How-To: Manage Your Music the Power User Way with Foobar
How-To: Manage Your Music the Power User Way with Foobar
Posted 04/14/2010 at 6:18am
| by Alan Fackler
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Apple has done everything in its power to convince the public that when it comes to music hardware and software there’s only a single choice: the iPod, and iTunes, respectively. And while we do admit that the iPod is an excellent MP3 player, we’re not so enamored with iTunes. That’s why we’re going to show you how you can use Foobar, a popular open source program with a powerful, modular design, to manage your music files, rip CDs, and even manage your iPod.
In this guide we’ll show you how to organize your music with Foobar, as well as how to customize the program, burn CDs, and manage an iPod.
Making the Move from iTunes
Before anything else, you’ll need to download Foobar, which can be found at www.foobar2000.org, and install it.
Since you’ve probably already got a huge collection of music stored on your PC, in long-forgotten folders and playlists, we’re going to want to start by moving that music into Foobar. There are a couple of ways to go about doing this.
The first time you open Foobar, you’ll be asked to select a UI configuration. Selecting Simple Playlist + Tabs will set you up with a blank white screen, tabbed on the upper left hand corner as ‘default’. This is your starting point, and will eventually contain a list of files to play. Right clicking the ‘default’ tab will allow you to create new tabs, which can be named anything you’d like.
The simplest way to play songs from iTunes is as follows: Open iTunes, and drag a song or album to your desktop. Once there, just grab the files, and drag them into Foobar’s interface. If you don’t want the song to appear under the ‘default’ tab, simply create a new one. This drag and drop system will allow you to play any of your iPod songs in Foobar quite easily. You can create different tabs for different playlists, and populate those tabs with any songs you’d like.
But wait a minute. We know what you’re thinking. “I have a five thousand song library and twenty playlists, I don’t want to sit around all day dragging and dropping individual songs!” Luckily, you won’t have to. To show Foobar where all you music is, click on Library > Configure. In the preferences window that pops up, you’ll see a field for your music folders; click on Add, and select your root music folder. Now, check the Enabled button under Library Viewer Selection Playlist. Now, when you press Ok, Foobar will load all your music from your music folder and you can browse through it using either the Search or Album List options that have become available in the Library menu.
If you want to transfer all of your playlists to Foobar, you’ll have to use a handy little program called ‘iTunes Export.’
You can download iTunes Export at bit.ly/ddNG02, and it works in three simple steps:
First, you select the iTunes library you want to export from. You do this by selecting the iTunes library file, which is a .xml document which acts as a sort of index for all of your music files. Ours, for example, was located at C:\MyDocuments\MyMusic\iTunes\iTunesMusicLibrary.xml
Once you’ve found your library, click next. You’ll now be asked which iTunes playlists you’d like to export. By default, it will export all playlists.
Finally, you’ll be asked to select an output directory for the playlists. Choose one, leave the rest of the settings untouched, and hit ‘finish’ to save your playlists in .m3u format.
Now that you’ve exported your playlists it’s time to load them into Foobar. In Foobar, go to ‘file’ and hit ‘load playlist’. Now, simply find the playlists you created with iTunes Export. Select whichever m3u files you want to import, and click ‘Open’. Foobar will automatically create new tabs for each one of your preset playlists.
Customizing Foobar
One of Foobar’s greatest strengths is its modularity, which allows you to add whatever functionality you want to the program, without bloat. Every person’s ideal Fubar setup is different, but we’ll show you how to get started modifying yours, by showing some modules that will give it more of the look and feel of iTunes.
The first thing we’ll install is a module called Columns UI, which can be found at yuo.be/columns.php.
This user interface module includes customizable columns that alter the look of Foobar, adding iTunes-esque genre, artist and album navigation.
Like other downloadable add-ons for Foobar, UI_tabs will download as a compressed file. We recommend using 7-Zip to unzip the file. Extract the add-on (a .dll file) to Foobar’s components folder, by default located at C:\Program Files\foobar2000\components.
Now that you’ve installed the add-on, re-open Foobar. A new user interface selection dialog will appear, which will give you the option to select ‘Columns UI’. Browse through the different interfaces until you find a look that works for you. Already, Foobar’s UI is looking a lot less bland.
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Tritonal74
January 03, 2011 at 7:05am
Early last year, after reading this article in my magazine, I downloaded and installed foobar, and have enjoyed it ever since. I'm having a bit of trouble, though, that I can't figure out. For songs I've purchased through iTunes, the album artwork appears in foobar, but for all the other albums I've imported, the artwork doesn't appear. Would someone mind explaining where in foobar I go to get this squared away? Thanks.
Tritonal74
Machinia
July 21, 2010 at 10:51am
This is how my music player history has gone since about 1999:
- Winamp (99 - 2010)
- Songbird
- Winamp
- Mediamonkey (ugh)
- Songbird
And once again I'm ready to rip Songbird apart in sheer rage. It may have something to do with my library size, but since the update SongBird is absolutely useless and confused.
FooBar has been installed on my PC for a long time and I've only used it for converting flac to mp3 for portable use. Today it gets promoted as my main media playe since I never seem to have problems with it. I shall reference this article when I make the change.
Signal2Noise
May 20, 2010 at 9:21pm
Even though I'm just seeing this month-old article now I must say it's quite timely. I just finished ripping my 1100+ CD library to FLAC in preparation for a Squeezebox Touch. DL'd Foobar in order to do some playback checks and despite it being reasonably good it is a bear to get familiar with it's intricacies. Thanks!
essjay22
May 14, 2010 at 3:11pm
That was sooo informative Szore !! Thank You . Please comment again to display the breadth and depth of your incredible insight on Tech and literature!!Thank You Jarol for your understanding of Foobaar and some really great tips. That I can use !s
a2002cmacg
April 14, 2010 at 12:04pm
I'm a big time Media Monkey fan, but I must give praise to your fine selection of music there.... :-)
Olmec
April 14, 2010 at 11:31am
Panels ui is no longer supprted by foobar. You have to use default ui or columns ui. That been said complex skins are usually made on columns ui.
huhhuh
April 14, 2010 at 11:05am
I use Winamp since I got DFX for it on my HTPC (through surround system)
Otherwise I use foobar on other desktop stations.
Stry8993
June 08, 2010 at 6:29am
I use it on Windows Media Player 12 for Win 7, but I've been thinking of making the move back to WinAmp. I just can't listen to music on my computer without DFX Audio Enhancer anymore, it just sounds so... dull without it.
AlBSure
April 14, 2010 at 8:18am
I've been using MM for some yrs now and absolutly love it. it syncs to ANY device i use it for my ipod,BlackBerry, Portable drives. it does everything you stated here for FooBar except the UPNP, so i might have to try foobar to stream(i'm currently using DAAP on my nas)
Jarol
April 14, 2010 at 2:06am
Nice guide, but lets add some more to it to ring in some more users!
For starters, I've always been using foobar since WinAmp started adding junk I never needed (video playback? what?). I found foobar to be the most customizable program I've ever used. I went all the way to making my own skins, but after a while, adding things just added bloat. So first thing I must say is this: DO NOT BLOAT THE SOFTWARE. The thing can easily run up to 100mb whereas when you first run it it only takes up a measely 12 mb. I highly recommend AGAINST custom skins. They are pretty, but they actually slow down the software and cause crashes and other harsh things down the line. The new (v1.0) interface comes customizable by default. Change the colors, they layout, and the compenents the way you want.
Anyway here is a list of things I highly suggest:
- Windows 7 Users - foo_w7shell - This adds win7 support in the taskbar. Has functionality to play, pause, change tracks, and even seek a current song. It also displays the current album art if you hae it.
- Got an iPod Touch or iPhone? - foo_touchremote + remote app (made by apple in app store) - This allows you to control foobar with your touch/iphone as long as they are in the same network! It looks and feels like you are controlling the music on your touch/iphone, complete with music search, playlist listing, album arts, volume, and seek control. Just one thing. Don't press shuffle! It crashes foobar. Other than that little quirk, it works great!
- Want an alarm clock? -foo_scheduler - Add times and create tasks for foobar to perform. I currently have my foobar setup as an alarm clock for example. It handles recurring schedules and can do a series of tasks you assign to that time.
- Got 5.1/7.1 surround? - foo_channel_mixer - This thing beats a lot of crappy software driven "surround" sound mixers that come with soundcards/codecs. Its lightweight and hardly slows down your system. Very customizable and works best in default settings for the most part.
- Need to fix the tags on your music? -foo_masstagger - This thing does the same thing as most competent tagging software does, only its built into foobar. Only downside is it takes some setup to make use, but once you understand it, its probably the most powerful thing in foobar.
- Got a Wii, PS3, 360, or other device (even touch/iphones!)? - foo_upnp - This thing is the end all be all of server that gets built into foobar. This can stream your music to your console and even over the internet! For example, you can have your foobar on your home computer and foobar at work. The foobar at work connects to your home's and you then have access to all your music! Even better, you can stream music to your ipod touch or iphone using streaming apps (though I don't recommend it). If connecting for your console, it acts like a media center, giving access to your music and even movies for your console to play. Careful though, this thing can bloat your program's ram usage.
There is much much more. But the above for me is what I use nearly every single day. Everything else is extra (besides the multitudes of format components for lossless music). Again I must say, keep it simple. The program doesn't need to be fancy to be powerful.
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