foobar2000 v2.0 Beta 12 – Neowin

foobar2000 is an advanced free audio player for Windows platform. It presents the simplest and most minimalist interface that you will see in this type of program. Other features include full Unicode support, ReplayGain support, and native support for several popular audio formats.

Features of foobar2000:

• Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, Audio CD, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND…and more with additional components.
• Reading without interruption.
• Full Unicode support.
• Easily customizable UI layout.
• Advanced tagging capabilities.
• Support for ripping audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
• Full ReplayGain support.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend player functionality

foobar2000 v2.0 BETA Changelog:

• Now available in 32-bit x86 (legacy), 64-bit x86. The 64-bit ARM version will be available soon. 64-bit versions require updated versions of add-on components.
• Dark mode support on Windows 10 and 11. Add-on components need to be updated to use it.
• Completely new media library engine, backed by SQLite. Much faster startup and shutdown with large libraries, significantly reduced memory usage.
• Significantly improved the performance of search queries in the media library that do not use %patterns%.
• The Reading Statistics feature is now integrated. Old foo_playcount data is imported on first run. Please remove foo_playcount as instructed.
• Added album art in the default UI playlist view.
• Clickable rating stars in the default UI playlist view.
• New default UI element: ReFacets, reimplementing most of the functionality of Facets. The old Facets component does not work with the new 64-bit foobar2000.
• Improved default UI separator, now allows any number of panes.
• Added “remember playlist layout” to the default UI playlist view.
• Added “stream selector” item to default UI toolbar.
• New audio output device management features – unwanted devices can be disabled, bit depth and DSP can be configured per device.
• New internal playlist format, edits instantly saved to disk, no more recent edits lost in crashes.
• New configuration data format, changes saved instantly to disk, no more recent changes lost in case of crash.
• Can display file creation time (%file_created%) and attributes (%file_attributes%).
• For non-portable installations, the profile folder is now %appdata%foobar2000-v2. There is no need to save the old profile before upgrading, your foobar2000 v1.x profile will not be changed.
• The first run performs the import of old configuration data (playlists, library).
• More audio formats supported out of the box: TAK, APE, AC3, DTS.
• Updated FFmpeg to version 5.1.
• Improved behavior of properties if “reload info” detects change in number of chapters etc.
• Rewritten built-in visualizations (VU/peakmeters, spectrum, oscilloscope), now using hardware accelerated rendering.
• Some default UI elements (ReFacets, Equalizer, Visualizations) are now also accessible as column UI panels.
• The Internet Radio dialog (File menu) stores previously played Internet radio streams.
• Modernized Explorer integration, no longer needs separate 32-bit/64-bit shell extension DLLs.
• The Properties dialog now follows the active UI theme colors.
• Use of Windows Imaging component for image analysis, removal of libwebp dependency. Album covers in HEIF, AVIF, etc. can now be viewed if system codecs are present.
• Added %year% mapping, takes part of the year from %date%, removing content beyond the first four digits.
• Changed default album listing templates to use %year%.
• Added sample rate exclusions to SSRC resampler.
• Added foobar2000 mobile cross feed DSP.
• New console logging system, writes log files per instance to specified folder.
• New full config reset semantics – now clears the profile folder (optionally leaving user components untouched) instead of asking all components to reset themselves.
• These complementary components are now obsolete because their functionality is available out of the box: foo_benchmark, foo_bitcompare, foo_verifier, foo_input_monkey, foo_ac3, foo_sanitizer, foo_input_dts.
• These components previously included with the installer are no longer optional (features still enabled): foo_rgscan, foo_cdda, foo_albumlist
• libFLAC 1.4, made it possible to decode 32 bits per sample of FLAC files.

foobar2000 v2.0 beta 12 release notes:

• Improved behavior when Watched Library folders are on temporarily unavailable network shares.
• Fixed audio issues when changing screen resolution in some configurations.
• Improved proprietary output behavior with unusual channel layouts, 4.1/5.0 would not play on a device expecting the 5.1 side.
• Fixed failure to read specific odd FPL files.

To download: foobar2000 64 bit | foobar2000 32 bit ~6.0 MB (freeware)
Connections: Home page | foobar2000 for Mac | Windows Store | android

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