MusicBee vs foobar2000

MusicBee can be skinned which can significantly change the appearance of a player.
To apply a skin, it must first be downloaded, moved to the appropriate folder, and after restarting MusicBee, it can be applied. A collection of skins can be found here. It's also possible to customize the layout by choosing which panels to display.

MusicBee can automatically identify songs based on their sound signature and use that information to pull metadata about the song (such as tags, artwork, and lyrics).

MusicBee offers a very straight-forward and easy-to-use interface.

Your media library is stored in a flat file rather than a traditional database, limiting its ability to manage truly massive collections of audio files, but offering far reduced processing overhead for small to medium-large collections.

A version of MusicBee can be used without having to be installed. It can be kept on an external device and run from that.

A collection of plugins can be found here. These plugins extend the uses of the app from iOS support, last.fm support, to streaming services support.

In addition to automatically pulling lyrics for songs, MusicBee can synchronise music playback with lyrics.

High-end audio cards can be easily used to their full potential without any additional software due to WASAPI and ASIO support.

MusicBee allows the user to subscribe to and auto-download podcasts.

MusicBee allows scrobbling with Last.fm.

Not only does it allow MiniLyrics to search for and add synchronized lyrics to your music files, but the MiniLyrics window can be docked in MusicBee over its own lyrics panel so you can edit them and see them displayed along with whatever you're playing.

There are detailed instructions in the community forum describing how to create a suitable WINE prefix in which to install MusicBee with nearly all the features operating as they do in Windows. There is also support for Linux using CrossOver by CodeWeavers, who offer an automated installer to accomplish the same result on nearly all major Linux distributions as well as Google's ChromeOS.

There is a plugin available that allows users to sync their iOS devices (including music ad podcasts).

It's possible to lock down access to settings while still having access to the player. This is great for parties, allowing guests to browse and play music without worrying if they will mess something up.

MusicBee tells you the time you are seeking to on mouseover on the seek bar.

Foobar2000 has a clean, minimalistic UI, small filesize, and is light on resource usage.

Foobar200 has over a hundred components to choose from that add UI functionality, decoding support for various formats, etc.

Foobar2000 natively supports MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC, AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, ALAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CD, Speex, Opus, and support for additional formats can be added with plugins.

Through the use of a plugin (of which there are three popular ones), users can get bit-exact sound output straight to their DAC or soundcard. While not something every user will use, for audiophiles this is a pretty important feature.

The player has a layout-editing mode that allows for a wide variety of UI setups.

Foobar2000 provides an extensive search to look through your library. It supports special queries to only look for certain tags and other conditions and is incredibly fast in doing so even with over 20k of songs in your library.

It was made in order to be as respectful to music as it can be.

ReplayGain can be applied on a per album or track basis, allowing the user to set up an even volumed listening experience.

Foobar 2000 has powerful theming support.

Browsing a site like DeviantArt will give you hundreds of skins (that have been made by other users) to choose from.

Foobar2000 can natively play ASX/MMS/RTSP streams.

The converter component allows foobar2000 to convert from and to any file formats that the player is capable of playing back.

Includes dynamic range analysis, integrity checkers, equalizers, and visualizers, such as waveform, oscilloscope, spectrum, spectrogram (waterfall), peak and smoothed VU meters, and X-Y (Shpect Lissajous) displays.

I'm old enough to have a lot of music where whole albums are worth listening to. This is also essential when the composers created music where the flow from one song to the next is part of the art of the album. E.g. on Queen's ANight_at_the_Opera_, the first song -- Death_On_Two_Legs -- is a very hard rock song with very pissed off lyrics. The next is _Lazing_On_a_Sunday_Afternoon, which is a very lighthearted amusing song. The contrast is wonderful. Also many artists have one song flow into another and breaking them up by using random on a song basis really breaks the music. Plus shuffle prevents repeats until the entire playlist is done. If you want, you can select individual songs and the are shuffled as if they are the entire album. It's harder to describe than to do:
configure play mode to shuffle albums

If you're like me -- and I know I am:
add library to list
play

But you can be more selective:
select albums (or songs if you only like a few)
do {
play_the_shuffled_list(list);
if (mood("not in for the current"))
skip();
if (mood("change_the_list))
change_the_list(&list);
} while !shuffled_off("mortal_coil");
die("happy");

Users can easily send their music files to their MP3 device through the use of the right click menu when browsing their library.

Foobar works well with Windows Media Center IR remote controls with virtual mouse functions; also with wireless mini-keyboards.