Apple iTunes Powered By foobar2000
POSTED ON 2/28/2006 | PERMALINK |6 Comments |
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There are a number of wonder things about iTunes. But, for Windows users, there's really only one nice thing. The user interface. Quicktime, which runs the back end of the application, is bloated and offers little in the way of configurable settings. In addition, there is no way to drive pro or semi-pro outboard gear via ASIO drivers. When it comes down to it, iTunes for Windows is great at organizing your music but does a poor job of playing it. It's not the same elegant solution experienced by OSX users.Enter Foobar2000. One might say that Foobar2000 is the exact opposite of iTunes. It plays any file format you throw at it. It is extremely efficient and has a small memory footprint. It is open source and very configurable. It sounds fantastic and can drive just about any device with just about any driver type. It's also not terribly user friendly.
Enter Multi-Plugin. Along with a host of other interesting, and frequently useful, features, Multi-Plugin allows you to have all the usability of iTunes backed up by the power and configurability of Foobar2000. It's a remarkable hack and works remarkably well. I've been using it for a few days and my mp3s sound better than ever. And I get the added bonus of being able to play with endless configuration options while keeping a clean Apple UI on top.
UPDATE: I've got the iTunes/foobar2000 combo running with about 15mb of memory and so little CPU that it sometimes registers as zero in Task Manager. Wow. All of this while actually sounding better.
- Foobar2000
- Multi-Plugin
- Asio4All - Universal ASIO driver
6 Comments:
Foobar is NOT open-source. I just checked.
If I'm going to use closed source software I might as well stick with iTunes or WMP or whatever.
If you like using bloated media players that devour system resources, stick with itunes, sure.
Just because it's not open source doesn't mean you shouldn't use it-
Foobar 2000 is a highly configurable media player, but it does take a bit of work to get it to look like a modern media player.
the point here is that itunes runs on the front end and foobar2000 runs on the back end.
I believe that most of foobar is open, however the essential core of the program is closed. There is more detail on the website.
Foobar is the best! Windows XP + Foobar2000 + Kernal Streaming plugin and resampler is the greatest!
Die, iTunes. Die.
Exactly what was I was looking for - hopefully it works :~) Thanks!
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