Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

263

I've recently switched over from my ancient WinAmp to foobar2000 and have noticed a marked improvement in sound quality on all of my music. After reading a number of articles, the consensus is that foobar doesn't do anything differently compared to other music players and that this perception of improvement is purely placebo. This confuses me, though, because I'm hearing parts of songs (mostly during ramping intensity intros) that I've never heard before. This has sometimes happened in the past when switching to higher quality headphones, so it seems like a legitimate, similar perception quality increase. So, for the more technically savvy than myself, I'm posing these questions - could the improvements be due to better processing of the encoded media signals? Maybe bugs that were in out-of-date code for audio processing or codecs at certain frequencies have rectified? Thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts.

I've recently switched over from my ancient WinAmp to foobar2000 and have noticed a marked improvement in sound quality on all of my music. After reading a number of articles, the consensus is that foobar doesn't do anything differently compared to other music players and that this perception of improvement is purely placebo. This confuses me, though, because I'm hearing parts of songs (mostly during ramping intensity intros) that I've never heard before. This has sometimes happened in the past when switching to higher quality headphones, so it seems like a legitimate, similar perception quality increase. So, for the more technically savvy than myself, I'm posing these questions - could the improvements be due to better processing of the encoded media signals? Maybe bugs that were in out-of-date code for audio processing or codecs at certain frequencies have rectified? Thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts.

(post is archived)

[–] • 2 pts

I don't know but I am curious to see what the truth is.

[–] • 1 pt

100%, newer codecs and software, in general, will give you a better experience. WinAMP, in particular, might do its own post-processing/compression which distorts sound. Some mp3s made with newer codecs might not even play at all, or at least terribly, on older software.

There could very easily be something you're missing, too. Is your WinAMP EQ customized, but the foobar2000 one flat? Do they both run on the same audio driver/card? I'm pretty sure foobar respects meta-data about track volume normalization, etc. Maybe WinAMP doesn't. All that stuff matters.

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

>Is your WinAMP EQ customized, but the foobar2000 one flat?

Both were custom, but ended up having different settings to make them sound similar to me.

>Do they both run on the same audio driver/card?

Yes, exact same config, never adjusted my speaker hardware either.

>I'm pretty sure foobar respects meta-data about track volume normalization, etc. Maybe WinAMP doesn't.

I've spent a fair amount of time de-clipping my collection and seen minor changes outside of overall loudness before. Maybe this is the feature that's making a big difference to me.

[–] • 1 pt

It wouldn't be impossible. I noticed a tremendous increase in audio fidelity when I switched to linux years ago. Though I didn't use foobar in windows.

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

Do you mind my asking what audio player you settled on? I've been looking at DeaDBeeF or qmmp for my Linux PC.

[–] • 1 pt

I use clementine or audacity or whatever is the default. I don't think it matters as most players use ffmpeg and libsndfile libraries, but those two you mention are nice as well, DeaDBeeF says it has good .cue support so it may come handy when playing back isos.

[–] • 1 pt

Doesn't Winamp have it's own built-in codecs for playback of most common formats, and foobar uses codec libraries to do the work? Or am I remembering wrong? I imagine foobar doesn't sound different than other modern players because it uses the same codecs, but Winamp is a self-contained beast.

[–] • 1 pt

Have you done a direct conparison?

And does it affect all formats?

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

I have not. I've only been using MP3's. I suppose I could make some recordings with OBS or my phone and then run them through Audacity to look for spectrum differences.