Music Match, WinAmp, Foobar200, Which softawre

You can achieve better sound be eliminating the soundcard and replacing with a USB to S/PDIF interface. This will virtually eliminate the jitter caused by the S/PDIF cable and interfaces. It can also have a very stable clock such as a Superclock2 for outputting S/PDIF data. Beats any transport for lowest jitter.

Winamp is the best MP3 Player and EAC is the best ripper together with Lame encoder. LAME gives you good speed, best quality and huge amount of options and flexibility. This is a commandline utility you can setup for use with good quality ripper, such as Exact Audio Copy. The best method of creating MP3's is to use EAC and Lame together but only if the procedure is adopted as indicated in the link given below:

http://www.bestmp3guide.com/

Happy encoding and listening!

J River Media Center. with additional s/w you can control it via Pocket PC http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/

Windows Media player 10....pretty good for organizing MP3's ...not bad sounding either...Microsoft has a Beta-release right now for WMP-10...good luck

Depends on how you encoded your mp3's. If they're 128-160kbps CBR, don't sweat the player, they'll all sound the same. If you used an alt-preset-something or other then you will be able to get your best sound out of foobar. I sometimes run foobar at 32 bit and 96khz which is something those other players can not do. It is not as user friendly because there are literally hundreds of options to tweak. If sound priority is really the most important to you, it's worth learning to use it. There are also a host of plugins out there to change the look and interface of it as well.

I vote Music Match! Go to the web site and do the lifetime upgrade for $60.00 it's well worth it. If you want better sound quality upgrade your sound card on your computer. I am using a pro grade card for home recording studios that has a s/n ration of over 120db. The difference between the Dell "high end" sound card and my pro card is incredible. I use Itunes and a couple of other software programs but I always come back to Music match for its layout and "all in one" capabilities. As for sound quality I can't tell the diff between most players and I have a very, very good ear. The problem is your sound card!!!!!

It might ultimately depend on what you are using to connect to your stereo. I have a squeezebox which uses it's own server but pulls from an iTunes library and also just installed an apple airport express which uses iTunes. My ipod also uses iTunes...