is there a best music player on the computer?


I recently bought an HRT MusicStreamer II and have listened to internet radio lately but sometimes the stations have their own player that they prombt you to use but I have had no luck with. For example: KUSF does not work for me, they offer a choice of Flash 2.0 Flash 3.0 and Windows Media Player. When I select one of these in the pop up window it does not work.

What is the best music player for my computer (Windows XP pack 3)?

Is there a way to select one player to use with everything?

What is the best choice for this?

I presume the individual website are to blame in some instances, however, I need a plan of attack.

any help appreciated.

Thanks!

Phil
128x128philjolet
I forgot to add that XXHighend seems to be the only PC program so far that I find to rival Mac Pure Music/Amarra but then again, I have not heard the current version of Jriver.
I have tried Winamp, Real, WMP and Media Monkey. The free versions are all compromised in some way and the sound of none were that good. I recently discovered J River Media Jukebox (the free version) and it's excellent. The view and search elements are second to none and unlike many of the free media players, full boolean commands are standard. Unlike the others you can manage the sound to a high degree and it sounds vastly superior in tonal quality. They have a good support forum which is manned permanently by a Beta team as well as admin presence. They do favour their full price player a little more (Media Center)but that's to be expected.
Aplhifi,

I'm curious as to what settings you use with J River. I use a Windows 7 64 bit laptop, with ASIO4ALL installed (what ASIObuffer do you use?).

I've been using XXhighend for a while now and must say that it sounds very good. I started with playing around with J River today and compared them one on one. And XX still has the slight edge.. The difference is smaller than I thought it would be though. Maybe I'm using the wrong settings? Somewhere I hope that J River will be better because of the user friendliness. At least my wife can put on some music when I'm not home!!!

Thanks!!
I recently loaded XXHIGHEND on a laptop and was very impressed with what I heard.
I am comparing it with Amarra, Pure Music, MediaMonkey and 1 or 2 other non-contenders.
XXHIGHEND seems to have better dynamic effect on my music, but has a very awkward interface. I like MediaMonkey for its interface more than the rest. It also finds all of you music during the initial installation.
I also enjoy SharkGroove, Pandora and Mog for music streaming.
Hope this helps.