foo_out_pulse

Native event-based PulseAudio output for foobar2000, for use in Wine.

Setup

This component connects to 127.0.0.1 using Pulse's native TCP protocol. First you have to enable the module for this protocol for the Pulse daemon by editing either /etc/pulse/default.pa or ~/.config/pulse/default.pa and adding or editing the following line:

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp

Next copy or link the Pulseaudio cookie into your Wine prefix, for example:

ln -s ~/.config/pulse/cookie ~/.wine/drive_c/users/<name>/.config/pulse/cookie

Make sure the Pulseaudio daemon is actually running, as it cannot be automatically activated over TCP.

For the icon to appear in the mixer, you will need to place a png of foobar's icon named foobar in, for example, ~/.icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/foobar.png

Wine 5.14+ is required for Pulseaudio to be able to read the cookie file, due to this change - see this discussion for context.

Known bugs

• With some sound cards, playback seems to be sped up when Pulseaudio is using its default timer based scheduling mode. You could try switching to interrupt scheduling (tsched=0) or try enabling the workaround in Advanced Preferences.

Advantages

Foobar works very well in Wine, but Wine's default Pulseaudio output has some disadvantages. Compared to using the standard output, this component

• May be less liable to cause audio dropouts when performing IO-intensive tasks such as tag writing, as it buffers as much as possible on the Pulse end,
• Has a custom fading implementation to prevent pops on seek/track change, that doesn't require reducing Pulseaudio's buffer length to work (configure in Advanced Preferences -> Playback -> Pulseaudio output),
• Doesn't resample unnecessarily, making the most of Pulseaudio's avoid-resampling option,
• Can show foobar's icon in the system mixer,
• Integrates with Pulseaudio's volume control.

Todo

Currently it

• Only connects to localhost and doesn't support connecting via Unix socket like normal programs,
• Probably doesn't properly pass through channel mappings from source files correctly.