Downloading and installing foobar2000
- Q: How do I make foobar2000 my default player?
- A: You can associate foobar2000 with different file types at ‘Preferences > File types’
- Q: External sites have version X but official site has older version Y, why?
- A: Because version X hasn’t been
officially released yet and is being tested, please stay with version Y
unless you are experiencing major problems with it and version X
appears to fix them.
- Q: Official site claims to have version X but when I download the file, I get older version Y.
- A: You are getting older file from your browser’s cache or from your ISP’s proxy. Try downloading from different locations.
Troubleshooting
- Q: ....
- A: Most technical problems can be
solved by removing any third-party components and resetting the
configuration (or doing a fresh reinstall). It is recommended that you
backup your foobar2000 directory before doing that, so you can try to
restore your old settings/components later, or help us with identifying
the exact source of the problem. Please note, that you have to backup
%APPDATA%\foobar2000 as well if you have support for user profiles
enabled.
- Q: I am experiencing high system resource usage (memory or CPU) while playing.
- A: Please disable any unneeded DSPs (such as resampler). Some of them require a lot of resources to operate.
If you use the resampler, please do not use “ultra” mode, as you are
extremely unlikely to be able to tell the difference between different
resampler modes. On normal music, you are also very unlikely to be able
to tell the difference between the resampler being enabled and
disabled, so you should reconsider if you really need it.
Some DSPs such as crossfader or gap remover need extra memory buffers
to operate; you can reduce the memory usage by changing their settings.
Also, certain output modes (Kernel Streaming) have been reported to use
excessive amounts of CPU time on certain systems.
- Q: I have a problem with one of third-party components...
- A: Please post your question on
third-party component forum. As we don’t take responsibility for
components other people make, this FAQ can’t help you any further.
- Q: Why is MP3 seeking so slow?
- A: The MP3
format doesn’t natively support sample-accurate seeking, and sample
accurate seeking is absolutely required by some features of foobar2000
(such as .CUE playback). MP3
seeking can’t be optimized neither for CBR files (frame sizes aren’t
really constant because of padding used), nor for VBR files (both Xing
and VBRI headers in those files contain only approximated info and are
useless for sample-exact seeking). Therefore MP3 seeking works by bruteforce-walking the MPEG
stream chain and is appropriately slow (this gets faster when you pass
through the same point of file for the second time because seektables
have been built in the RAM).
Tagging related questions
- Q: How can I add/remove ID3v1/ID3v2/APEv2 tags to/from my MP3 files
- A: Just use the ‘Tagging > MP3 tag types’ feature from the context menu.
- Q: How can I rename files based on information from the tags?
- A: You can find this feature at
‘File operations > Move, rename or copy files’ from the context menu
(you need to enable the Masstagger component during installation).
- Q: What tag types is foobar2000 writing to my MP3 files?
- A: foobar2000 updates existings
tags and adds ID3v1 (and ID3v2.4 if necessary) to files without tags.
ID3v2.4 is added to files with ID3v1 tags when information you are
trying to write can’t be fully stored in ID3v1.
- Q: ID3v2 tags added/modified by foobar2000 are not read from application X or portable Y. What can I do?
- A: foobar2000 writes ID3v2.4 tags
encoded as UTF-8 (specified in late 2000). Please ask the vendor of X
or Y to support this revision of the ID3v2 standard.
- Q: foobar2000 writes question marks to my ID3v1 tags. What’s going on?
- A: only ASCII characters are allowed in ID3v1. Any other characters are replaced by question marks on rewrites.
Other questions
- Q: I am having a problem with title formatting strings...
- A: Please read included help (help
button in ‘Preferences > Display > Title formatting’), most of
title formatting features are explained there. Additionally, you can
get more help here
- Q: In what order should my DSPs be placed?
- A: In descending order (about all of them are optional): Resampler ⇒ [Other DSPs] ⇒ Volume Control ⇒ [One of limiters]
- Q: What resampler settings should I use?
- A: First, you shouldn’t use
resampler at all, unless you can tell the difference between resampling
being enabled and disabled; resampler is a resource hog and the
differences on normal music are very small and virtually impossible to
notice (only certain “test signals” such as udial.wav may sound
obviously different, but nothing like that occurs in real music). If
you really have to use resampler, resample to 48000Hz 1)
and use fastest settings. You don’t “gain quality” by resampling to
higher samplerate, it’s just like stretching a picture to display it on
a higher-resolution screen. You will be most likely able to “play”
96000Hz samplerates on whatever card you have, but samplerates
unsupported by hardware will be downsampled by to e.g. 48000Hz before
reaching your soundcard.
- Q: Does foobar2000 sound better than other players?
- A: No. Most of “sound quality
differences” people “hear” are placebo effect (at least with real
music), as actual differences in produced sound data are below their
noise floor (1 or 2 last bits in 16bit samples). Foobar2000 has sound
processing features such as software resampling or 24bit output on new
high-end soundcards, but most of other mainstream players are capable
of doing the same by now.
- Q: My bass is much deeper than yours!
- A: My bass can walk right through the floor.
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