foobar2000
foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface. While supporting a large number of audio file formats, it has many features for metadata support and file organization, and it has a converter interface for use with command line encoders. 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 SDK is licensed under the BSD license.
Since version 0.9.5, foobar2000 supports Windows XP and later releases only. This version features a revamped default interface, with embedded support for album list, album art, spectrum visualization, and some other features and improvements.
The name foobar is derived from a common placeholder name used in computer programming.
Features
- Powerful open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player, including the ability to fully replace the user interface.
- Full Unicode support: File names, user interface, tagging, etc.
- Replay Gain support: Both playback and writing ReplayGain information to file tags.
- Gapless playback.
- Advanced tagging capabilities - through built-in Properties dialog and various optional tagging-related components.
- Built-in Media Library functionality.
- Intuitive query syntax for searching the Media Library.
- Autoplaylist support: Generate dynamically updating playlists based on queries.
- Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
- Support for trans coding all supported audio formats using the Converter component (requires external command-line encoder executables for different output formats).
- Secure CD ripping.
- Streaming support.
- Efficient handling of large playlists.
- User interface with simple configuration to create even complex layouts quickly and easily.
- Highly customizable display of track information using title formatting scripts.
