Substitute for Foobar2000

General system Gaming, sound and video
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I’m looking for a substitute for Foobar2000 ( https://www.foobar2000.org ) which is, unfortunatly, not available for Linux.

Foobar2000, or F2k, is an advanced, modular audioplayer.
While I rarely used it as a player, it was my favorite app on Windows to convert and tag audio files. It supports fast and easy conversion between all major audio formats (WAV, FLAC, MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus…) and, very important, allows you to use external encoders (important e.g. for AAC because the Apple AAC encoder is the best one out there but ofc can’t be included in non-Apple software.

It also supports an very easy way to tag files. You just load all of the files from a album in F2k and then the app searches various online databases to find out which album it is. Just one click more and F2k writes all the tags to the files. It also supports adding cover art to the files.

TLDR; I’m looking for an app that offers conversion between major audio formats with encoders of my choice and an easy and simple way to tag audio files.

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I personally have a very advanced foobar2000 setup, and still run it through wine…
However looks like your setup is fairly simple, surely there will be many good suggestions, you may also dive in this thread

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In one? In Linux? Haven’t come across a single one for audio, yet. For video, handbrake can be used.

Or maybe I didn’t look around earnestly and long enough?

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Don’t know about the conversion of formats, my audio goto
app is clementine, a bit outdated now but my goto.

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Deadbeef is a light audio client (GTK). Customizable (but not as Foobar).
The more complete I had found is Gmusicbrowser (GTK).

I recently discover Sayonara (QT )and love it. I still use it as I am on KDE now.

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Let’s try to stay on-topic here pls, as the OP is asking for an in-one solution to converting, and tagging audio.

…not so much for playing audio:

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OK Sorry. I read too speedly.

Some years ago I was using XCFA : http://www.xcfa.tuxfamily.org
It’s not developped anymore. Don’t know if it’s possible to install it and use it now.
It was a killer app.

Maybe a good start is looking for an equivalent of XFCA?

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sudo pacman -S kid3

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it doesn’t convert, but only taggs. Does it?

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Yes, it just tags.
But to convert, ffmpeg will do. For example:

Batch convert a directory content to mp3:
Source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/114908/bash-script-to-convert-all-flac-to-mp3-with-ffmpeg

$ cd [media-dir]
$ find -name “*.flac/opus/mpa…” -exec ffmpeg -i {} -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k {}.mp3 ;

…and likely, depending on the formats you want to convert from/into.

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Fine, but still… this!

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I think the last time I ripped an AudioCD I used Amarok or Rhythmbox

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VLC supports conversion between some audio formats.

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Strawberry is a music player that includes audio format conversion. It also edits tags, but Kid3 as mentioned by @storm is better overall at tag editing.

Sound Converter as the name implies converts between audio formats.

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o @NX-01

DeaDBeeF looks interesting to me, but im used to VLC now.

:vulcan_salute:

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Thx so far folks!
I will check all the apps you mentioned over the next days.

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Ocenaudio might work for you as well.

For tagging specifically, I used to use MusicBrainz Picard. It’s capable or acoustic ID/fingerprinting as well.

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Yesterday I found fre:ac, a project that has at least most of the features I’m looking for…and even more, like a built in CD ripper with Accurate Rip support!
So this can not just be a subsitute for foobar, but also for EAC (Exact Audio Copy)!

It even supports using Apples AAC encoder, at least on Windows. Have yet to figure out if there’s a way to do this on Linux. But even if there’s no way, it uses the FDK AAC encoder out of the box, which is just a little bit behind Apple in terms of quality (some would even say they’re pretty much on par).

I installed this yesterday (as a flatpak; didn’t check if it’s in the AUR) and have to test most things yet, but I already transcoded a lot of audio books from AAC and MP3 to Opus and so far it worked fine. And since it has multithread support it’s also reasonably fast.

https://www.freac.org/

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It is available from the AUR and also as an appimage directly from freac.org

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Yeah, I thought that it’s in the AUR but I wanted to try flatpak anyway.

There’s also a Snap available if anyone prefers this :wink: :grin: