User:Mjb/foobar2000

Here are my notes regarding how I have configured foobar2000, a free audio player for Windows.

Any questions/comments, email me at root at skew.org.

UI

Preferences:

• Display
  • Default User Inferface – I like its simplicity. The alternative, columns user interface (CUI) would be fancier, but I don't like to introduce dependencies, and it helps simplify bug reporting.
  • Prefer currently playing track – i.e. I like the Album Art Viewer to reflect the currently playing track, not whatever else I have selected.
• Context menu
  • (all selected except Copy names, Copy, Collect)
• Default User Interface
  • Text = light blue
  • Background = black
  • Selection = peach
  • Highlight = yellow
  • Fonts
    • Default, Tabs, Status Bar = Source Hans Sans JP, Regular, 8 pt
    • Lists = Source Han Sans JP, ExtraLight, 7 pt
    • Playlists = Source Han Sans JP, Light, 8 pt
    • Console = Inconsolata, 9 pt
  • Playlist View
    • All my custom columns and groupings are in a separate document, not yet on this wiki.
• Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Ctrl+R = Remove tags
  • Shift+Ctrl+R = Reload info
  • Alt+F = Open containing folder
  • Alt+C = Crop selection
  • Shift+Delete = Delete file
  • Shift+Ctrl+O = Optimize file layout + minimize file size
  • Ctrl+G = Scan per-file track gain
  • Shift+Ctrl+G = Scan selection as a single album
  • Ctrl+B = Apply track ReplayGain
  • Shift+Ctrl+B = Apply album ReplayGain
  • Ctrl+D = DR Meter
  • Shift+Ctrl+F = Convert (FLAC, same name, no changes) - for splitting image rips
  • Shift+Ctrl+T = Convert (FLAC, same name, max compress, tmp subfolder) - for recompressing albums
• Media Library
  • Album List
    • Double-click action: Add to current playlist
• Playback
  • ReplayGain
    • Source mode: album; Processing: apply gain
    • Cursor follows playback
• DSP manager
  • Active DSPs: Dynamic DSP (see below)
• Shell integration
  • Register supported file formats on startup
  • Set "Enqueue" as the default action
  • Bring to front when adding new files
  • Sort incoming files by: %path_sort%
  • Exclude file types: *.CUE
• Advanced
  • Display
    • Album art
      • Max external 8 MB, prefer embedded

Dynamic DSP

foobar2000 allows you to name a chain of DSPs as a preset, but doesn't provide a way to automatically choose the preset based on tags, filenames, or other attributes of the currently playing file. Dynamic DSP is the answer. It uses a title formatting script to generate the name of a chain of DSPs. These chains are just like presets, but specific to this component. I've barely scratched the surface of using it, but it's great so far.

I routinely annotate file names with comments in brackets, like this: Some Song [channels swapped].flac. Here are some common phrases I use:

• weak bass
• channels swapped
• slightly fast

Each of these correlates to a DSP chain which compensates for that problem. I do not yet have chains defined for combinations of these problems.

Then I just use a simple title formatting script to generate the name of the chain, based on the filename: $if($strstr(%filename%,weak bass),bassboost)$if($strstr(%filename%,slightly fast),slower)$if($strstr(%filename%,channels swapped),swapchannels) and I have defined some profiles

Spectrograms

Please see foobar2000 spectrograms.