linux, Mac -> cmus
  - nyolfen 5y ago
    someone should really port cmus to use bubbletea/bubbles https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbles https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbles
- thomond 5y ago
  Does cmus even support MPRIS out of the box? Last time I used it it didn't.
  - lightbulbjim 5y ago
    It did last time I used it (a few years ago now).
matheusmoreira 5y ago
I really like music player daemon on Linux. Is foobar actually superior at reproducing sound?
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  The result of decoding music files is deterministic and well defined, so essentially: they will all sound the same, unless one of them is screwing something up. Some may handle sample rate conversion better than others. Foobar's FAQ says as much: https://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ https://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ
  - out_of_protocol 5y ago
    Only if system mixer is bypassed Not sure about linux, but on windows, macos, android difference is huge if you have some good DAC & headphones
- out_of_protocol 5y ago
  foobar can do bitperfect output. MPD too, given configured properly. A lot of players is missing this option (specifically bypassing system mixer), and it making sound noticably worse. On MacOS situation is dire (there are some players, but their UX is terrible, imo)
- Dah00n 5y ago
  No, the quality of the sound itself isn't better. If anything a higher quality pipeline is easier in Linux IMO.
- entropie 5y ago
  > music player daemon I use it for like 15 years now. No other player is that versatile. Client/Server, very stable, small resource footprint. Recently I used mpd to play audiobooks and live radio streams on my headless server. MPD uses icecast to make the stream available in my local network so I can use chromecast and/or google assistants to listen to the streams. Its more or less running transparent in the background and iam very glad I found this solution.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
distances 5y ago
Foobar2000 was the hardest app to replace when I switched from Windows to Linux. I finally settled with Clementine which is great too, but that was basically the end for my music collection, organization and rating hobby. I had even built my own replacement to Last.fm/Audioscrobbler backed with a local database as I wasn't happy with their feature sets, and I meticulously kept all tracks uniquely identifiable with full tagging to derive some data of my listening habits. That all basically ended -- instead of being an active process and participating in vibrant communities my music listening changed to just that, listening. The eventual switch to Spotify was much less dramatic for me. Sure it was replaced with something else to tinker on, but some of my fondest computing memories are thanks to foobar2000.
- cmehdy 5y ago
  Same thing with a move to Mac over a decade ago. I still feel icky that most of the stuff I've listened to this past decade is archived on such a closed platform, and once in a while it itches enough that I use a downloader of sorts to try and at least archive them somewhere. But the curated library of tags, endless dynamic playlist generation, and aimless wandering through torrents and articles are all but gone. And along with it a certain aspect of the love for music.
- tryauuum 5y ago
  I've recently settled with running foobar2000 in wine
- jszymborski 5y ago
  Clementine development seems to have slowed down these days, but there is an active fork called Strawberry which I'm a big fan of. https://strawberrymusicplayer.org/ https://strawberrymusicplayer.org/
- suby 5y ago
  I had a similar experience. I tried every linux music player I could find, nothing came close to foobar. I also settled on Clementine which I still use, but I stopped collecting and organizing music locally as a result of the switch. I even spent some time coding a new music player before deciding to just settle on clementine.
hestefisk 5y ago
X11amp ftw.
agumonkey 5y ago
yeah it's dev (or dev team) deserves kudos for making something so lean and neat
globular-toast 5y ago
I haven't touched Windows in over 10 years (Linux only) and foobar2000 is the only piece of software I miss. It wasn't the UI or anything. Amarok is probably better. It was just how solid the software felt. foobar2000 was the only thing I could trust to send the right bits to my soundcard when I wanted them to be sent. All other audio software felt like the actual audio part was an afterthought and a hack that just barely worked.
- oblak 5y ago
  can't easily use it with wine, though?
Sniffnoy 5y ago
I just run Foobar under Wine. It works fine.
svl 5y ago
gmusicbrowser (combined with Ex Falso for more extensive tagging) has replaced foobar2000 for me, and I _think_ that these days I like it even better than I ever liked foobar2000 - but maybe that's just the long years making my memories of its greatness somewhat hazy...
puzzlingcaptcha 5y ago
DeaDBeeF is probably as close as you can get https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/ https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/
notesinthefield 5y ago
I quite enjoy Strawberry https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org
anthk 5y ago
MPD + any client even from the phone across home, or even the world. Who is dreaming now?
HKH2 5y ago
Nope. For Foobar to have the functionality of my player, I'd have to write a plugin for it, and I have no intention of doing that for closed source software.

Doubtful. With Linux you can setup a streaming server and stream your music across different devices. You can automatically download covers and lyrics for each song and automatically organize and index your collection for search.

jjulius 5y ago
... you can do all of those things on Windows and Mac, too.
FranzFerdiNaN 5y ago
> You can automatically download covers and lyrics for each song and automatically organize and index your collection for search. I did this in like 2008 already, on windows.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
I have yet to find a Linux app as amazing as mp3tag
- rK5Q58 5y ago
  Idk what you mean by "Linux app" but I use beet[1] and it's superior to any manual tagger software I've used. [1] https://beets.io/ https://beets.io/
- youngNed 5y ago
  I have to agree, and its a piece of software I think a lot about. It doesn't do anything particularly special, if you look at the list of features you could list off many others that do the same, and many do much more. I like cli software, and should be drawn to beets, but yet... but yet, i still paid 20 for mp3tag and i would do it again
- deadbunny 5y ago
  Musicbrainz Picard is my tagger of choice, highly recommend it.
hffftz 5y ago

arsome 5y ago

Foobar may have more customization potential, but for my preferred layout, Clementine or Amarok 1.x were comparable if not superior options.

peruvian 5y ago
I ended up switching to MusicBee (https://www.getmusicbee.com/ https://www.getmusicbee.com/), before switching to macOS. It's not as snappy but I liked the default UI and had all the batteries I needed. Also back then they had this concept of an "Inbox" for new albums, which was a special playlist of newly scanned music that you then could "move" to your library. It was good for vetting new albums before the era of streaming/YouTube.
- monkpit 5y ago
  That’s a really clever solution to an annoying problem. Before music streaming, I would sometimes order 10+ CDs on Amazon and import them all (without knowing if I liked them, just on a hunch). Then I just ended up with lots of musical clutter in my library.

hlandau 5y ago

I've used Linux as a desktop since 2013 and to this day I still use foobar2000 as my music player under wine because I've never found anything better.

ropeladder 5y ago
Same. Deadbeef comes close but it doesn't support all my foobar2000 metadata.
- stereolambda 5y ago
  Can people who feel similar share what metadata do they miss the most? Maybe I'm a caveman, but I feel mostly satisfied with artist/title/album, plus maybe the year at most. I came to use filesystem directories for genre/mood tagging and then also artist/album obviously. It's crude, but usable and easily portable. I'm not claiming this is all one can wish for, but I'm curious. For this kind of library I found Audacious (minimalistic, supports Winamp skins) and QMPlay 2 to be good. The latter supports and remembers your folder tree, has a very cool widget system and can be also used for videos (music or otherwise).
  - volkl48 5y ago
    I collect live recordings, so there's a bunch of less common stuff I use a good bit: Date performed, handle of who recorded it, tour, a personal rating system for the recording quality, additional artists (special guests + the like), and general comments I might want attached to the file. ("clips at 0:40" or "heckler in the quiet part"). I may have 20 copies of the same song, and I may even have multiple recordings of the same song on the same night from different people. At least for some artists, there's a huge number of show recordings out there. The guy who maintains the (unofficial, although known and tolerated by the artist) live archive for Nine Inch Nails is up to >1,000 recordings, for example.
  - ropeladder 5y ago
    Now that I think about it it may have been that there was info in foobar's media library database that wasn't supported, not necessarily id3 tags. Play count and last played date are some I'm partial to that I couldn't get working. I also use album artist a lot, though that's probably supported.

ibz 5y ago

Foobar2000 was my favorite as well back in my Windows days. But on Linux I think cmus does a great job. What exactly does Foobar2000 have that cmus doesn't?

jcpst 5y ago
Windows -> foobar2000 Linux, Mac -> cmus
- nyolfen 5y ago
  someone should really port cmus to use bubbletea/bubbles https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbles https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbles
thomond 5y ago
Does cmus even support MPRIS out of the box? Last time I used it it didn't.
- lightbulbjim 5y ago
  It did last time I used it (a few years ago now).

matheusmoreira 5y ago

I really like music player daemon on Linux. Is foobar actually superior at reproducing sound?

JohnBooty 5y ago
The result of decoding music files is deterministic and well defined, so essentially: they will all sound the same, unless one of them is screwing something up. Some may handle sample rate conversion better than others. Foobar's FAQ says as much: https://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ https://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ
- out_of_protocol 5y ago
  Only if system mixer is bypassed Not sure about linux, but on windows, macos, android difference is huge if you have some good DAC & headphones
out_of_protocol 5y ago
foobar can do bitperfect output. MPD too, given configured properly. A lot of players is missing this option (specifically bypassing system mixer), and it making sound noticably worse. On MacOS situation is dire (there are some players, but their UX is terrible, imo)
Dah00n 5y ago
No, the quality of the sound itself isn't better. If anything a higher quality pipeline is easier in Linux IMO.
entropie 5y ago
> music player daemon I use it for like 15 years now. No other player is that versatile. Client/Server, very stable, small resource footprint. Recently I used mpd to play audiobooks and live radio streams on my headless server. MPD uses icecast to make the stream available in my local network so I can use chromecast and/or google assistants to listen to the streams. Its more or less running transparent in the background and iam very glad I found this solution.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

distances 5y ago

Foobar2000 was the hardest app to replace when I switched from Windows to Linux. I finally settled with Clementine which is great too, but that was basically the end for my music collection, organization and rating hobby. I had even built my own replacement to Last.fm/Audioscrobbler backed with a local database as I wasn't happy with their feature sets, and I meticulously kept all tracks uniquely identifiable with full tagging to derive some data of my listening habits. That all basically ended -- instead of being an active process and participating in vibrant communities my music listening changed to just that, listening. The eventual switch to Spotify was much less dramatic for me. Sure it was replaced with something else to tinker on, but some of my fondest computing memories are thanks to foobar2000.

cmehdy 5y ago
Same thing with a move to Mac over a decade ago. I still feel icky that most of the stuff I've listened to this past decade is archived on such a closed platform, and once in a while it itches enough that I use a downloader of sorts to try and at least archive them somewhere. But the curated library of tags, endless dynamic playlist generation, and aimless wandering through torrents and articles are all but gone. And along with it a certain aspect of the love for music.
tryauuum 5y ago
I've recently settled with running foobar2000 in wine
jszymborski 5y ago
Clementine development seems to have slowed down these days, but there is an active fork called Strawberry which I'm a big fan of. https://strawberrymusicplayer.org/ https://strawberrymusicplayer.org/
suby 5y ago
I had a similar experience. I tried every linux music player I could find, nothing came close to foobar. I also settled on Clementine which I still use, but I stopped collecting and organizing music locally as a result of the switch. I even spent some time coding a new music player before deciding to just settle on clementine.

hestefisk 5y ago

X11amp ftw.

agumonkey 5y ago

yeah it's dev (or dev team) deserves kudos for making something so lean and neat

globular-toast 5y ago

I haven't touched Windows in over 10 years (Linux only) and foobar2000 is the only piece of software I miss. It wasn't the UI or anything. Amarok is probably better. It was just how solid the software felt. foobar2000 was the only thing I could trust to send the right bits to my soundcard when I wanted them to be sent. All other audio software felt like the actual audio part was an afterthought and a hack that just barely worked.

oblak 5y ago
can't easily use it with wine, though?

Sniffnoy 5y ago

I just run Foobar under Wine. It works fine.

svl 5y ago

gmusicbrowser (combined with Ex Falso for more extensive tagging) has replaced foobar2000 for me, and I _think_ that these days I like it even better than I ever liked foobar2000 - but maybe that's just the long years making my memories of its greatness somewhat hazy...

puzzlingcaptcha 5y ago

DeaDBeeF is probably as close as you can get https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/ https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/

notesinthefield 5y ago

I quite enjoy Strawberry https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org

anthk 5y ago

MPD + any client even from the phone across home, or even the world. Who is dreaming now?

HKH2 5y ago

Nope. For Foobar to have the functionality of my player, I'd have to write a plugin for it, and I have no intention of doing that for closed source software.