Best windows software player

[fiske]

Been reading this thread and me myself settled on using Foobar several years ago.

Never looked back. Tried several solutions at the time, but none of them where close to Foobar including the DarkOne 3.1 skin plus the SACD plugin.

My stereo collection is stored on 2 x 4TB disk (plus 2x backup, so 3 copies).

One disk stores music in PCM (Flac) and the other DSD (DSF) files. All stored in a tree structure in the following structure ; Artist => Album => Songs.

I have had to store on different diskdrives because of diskspace neeeded for my collection.

I have CD's in a "PCM" folder (16 bits 44.1KHz). All higher formats in a "PCM HD" folder . The other disk is for DSD files in DSF fomat. I think I have approximatly the same "volume" of files in PCM as in DSD.

 

Currently I do not do upsampling because my Wyred4Sound DAC 2DSDse handles "all" formats on the fly.

The Foobar skin that Tedgo built fits my needs perfectly. I use my 42" TV to navigate and when tagging is done "correctly" it serves my needs and sounds fantastic.

One of the most important things I have used a lot of time on is to get the tagging of the files correctly.

 

I know there might be other nice solutions out there and I also bought JRiver som years ago, but never liked the GUI.

Tedgo is now updating DarkOne.

I thought I could give some links that might be useful if anyone is interested in Foobar. Check also Foobar Mobile for Android and IOS.

Links:

DarkOne 3.1: DarkOne v3.1 by tedgo on DeviantArt

DarkOne 4.0: DarkOne v4 by tedgo on DeviantArt

DarkOne 4.0Mod_V1: DarkOne4Mod v1 by tedgo on DeviantArt

SACD decoder: https://sourceforge.net/projects/sacddecoder/

Foobar for Dummies: https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/digital/pc-software/foobar-2000-for-dummies-part-3-new-experimental-sacd-plugin-v-0-9-x/

Great source for learning and setting up Computer Audio: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/index.html

 

And of course this site is a must read to learn about Computer Audio.

I have the last year ripped everything I have and only use a PC to playback music. In addition I find Foobar to be perfect also for Multi Channel music. I have around a 1000 MCH disks stored in PCM and DSD format in addition to my 2channel ripped disks.

 

All the best. And remember to listen to the music. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

And when free even better :-)

[fiske]

+1

 

I actually have been looking for a nice foobar skin...will definitely check it out.

Since you know foobar, just curious....why don't they have skins that have SACD and upnp plugins implemented, or they are not allowed to? It would be nice if they could.

 

I think that would take too much time from the developers working on the core part of Foobar as they focus on the basics for the player.

 

Foobar is a powerful open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the basic player, including the ability to fully replace the user interface.

Foobar is relying on others to extend functonality. SACD is f.ex done by Maxim. To install the SACD plugin it's a must do to read the "Foobar for Dummies".

In addition there is an upnp plugin. Have a look at the Component page at Foobar's website.

 

I find Foobar very easy to use and you can get it set-up to look very Roon-alike based on the DarkOne skins.

If you have look at the component page for Foobar it's quite many that can be installed. Most of them are just a .dll extension.

 

I think the reason The plugins live there own life is that the plugin "owners" then feel responsibiity for it and the users of the component can ask the developer directly.