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December 7, 2005

iTunes vs. Foobar2000

I've been impressed by iTunes' usability since I started using it with the Nano. It's got a slick, functional interface. I've been considering making it my music librarian, but have decided not to. iTunes doesn't natively support all the formats I use, most notably Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. I don't think Apple will ever add support for codecs that aren't natively supported by iPods. So it will remain a niche player for me.

I'll continue to use Foobar2000 for the majority of my computer-based music stuff. In fact, once version 0.9 comes out, I plan on trying out plugins new to me, like the Columns UI, to increase its efficiency for me. I also want to delve into its playlist generation and scheduling capabilities, to see if I can't move more of ICYG's functionality into FB2K itself.

Posted by Alex Harden on December 7, 2005 9:12 PM |

Comments

The XiphQT package (www.xiph.org/quicktime) may be an interesting project for some to watch for.

karl.

Posted by: karl | December 8, 2005 10:56 AM

Thanks for commenting, Karl. If working QT Vorbis components ever enable Vorbis to be seamlessly supported in iTunes, I'll definitely check them out. All I've used to date are buggy components that barely render Vorbis audio, let alone metadata.

Posted by: aharden | December 8, 2005 7:18 PM

I would be happy to support any project that would enable iTunes or an Open Source alternative for the Mac that would play streaming ogg vorbis. The disappointing part for me when switching to Mac has been the lack of an Open Source community for audio projects on the Mac. Most I have seen were not touched since 2004 or earlier.

Posted by: Scott | December 10, 2005 1:08 PM

No joy... I tried the XiphQT package, installed successfully, rebooted for good measure and I still cannot play the ogg stream from ICYG on my Mac. But using foobar 2000 on Windows, works fine.

Posted by: Scott | December 10, 2005 1:43 PM

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