Foobar2000

:

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player (software) for Microsoft Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. Featuring a minimalism interface, it also boasts many features for Metadata (computing) 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 Software development kit under the BSD license, which also includes the source code for most of the components.

=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 digital signal processing effects. *Built-in Replay Gain support. *Gapless playback *Diskwriter component which allows transcoding from any playable source to various formats (extensible via the API). *Low memory footprint. *Standard user-interface which integrates seamlessly with Windows and provides a minimal learning curve for new users. *Kernel streaming and ASIO output components, which can bypass theoretical problems involving Windows KMIXER.DLL. *Support for many tagging formats including ID3, APEv2 tag, Ogg, WMA and others. *Last.fm support. (through a plugin) *Apple iPod support. (through a plugin) *Vital and committed user-base.

=See also=

*List of audio players (software) *Comparison of media players

=External Links=

==Official Links==

*[http://www.foobar2000.org/ Main Page] - foobar2000.org *[http://forums.foobar2000.org/ Forum] - discussion and support *[irc://irc.freenode.net/foobar2000 #foobar2000] on Freenode - discussion and support *[http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.phptitle=Foobar2000 Wiki] - collaborative documentation *[http://pelit.koillismaa.fi/plugins/ Third-party Component Listing.] - extending functionality

==Other==

*[http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.phpshowtopic=13854 User-compiled list of important foobar2000 sites].