In foobar2000 it is assumed that those album folders have a common ancestor folder, like C:\Music. You then add that as your library path. Once that is the case then you can set it up to show the folders in the left pane, with the songs of the folders in a right pane. So it is certainly able to do what you want quite easily, unless your folder structure is total chaos.
The player will still look like ass, but hey, that's seems to be the way the foobar2000 author likes it.
Music player recommendations
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Re: Music player recommendations
The question is, how to set it up? I've never found such an option in that user interface.
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Re: Music player recommendations
In "Library->Configure" you add "C:\Music" to the "Music folders" list.
In "View->Layout->Quick Setup" you select "Album List + Properties" and click OK.
In the lower left corner of the main window there is a combo box. It defaults to "View: by artist/album". You need to change it to "View: by folder structure". After this you will have a tree list to the left that are all the folders, and to the right you have your play list with tag properties above it. If you press enter after selecting a folder to the left it adds all those files to the play list to the right.
In "View->Layout->Quick Setup" you select "Album List + Properties" and click OK.
In the lower left corner of the main window there is a combo box. It defaults to "View: by artist/album". You need to change it to "View: by folder structure". After this you will have a tree list to the left that are all the folders, and to the right you have your play list with tag properties above it. If you press enter after selecting a folder to the left it adds all those files to the play list to the right.
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Re: Music player recommendations
While that worked, the UI is still shit. It's a real pity, on pure technical terms foobar2000 is far and away the best music player software, if it was just a little more convenient to use...
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Re: Music player recommendations
The stock UI is definitely not "modern", but it feels adequate to me. It fits quite well with default system looks in my opinion, in contrast to something like fre:ac (not a music player) that both has a custom UI that's also not pretty (with other missteps like a cross for a tick mark). I'll take foobar2000's "I'm a stock WinForms application"-esque looks over whatever default skins Winamp ships with any day. I mentioned a couple of plug-ins I use with it, and the result is to me perfectly acceptable:
https://i.imgur.com/iFN7J6B.png (I don't use the grouping with images thing, but it's a thing Columns UI supports that's not present in the stock UI)
Of course, if you want to go crazy, there's some amazingly impractical and wasteful skins for that too.
Admittedly, there are some annoying weak spots that just feel outdated. A button can't contextually change its icon except on mouse hover. This means the button for combined play/pause doesn't actually change. By default it uses a question mark (why?), so I had to take the play button's icon and use that. There is no smart resizing of the playlist detail columns either, so the situation of lots of free space in some spot and truncated text in other spots is common. Other than that, though, I haven't had a reason to complain, especially with the ability to turn on/off basically any feature.
On the topic of ugly player skins, has there ever been anyone who actually liked this piece of fine art?
https://i.imgur.com/iFN7J6B.png (I don't use the grouping with images thing, but it's a thing Columns UI supports that's not present in the stock UI)
Of course, if you want to go crazy, there's some amazingly impractical and wasteful skins for that too.
Admittedly, there are some annoying weak spots that just feel outdated. A button can't contextually change its icon except on mouse hover. This means the button for combined play/pause doesn't actually change. By default it uses a question mark (why?), so I had to take the play button's icon and use that. There is no smart resizing of the playlist detail columns either, so the situation of lots of free space in some spot and truncated text in other spots is common. Other than that, though, I haven't had a reason to complain, especially with the ability to turn on/off basically any feature.
On the topic of ugly player skins, has there ever been anyone who actually liked this piece of fine art?
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Re: Music player recommendations
I absolutely can live with the stock Windows look, but the least I expect is a somewhat sane implementation of functionality. And here's where foobar2000 makes it hard. The instructions to make the directory pane visible helped a lot already but I still miss some very simple convenience items like 'play contents of this folder' in the context menu.Xeotroid wrote: ↑Mon Jul 10, 2023 5:35 pm The stock UI is definitely not "modern", but it feels adequate to me. It fits quite well with default system looks in my opinion, in contrast to something like fre:ac (not a music player) that both has a custom UI that's also not pretty (with other missteps like a cross for a tick mark). I'll take foobar2000's "I'm a stock WinForms application"-esque looks over whatever default skins Winamp ships with any day. I mentioned a couple of plug-ins I use with it, and the result is to me perfectly acceptable:
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Re: Music player recommendations
On Linux, DeaDBeeF.