Foobar2000

From Free net encyclopedia

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. Featuring a minimalist interface, it also boasts many features for metadata support and high-quality audio output. The theoretical maximum sampling rate and bit depth for audio output are both far in excess of the capacities of even professional-grade audio equipment. To maximize the audio fidelity of consumer-grade equipment, it provides noise shaping and dithering. It features a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. While the core is closed source, the author provides an extensive SDK under the BSD license, which also includes the source code for most of the components. From version 0.9, there is only support for Windows XP and 2000, or later.

1 Notable features
2 See also
3 External links
- 3.1 Official Links
- 3.2 Other

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Notable features

Some of these features are supported through third-party plugins.

Straightforward scripting language called TAGZ which allows the user to change what metadata is shown by the player in various locations like the playlist.
Unicode support on NT-based versions of Windows.
Tabbed playlists.
Highly flexible and well-designed component API which allows developers to change or add almost any feature, including the user interface, decoding of unusual audio files, output to unusual devices, visualizations, and DSP effects.
Built-in Replay Gain support.
Gapless playback
Converter component which allows transcoding from any playable source to various formats (extensible via the API). Prior to v.9, the Diskwriter component handled transcoding.
Low memory footprint.
Standard user-interface which integrates seamlessly with Windows and provides a minimal learning curve for new users.
Kernel streaming output component, which can bypass theoretical problems involving Windows' KMIXER.DLL.
Support for many tagging formats including ID3v2 (reads all, but writes v2.4 UTF-8 only), APEv2, Vorbis, ASF and others.
Last.fm support. (through a plugin)
Apple iPod support. (through a plugin)
Built-in support for application- or system-wide keyboard shortcuts for any action supported within the player.
Multi-file tag editor, capable of editing any metadata fields.
Lively and committed user-base.