Foobar2000 is the audiophile’s music player. Tiny, customizable, and bit-perfect.

First Setup

Install, then: File → Preferences → Playback → Output. Select your output device. Choose WASAPI (event) or ASIO for bit-perfect output (bypasses Windows mixer for pure audio). Install the WASAPI output support component if it’s not listed.

Organize Your Library

File → Preferences → Media Library. Add your music folders. Foobar2000 scans them and builds a database. Use Album List (Ctrl+L) to browse by artist, album, genre, or folder structure.

Essential Components

Components → Get more components. Install:

  • WASAPI output support — Bit-perfect audio
  • ReplayGain Scanner — Normalize volume across albums
  • Columns UI — Alternative interface with more customization
  • Lyric Show Panel 3 — Synced lyrics

ReplayGain

Select all tracks → Right-click → ReplayGain → Scan per album track gain. This tags files with volume adjustment metadata. Enable in Preferences → Playback → ReplayGain: “Use album gain.” Now all albums play at the same perceived volume.

Layout Customization

View → Layout → Enable layout editing mode. Drag panels around. Add a visualizer (View → Visualizations → Spectrogram). Create a layout with album art on the left, playlist in the center, and lyrics/visualizer on the right. Save: View → Layout → Create new preset.

Keyboard Controls

Space = Play/Pause, Ctrl+→ = Next, Esc = minimize, Ctrl+F = search library.