foobar2000 2.25.10 / 2.26 2026-09-22 Preview

Foobar2000 plays MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, WavPack and Musepack without any extra downloads, so most music libraries open and play the first time you run it.

It is also small and fast, and it stays responsive on a laptop that struggles with heavier players.

The trade-off is that it looks plain until you set it up the way you want it.

Why People Stick With Foobar2000

Gapless playback means albums recorded as one continuous piece, like live sets and classical recordings, play with no half-second silence dropped between tracks.

ReplayGain evens out volume differences between recordings, so a quiet album and a loud one sit at roughly the same level and you stop reaching for the volume dial.

The library handles collections of tens of thousands of files without slowing down, and the DSP settings let you shape the output to match your headphones or amplifier.

Components Are What Make It Yours

Foobar2000 ships deliberately bare and expects you to add the pieces you actually want: visualisations, Last.fm scrobbling, extra format decoders, alternative interface layouts.

The Quick Guide for Installing Foobar2000 Components walks through adding your first one.

More of them are collected on the foobar2000 guides and tutorials page.

Internet radio is built in rather than bolted on, and How to Stream Online Music with foobar2000 covers adding stations and saving them.

Converting Your Files

Foobar2000 converts between formats on its own, but only once it has encoders to hand the job to, which is exactly what the foobar2000 Free Encoder Pack installs for you.

That bundle covers LAME MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, Musepack, FLAC, WavPack and Apple Lossless, and its installer puts each encoder where the Converter expects to find it.

Bear in mind that going to MP3, AAC or Opus discards some audio data by design, so keep a lossless original if you plan to convert again later. The Audio File Conversion Made Easy with foobar2000 guide runs through a first conversion step by step.

Ripping CDs Into Your Library

Foobar2000 rips audio CDs itself, which is plenty for discs in good condition.

For scratched or second-hand CDs, a dedicated ripper reads damaged sectors more patiently: Exact Audio Copy is the thorough choice and CDex the straightforward one.

EZ CD Audio Converter sits between the two with a friendlier interface, and the CD Ripping / Encoding Guide covers the whole process.

The usual plan is to rip once to FLAC for storage, then convert copies to MP3 for a phone or a car stereo. FLAC vs MP3 explains what you gain and what you give up on each side.

Tags And Volume Housekeeping

Foobar2000 edits tags, the artist, album and track details stored inside each file, perfectly well on its own.

For renaming hundreds of files at once or fixing a messy folder in bulk, many people keep Mp3tag open alongside it.

MP3Gain is worth a look for volume levelling too, since ReplayGain tags are not read by every player, phone or car head unit.

Which Version To Download

The Windows build is the complete one, with the largest component library and support for VST effect plugins.

It runs on Windows 7 or newer, and the 32-bit, 64-bit and ARM builds are all listed on the foobar2000 download page.

There is a native Mac version that uses Audio Units rather than VST for effects, and foobar2000 for Android is a separate app with its own page here.

Other Players Worth A Look

If you want a big library view without the setup work, MusicBee arrives configured and skinnable out of the box.

AIMP is lighter again with a proper equaliser, and 1by1 is about as stripped-down as a music player gets.

VLC Media Player is the one to keep for everything else, because it handles video and awkward files with no codec installation at all.

For batch conversion without a player in the way, LameXP and winLAME are dedicated encoder front-ends.

More choices are listed in the media players section.