Overview

Foobar2000 is one of the best audio players in regards to the Windows platform. The main strength of this tool is the support for almost all of the audio formats out there – without any plug-ins – that you want to download and install. Foobar2000 lets the music speak for itself as it is a pretty straightforward tool without any fancy looking buttons or complicated interface. Let’s take a closer look at this audio player and its features.

Installation

Foobar2000 is a great definition of lightweight. With a setup kit of just 3MB in size, the installation is fast and if you blink once, you could miss it! Well, perhaps not that fast but you get my drift. Foobar2000 is designed to work on the Windows operating systems and it doesn’t come with other bundled software. Let’s move on to the good stuff and analyze foobar2000’s interface.

Interface

A plain and simple UI is used by foobar2000 and it looks effortlessly great. The interface is clean, easy to use and intuitive. The plain but otherwise functional interface is navigated by using tabs and panels. Several layout options are provided through which you can customize the interface too. The two panels, each with tabbed menus, give you lots of info regarding an album, artist or a specific song. The straightforward style of its interface makes foobar2000 very appealing to beginners as well.

Pros

Foobar2000 is called an audio player but the truth is that it is much more than just that. Its functionality is unbeatable in my opinion. Many audio formats including the usual .mp3 as well as music formats such as .flac are handled by this open-source software. The advantages of foobar2000 are the fast and effective conversion with no loss of quality as well as the fact that it can play these formats seamlessly. The target tracks just have to be highlighted and with a right click, the converting can begin. The tracks can be converted to almost any format. For example, a 320mb .flac album to .wav was done in less than two minutes. Pretty impressive, isn’t it? The other outstanding feature of foobar2000 is its playback. It is certainly unrivalled. You are provided with equalizers, preset profiles and all the usual effects such as extra bass, treble and more. Other features of foobar2000 include CD ripping and the possibility of organizing media libraries.

Cons

There aren’t any real cons when we’re talking about foobar2000. Some may be disappointed from its very simple interface that lacks any graphical appeal. But when we have such a solid and feature-packed software product, all of this fades away and just isn’t a cause for concern.

Alternatives

iTunes, Songbird, the popular Winamp, Rhythmbox, MediaMonkey and many more audio players out there are some of the alternatives to foobar2000. Some may be better looking, boasting a sleek interface, but when it comes down to pure functionality, foobar2000 doesn’t have a rival!

Conclusion

Foobar2000 is a solid audio player that both novice and advanced users will appreciate. The ripping and conversion features are outstanding. Moreover, it supports almost any audio format you can think of. All these factors combined make foobar2000 one of the best audio players at the moment.