Best Freeware Players

Graham Slee wrote: "But I've noticed I can tell a difference between Foobar2000 and the VLC media player, and I think the VLC may just have the edge!"

I love my VLC ! I believe, once I get enough music stored on my CPU, I may be able to create playlists lasting a few hours long !
My RT707 could play up to 7 hours without changing 7" tapes. ( haven't used that in years.)

I just finished cleaning up and rebuilding  my 2008 Win XP computer tower. I added a 500GB hard drive for music and pictures storage... 3rd hard drive. This system has both PATA and SATA drive connections. My Plextor PATA CDR/CDRW has a read speed of 52x max and records at the same 52x max.
I use the Plextor for CD ripping... takes less than 5 minutes for most CDs. I haven't really measured it, I just know it is screaming fast, compared to my old 8x CDRW and my RT707 reel-to-reel !
 The 3 hard drives are SATA. The SATA DVD-RAM drive is not as fast as the Plextor.
I have been converting files direct from CD to FLAC files with fre:ac.org version 1.0.23.
 The fre:ac.org can convert to Ogg Vorbis, Bonk Audio, FAAC MP4, LAME MP3,and Windows Wave Audio files.

I can play any formatted music with the VLC media player out on USB to either the Bitzie or Majestic DACs... the Majestic gives more sound output, but both DACs are giving clean unadulterated music.
  The VLC media player has it's own output level control which helps tame the loudest music to keep it from clipping.

Being the fact of storing my music to a separate hard drive from the operating system,
  if the OS crashes, I won't loose many hours ripping and storing files.

 One draw back on my computer is the SPDIF coax out does not work.
 I have been playing music from my CD/DVD player on SPDIF coax to the Majestic DAC and WOW, what clear and clean energy!

 While writing this I ripped 2 more CDs.