Windows 7 Software compatibility Testing - foobar2000

foobar2000 is certainly not the most visually striking audio player nor even is it the easiest to use but to my humble opinion foobar2000 has a bunch of amazing features that will make the difference and once you know them you'll forget about appearance and ease of use. Developed by Peter Pawlowski (an ex Nullsoft freelance contractor) for Windows based computers, this agile piece of freeware brings, above all, a remarkable sound quality, just to give an example of this I can tell you that the maximum theoretical capacity of the sampling rate and bit depth comfortably exceed the capacity of professional audio equipment, and let me tell you that I compared it with other well-known audio players and the quality difference is more than notable.

Regarding the visual aspect, foobar2000 features a minimalist interface and a highly modular design, you know, it is a common thing to see a sophisticated look in this kind of programs, sometimes sacrificing some functionality, however, foobar2000 is right the opposite, just a list where you can add the songs and play them back. You know what they say, all extremes are bad, and foobar2000 bets roundly on simplicity and functionality, however, a little tweaking and a little patience will show that you have a lot of interesting options being one of the most customizable and one of the most used by audiophiles or those who have high-end audio systems.

Some of the basic features in foobar 2000 include Unicode support, ReplayGain, native support for several popular audio formats with extensive metadata support, DSP filters. It also includes a tag editor to change all information for each of the tracks. But if standard features are not enough for you, foobar2000 can be extended with new components you'll find the in the application's site: statistics module, CD burning, file integrity checker, etc.

So I downloaded and installed the last stable beta version of  foobar2000 (version 1.0 beta2) and what you are about to read is the result of having tested it under the Windows7 environment.

Installation & First Run
Although the setup process implied a lot of steps, it was not difficult nor did it result in trouble, or incompatibility.
First of all foobar2000 setup wizard showed the welcome window, after that came the license agreement and agreeing to that took me to the first decision to be made, the installation type, the options were Standard and Portable. I chose Standard and moved on.

The next step was the location selection and after that the components selection was shown.

Immediately after that the installation process itself started. It took no time, less than a minute. When it finished, a last window appeared telling the setup was complete and offered to run the app.

can customize the interface choosing among different layouts.

Functionality & Integration
So, in order to see how does foobar2000 behaves I opened my music folder in the media library and played some files randomly and I must say that the audio quality and the rapidity of the app are just amazing. Besides its resources consumption was more than acceptable (20MB of RAM) specially if we consider what I said above.

Another feature I wanted to explore was the track conversion. And I must say that it worked perfectly, and the options it offers are incredibly thorough.

So I took a track and converted it from mp3 format to wav. Incredibly fast, plus no delays, hitches or inconveniences of any kind.

When it comes to integration, foobar2000 made it really well. Absolutely no troubles incompatibilities or malfunctions under this environment, not even with Aero features nor shell and context menu integration.

Bugs Report
As you can see I couldn't find any bugs or incompatibilities myself, and I guess most users are having a similar experience as I couldn't find any related post or comment telling about troubles in the web and in specialized forums like here. Moreover I could find that many users are recommending it as a really good alternative like in this post.

Final Words
Surely, if you are someone of those high quality music fans who prefers functionality (carried to an extreme) and performance rather than appearance and other details you'll love foobar2000.

So, give foobar2000 a try in your Windows 7 machine and tell us what you think by leaving a comment below.