The following is another “guest blogger” tutorial by Skyler Huse

Foobar is an application I think everyone should try. It’s an audio player that plays a lot of different file types (MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA, WMA and more with optional components). It also does more than just play your music. It can rip songs from CDs, convert songs to many other formats, you can edit the tags of your songs, customize virtual everything, and lots more. And the best thing about it is that it uses less ram when compared to most other audio players. This makes it perfect for using while playing games, if you use it for nothing else.

You can download Foobar here, where it also lists some features and links to screenshots among other things. Run the installer until you get to the Choose Components box. Make sure to check Optional Features so that you get all you can out of this program. Feel free to customize the shortcut icons however you want.

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After you finish installing the program, run it and you should get a window like the one below. Pick whichever style you want. Or just leave it as is, because I’ll show you how to customize it however you want! You can always go back to this Quick Setup by going to View -> Layout -> and click Quick Setup.

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Now, to customize it, go to View -. Layout -> and click Create Scratchbox. You should get a window like the one below. This Scratchbox lets you mess with the interface without it actually applying until you tell it to.

Left click on any gray area and the window below should pop up. The first thing you will want to add is a splitter. This cuts up space so you can add more elements. A top/bottom splitter splits the area you clicked into two areas, one on top and one on bottom. A left/right splitter splits the area you click into two areas, one on the left and one on the right. I always get the two confused because I think it means the split line goes from left to right or up to down, but that’s not what it means.

If you use playlists, the next thing you want to place is Playlist Tabs, which lets you switch between playlists. If you’re like me and just want all your songs listed, skip the playlist tabs and add a Playlist View, which actually shows your songs. People who used the playlist tab still need a playlist view. You can stop here if you just want a really basic, no thrills interface. It will work fine. Something you will probably want to add is the Album Art Viewer and a Playback Visualization (I like Sprectrograms). Feel free to just mess around with everything. You can remove parts by right clicking on the part you want to get rid of and click Cut UI Element. When you’re done, go to Edit -> Apply Layout.

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Now that you have Foobar looking how you want, you probably want to add your music, right? Go to File -> Add Folder and choose the folder with your music. One thing you need to know is, that if you change something in your music folder, you will need to remove all your songs (ctrl + a and then delete) and then add your songs back. Playing music is a simple thing, so I don’t think I need to go over how to do that. But there is still more Foobar can do! Right click on a song, this shows some more stuff you can do with Foobar, like converting, getting tags from freedb, applying replaygain, etc. Click Properties or press alt + enter, this will bring up the metadata (or tags) of your song. Foobar makes it simple and quick to edit all your metadata.

Now, select all your music by pressing ctrl + a and right click again. Hover over File Operations – Move To and Rename To are two very useful things. Move To can easily organize your music collection based on the tags, and Rename To renames all your files based on tags, although Move To can do this too.. Click on Move To. You should get a window like the one below. Select a place to move your music (I recommend your My Music folder) and click in the File Name Pattern box. This is where all the magic happens. You can enter how to arrange your music here. For example, if you want folders with different artists, you type %artist% to add folders for different albums in these folders with the artist’s name, type /%album%. Finally, type somethings like /%track% %title% to put the songs in the album folders with the track number and file name. You can also click on the button to the right of the box to use some of the presets, but I like having control over what I want to happen. Click Run when you are done. Note that you will need to rescan your music folder (File -> Add Folder) to play your newly arranged files.

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But wait, there is still more! Go to File -> Preferences or just press ctrl + p. You should see something like the image below. Click the + by Display and click on Default User Interface. Here you can do a little more with Fooobar’s interface, such as applying transparency to the Window. What I want to focus on right now are the check boxes. I like to make sure Minimize To Notification Area is checked. Foobar uses the least amount of ram when minimized there. I also like to check Show Balloon Tip On Song Change. Back to the list view, it should be obvious what you can change under Colors and Fonts. Filetypes lets you choose what files automatically open with Foobar.

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Ok, this is is a fairly important one, so it gets to start its own paragraph! Click on the + sign by General and click Keyboard Shortcuts. This is what makes Foobar so great for using while playing games for me. Foobar lets you set your own Global Hotkeys, which will work even when Foobar is minimized. Click on Add New. The first thing you’ll probably want is a ‘next’ button. Next is located under Main and then Playback in the action box. Click it, and then click in the key box and press the key combination you want to use (I use Windows + Right Arrow Key). Check Global Hotkey if you want to be able to change the song without switching to Foobar. Repeat this for all the hotkeys you want. I usually just add Previous (Windows + Left) and Play or Pause (Windows + Down). Make sure to click Save All when you’re done.

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Someday I’ll talk more about this amazing little audio player. For now, mess around with it and enjoy!