Program: Foobar2000
License: Freeware
Description: Foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.
Website: http://www.foobar2000.org/
Other: Has a portable install option built into installer. However doesn't have relative paths. A PAF Live installer that included drive letter switching would complete the author's efforts for a portable version.
I am an advocate for Songbird and am listening to it as I type now. Unfortunately Songbird is unusable on older machines due to its high resource usage. Until the developers work on improving performance Foobar2000 would be a good lightweight alternative. Already has a strong user base.
EDIT: Mir has noted that foobar2000 also writes preferences to the registry. I'm not sure where these are located but I would think should be able to be handled by the portable launcher. Thanks for the heads up Mir 
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
I'm afraid that foo2k can't be added "officially" to the package due to it's closed source nature. Anyways, a pretty nice player, I'm using it for years (from a TrueCrypt volume I always mount to the same drive letter).
The playlists by default can't handle relative paths, that's right, try to use susbt for example to provide a constant drive letter to your music library.
I recommend exporting playlists to m3u format and importing it whenever the drive letter changes. Note that you will have to edit the m3u playlist so that it has relative paths.
I would love to see this and XMPlay packaged here once John has a freeware server set up.
Vintage!
Foobar2000 can be official. It seems 90% of freeware applications get shot down because of their closed source nature. Please realise that thanks to the PAF Live framework that was developed by no less than John T. Haller himself we now can have official freeware portables. At the moment the only PAF Live based application to go official is Java Portable. This is mostly open source but not completely therefore legally it is freeware. This means freeware applications can be developed and if found worthy can be release officially
Though Java Portable may be the only official PAF Live application so far there are others on the development tests page, meaning they are on their way to becoming official in time when thoroughly tested. Examples are Glary Utilies Portable and PicPick Portable. I believe there are more though I cannot remember them at the moment.
So yes foobar2000 and other freeware applications can be made portable.
PortableApps.com Advocate
Yeah, how come they are on that page? Surely they shouldn't be. I know I didn't put them there. Honestly
:-)Anyway, foobar2000. Only distributed as an EXE, which the PAF Live installer is unlikely to be able to extract (if previous experience is anything to go by) although it's worth a shot. I tried the program a while ago and it seemed really good. If there's a portable install option maybe I'll do something that can be installed straight into the App folder.
To be honest, I've used XMPlay for ages and been really happy with it. Distributed as a ZIP, so I'll definitely have a look at packaging this one.
Your a legend!
PortableApps.com Advocate
horusofoz
You have been here a while. why didnt you do a search for foobar 2k? you would have learned about one of the dev's working on a alternitive to foobar2k. Also it isnt "Truely" portable seeing as it writes preferences to the registry and DOESNT carry them around.
For example how FB2K looks and is layed out. Also any options like for example when one has a xchat plugin to emulate WinAmp the script can be editied to show what meta data you want. this doesnt travel with you but stays on the computer you where last on. this makes it a big headache when you use computers with DEEP FREEZE in which every thing is wiped out during a reboot. Also makes it a pain when you try and use FB2K in linux under WINE. FB2K does work under WINE btw and the latest edition too.
Also FB2K isnt a library Media player that songbird and some others are. its library and search feature fails.
I had searched for foobar2000 but had only come across requests that were rejected because it was open source. Doing a deeper trawl I now see in an outdated NSISPortable Pre-Release thread Zach Thibeau states that he's developing an OSS alternative. I'm sure you can understand that I didn't read this thread initially as I didn't expect it to have that sort of information. I would definitely prefer Zach's open source alternative. However until it becomes available foobar2000 is still on the table.
I didn't realize FB2K wrote to the registry as I had read elsewhere that it was portable for everything other than the absolute paths. Now that you have informed me about the registry keys I agree that, in it's native state, it isn't portable. Still, I think these keys are no greater obstacles than others for other apps. Wouldn't they be able to be dealt with by the portable launcher?
Not sure what you mean by FB2K's library features failing. I'm not a long term user of the app but seemed to work on the runs I've given it. Can you give elaborate on this point?
With the concession that the launcher would need to to cater for the registry keys that handle foobar2000's preferences, I think this can still go ahead.
PortableApps.com Advocate