Doji Grovesai

Foobar 2000 spotlight

I'm getting sick of iTunes. Part of it, though this sounds really lame, is that I hate the way it looks. That, and I barely use any of the features (search and browse are the only ones, really). So I get 4 different programs that keep clogging things up, only 1 of which I use (why do I need iPod helper with no iPod?). So I hunted for more mp3 solutions.

If you'll recall, I gave my opinion on the more popular media players at the time. Since then, I am pleased to report that I have effectively eliminated any trace of RealPlayer, but found work-arounds so I can still play .rm files (whee!).

But to the point. I am getting really annoyed with iTunes. So on my hunt for a way to change the skin of iTunes, I came across two solutions:

• Use a third-party program which doesn't really do anything, since you can only use his skins, and his site is offline to boot.
• Don't use iTunes.

Contrary to popular belief, I like simplicity. So exercising option 2, I went hunting for something that fit a few requirements: free, searchable, customizable, fast, and looks like it belongs in windows (or at least can be skinned to match). My search lead me to Foobar 2000.

Now, when I said I like simplicity, I meant it. However, I tend to intuitively choose the most complicated solutions possible. Foobar promised to do everything I wanted it to do, so I jumped on it. And it works right out of the "box." You can open up your whole music directory, and Foobar will just throw it all on the screen, and you can play it (and do things like shuffle, repeat, etc.) right off. But it's just a play buttons bar, a seekbar, and a menu. If you want simplicity, out of the box is the way to go. Functionally, you get to search and edit tags, and the program handles just about any type of media file. Winamp can't even beat that (I still think Winamp 5 has a broken search). Out of the box, Foobar 2000 is fast and simple.

But I wanted more organization, and some browsing alternatives (so I didn't have to scroll or search through 12 GB of mp3s. Foobar is not simple here. The program is still fast, but getting there took about 2 hours just to find everything, and another half-hour or so to tweak it all. Tweaking took another hour of forum lurking just to find out how to adjusts the plug-ins properly. Truly, I'm a little slow when it comes to brand new programs, so this amount of time is not necessarily typical.

The end result is a fast media player, that does almost everything I want it to (still more tweaks I'd like to make). It's skinnable, but the default appearance is windows based, so it looks like it belongs with everything else.

Ironically, after 3 hours of steps that were not simple, I have a clean and simple solution for my music management.