Category Archives: Freeware

Free To Use Audio Software

Foobar2000 ~ Extensible Audio Interface & Player

Posted by tom2tec on

An advanced and evolved freeware audio player for Android, Mac, Windows and Wine. Foobar2000 can be extensively extended, modified and themed.

This is the basic Default User Interface or DUI. You will need to configure and extend the DUI Foobar2000 interface according to your preferences and requirements.

Foobar2000 v2.16 Default User Interface
Foobar2000 Default User Interface

Features:

  • Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, Opus, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND… and more with additional components.
  • Gapless playback.
  • Easily customizable user interface.
  • Advanced tagging capabilities.
  • Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
  • Full ReplayGain support.
  • Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
  • Open component architecture allows third-party developers to extend functionality.
  • Multiplatform: Android, Mac, Windows 32|64-bit and ARM (ARM64EC).

Interfaces:

foobar2000 is not limited to the Default User Interface (DUI). Over its history, foobar2000 has had several complete user-interface modules, as well as newer technologies that extend the modern interfaces with highly customizable panels.

Core and Historical User Interfaces:

  • Default User Interface (DUI) — The standard interface included with foobar2000. DUI uses configurable UI Elements to construct the player layout and remains the default interface in current versions of foobar2000.
  • Columns User Interface (CUI) — A popular alternative user interface with interchangeable panels and toolbars. CUI provides extensive control over the arrangement and appearance of the foobar2000 interface and is widely used for customized layouts and themes.
  • Classic User Interface — A recreation of the Default User Interface from early versions of foobar2000. It remains available as a component for current foobar2000 versions, primarily for historical and nostalgic purposes. The component intentionally does not attempt to reproduce all functionality of the modern DUI.
  • Panels UI (PUI) — A discontinued historical user-interface module that allowed the entire foobar2000 interface to be constructed from configurable panels. Panels UI was an important interface in the foobar2000 customization community before being discontinued. It should be regarded as a legacy interface, not a current alternative to DUI or CUI.

Modern Web-Based User Interface:

foobar2000 also supports web-based interface components. These should not be confused with complete UI modules: they operate as panels or UI Elements within the DUI or CUI.

  • WebView — Provides a Microsoft Edge WebView2 browser control as a foobar2000 UI panel. HTML, CSS and JavaScript can be used to create interactive panels and visualizations. It supports both Default UI and Columns UI.
  • WebView2 — A newer WebView-based component that exposes Microsoft Edge WebView2 as a foobar2000 Default UI Element or a Columns UI panel. It allows HTML, CSS and JavaScript to interact with foobar2000 and can access the visualization stream. The current component supports foobar2000 2.0 and newer, Windows 10 and newer, and x86, x64 and ARM64/ARM64EC builds.

WebView and WebView2 represent a web-based UI technology rather than separate core foobar2000 interfaces. A WebView/WebView2-based design is still a DUI or CUI layout with a web-based component incorporated into it. The official component repository explicitly identifies WebView2 as a Columns UI panel / Default UI element, rather than as a user-interface module.

The Interface Landscape

In practical terms, foobar2000’s interface history can be divided into:

Complete user-interface modules

  1. Default User Interface (DUI) — current
  2. Columns User Interface (CUI) — current
  3. Classic User Interface — current component, reproducing the historical DUI
  4. Panels UI (PUI) — discontinued historical interface

UI extension and panel technologies

  • WebView
  • WebView2
  • JScript Panel / JScript Panel 3
  • Other DUI UI Elements and CUI panels

This distinction is important when describing foobar2000 themes. A theme designed for CUI is a theme for a different complete UI module than a DUI theme. A theme that incorporates WebView2, however, is still a DUI or CUI theme that uses WebView2 as one of its UI components.

For this reason, foobar2000 themes and interface collections identify the Intended User Interface separately from individual panel technologies and components.

Links:

Packages & Store Versions:

Official Foobar2000 Forums At Hydrogenaudio:

References:

Foobar2000 ~ The First Steps

WMP Tag Plus ~ Extends WMP File Formats

Posted by tom2tec on

WMP Tag Plus is a plug-in that integrates seamlessly into Windows Media Player to provide library and tagging support for additional music formats. These formats include FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio (.ape), Musepack and MPEG-4. Windows Media Player 11 or higher.

bmproductions.fixnum.org
hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=80263.0

mp3 Diags ~ Diagnose & Repair mp3s

Posted by tom2tec on

MP3 Diags is a GUI-based application that allows end-users to identify issues with their MP3 files, fix some of the issues and make other changes, like adding track information. It also lets you “look inside” an MP3 file.

mp3diags

mp3diags.sourceforge.net

Foobar2000 1.x ~ Installing Analog VU Meters

Posted by tom2tec on

Adding an analog VU meter to the old Foobar2000 1.x Default User Interface

Required component: foo_vis_vumeter

Directions:

  1. Download foo_vis_vumeter
  2. Navigate to File \ Preferences \ Components
  3. Drag foo_vis_vumeter.dll to the component window
  4. Click Apply and then Ok to restart Foobar
  5. Copy any .bin skin files to the …\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\user-components\foo_vis_vumeter folder (Shift+File>Browse configuration folder)
  6. Select View > Layout > Enable layout editing mode
  7. Right click the tab area in a panel and select Add New Tab
  8. Right click the new tab and rename it “Analog VU Meter” or whatever
  9. Right click the new display area and select Add New UI Element
  10. Select ‘Analog VU Meter’ from the list (Playback Visualization)
  11. Disable layout editing mode

Group Submenus:

Adding a new subfolder to the …\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\user-components\foo_vis_vumeter folder creates a listing with that subfolder’s name in the Group submenu. ‘.bin‘ meter files in those subfolders are then accessible via the corresponding group submenu.

Parameters:

Right mouse click on the meter display:

  • Layout submenu / Horizontal or Vertical / Dual or Single / Mono / Lock Aspect Ratio
  • Select skin

Preferences > Advanced > Display > VU Meter:

  • VU meter sensitivity – Default left and right preamp (db): 20 and rise time(s) 0.20s

Mouse wheel (hover over meters)

  • Adjusts meter sensitivity

Resources:
Analog VU Meter Skin Gallery
Updated version for Foobar2000 2.x

My Current Foobar Interfaces ~ Default User Interface (DUI)

Posted by tom2tec on

Four Panels & MusicBrainz Releases
Four Panels – All Music Review
Four Panels with Dynamic Range & Waveform Seektable
Four panel - EsPlaylist - Analog VU meters
Default User Interface (DUI) – Four panels – Playlist Organizer (foo_plog)
Four panel - EsPlaylist - Analog VU meters
Four panels – EsPlaylist – Analog VU meters
Four Panels - SimPlaylist - Visualizations
Four Panels – SimPlaylist – Visualizations
Six panel with lyrics
Six panel with lyrics and 4 star or better playlist
Four Panel - Seektable Waveform
Four Panel – Seektable Waveform
Six Panel - SimPlaylist - Default analog VU meters
Six Panel – SimPlaylist – Default analog VU meters
Six panel - Spectrogram
Six panel – Spectrogram
Current 4 Panel DUI
Four Panel – Playlist Organiser Script

Recommended Audio Software

Posted by tom2tec on

The Best Of The Best List

Accuraterip ~ Accurate DAE (Digital Audio Extraction)
AcoustID ~ Identify & Fingerprint Songs
Ampache ~ Freeware streaming music server
Audacity ~ Freeware audio editor & recorder
AudioShell ~ Freeware Windows audio tag integration
BatchEncoder ~ Freeware Audio Encoder Frontend
Boom Audio Player ~ Foobar2000’s simpler sibling
CDBurnerXP ~ Freeware CD & DVD Burner
CUETools ~ Freeware cue file tools
DADA Auto-Rating For Foobar ~ Automatically rate your music
DRC (Digital Room Correction) ~ Advanced equalization
EAC (Exact Audio Copy) ~ Advanced freeware CD ripper
Equalizer APO ~ Advanced Windows Equalization
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio CODEC) ~ Open lossless audio format
Foobar2000 ~ Advanced freeware audio player
Foobar2000 @ Deviant Art ~ Skins & themes
foo_discogs = Foobar2000 + Discogs ~ Advanced file tagging
freeDB ~ Set up freeDB access Search FreeDB
KeyFinder ~ Freeware musical key analyzer
LAME ~ Freeware mp3 encoder
MP3 Diags ~ Freeware mp3 file repair tool
MP3Gain ~ Freeware mp3 volume normalization
Mp3tag ~ Freeware metadata tag editor
MusicBrainz Picard ~ Tag songs with MusicBrainz metadata and cover art
MuseScore ~ Music composition and notation
PlexTools ~ Plextor’s CD ripper
PowerShell Audio ~ PowerShell-driven audio interface
ProjectM ~ Advanced music visualization
ReplayGain ~ Advanced gain equalization
ReplayGain & Foobar ~ ReplayGain within Foobar2000
ReplayGain & Foobar under Linux ~ RPG with Wine & Foobar2000
Room EQ Wizard ~ Room equalization analysis & compensation filters
RightMark Audio Analyzer ~ Freeware Audio Hardware Analyzer
SoundHound ~ Name that tune
Sox ~ The Swiss Army Knife Of Sound Processing
Teac Editor / Teac Player ~ Hi Resolution Audio Editor & Player
VU Meter ~ Freeware Standalone Analog Volume Unit Meter
WinAmp Repository ~ NullSoft WinAmp archive
Windows DirectShow Filters – Use FLAC & OGG in Windows, freeware
WMP Tag Plus ~ Extends Windows tag support, freeware