Are the paid media players way better than the free ones? Or does it just make people feel good buying software?

Basically most of my software are freeebies. I use two media players. Winamp for testing my smx's and Zion for the bells and whistles. (read skins)

I have always used free media players. Iv'e never needed anything over the years that Winamp free has not provided. That being said, my requirements of a media player (for music at least) are very small. If it has reasonable album management and plays music, it's on the list!
(i use VLC for all video requirements)

I have no problem buying software though, but it needs to be something that cannot be done or found any other way.

Is anyone using, or has used Foobar 2000? it was on a recommended list on Cnet. Ive had a look but any feedback would be appreciated.

Foobar is mostly used for FLAC playback, but also is a good mp3  player, very light footprint however, not sure it's still supported. I'd choose this if I used a free player first above all other freeware players.

Yes, I feel good buying software that is worth it and meets my expectations as a consumer...plus I'm supporting furthur development for a quality product. 

Hey, I use what I skin...lol.

It's still in development.....just not very fast track. I believe a new version was released last month.

I've tried it and my only gripe is that it's assembly ware. There are "plugins" for damn near everything you need but you've got to spend the time trying them out and deciding which work best for you and "assembling" your player.

Winamp has Flac support (will rip in Flac) in fact I can't think of any audio format it doesn't support.

MusicBee

I agree with Lantec...not really into hunting down equalizer presets. You're right about it being assembly-ware no doubt. Deviant Art has some really cool skins for it though, my main reason for using it in the past. Glad to hear it's still being updated.

I use iTunes religiously. My only hangup is that you have to correct most ID3 tagging and embed album artwork before you can import the files into iTunes. One perk among many is almost all 1.27 TB of my library is lossless which itunes will down convert to 128 AAC for my iPhone when synced. Doesn't get better then that.

I use spotify, It does a great job combining what music you already have on your system and integrating it with new stuff.
It's light on resources and is probably the best source of free music out there.
It also has no problem opening any downloaded audio file (such as a podcast) and adding it to the library

Free for a time and it is no good for the many facebook haters here.

"A six month free trial period is activated upon initial login with a Facebook account, where a user can listen to an unlimited amount of music supported by visual and radio-style advertising. After the trial, Spotify will make tracks unavailable once they are played 5 times and has a listening limit of ten hours per month.^[14] An "Unlimited" subscription removes advertisements and time limits and a "Premium" subscription introduces extra features such as higher bitrate streaming, offline access to music and mobile app access.^[15] An active Facebook account is required to use Spotify, unless the user has registered for a Spotify-only account before 22 September 2011. Subscriptions are restricted to people with credit/debit cards or PayPal accounts registered in certain countries" Source is from wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify

I would certainly agree with you on that. I have been using dfx for years and it makes a huge difference in sound quality. What most people do not know is there is even a program for making your own skins using existing winamp skins. It only works with the classic skins or skins that use bmp images. Here is a skin I made for one of my favorite winamp skins called Frequency. It is the bottom window.

It still does include the 10 free songs. It's also cheaper if you pay quarterly or yearly.

I have around 15000 mp3 files representing over 500 albums and CDs in my library I have converted. I use mediamonkey for several reasons:

1) it handles very large libraries much better than other players I've tried

2) it has REALLY good support for editing tags

3) supports all the file types you'd ever want to use

That being said, it has its share of bugs and problems like any other software. Honestly, there isn't any perfect player (yet.) Things I find annoying with mediamonkey:

1) making playlists is a bit clumsy in my mind

2) crashes more often with most recent version than it used to

3) my media library got corrupted once and I lost all play history which didn't really annoy me too much, but it would some people excessively

4) the interface could use a lot of work in the looks/usability department in general

Good luck with your search. My advice is, install a bunch of them, use each for a week and keep the one you like best!

vlc, bs media player- some of the more basic free media players

Nothing fancy... Amarok on both Linux and Windows...

I wish I had kept my old subscription going but when things got tight I canceled it and 3 months later they changed...

from their website....

Lantec...I didn't know that. I hardly ever use my credits so when my sub expires, I'm going to switch. Thx

Of all the players I've tried throughout the years (closing on 1½ decade), and I've tried -many-, I've found that WinAmp is currently the best and easiest to use for music - and by far the easiest to skin (Classic skins).
It is offcause the player I use, and it's been my main music player since 1998. (I use VLC for video/films)

BUT.... WinAmp's not the best player ever to have seen the light of day.
Two other players could potentionally have knocked WinAmp off of the throne. K-Jöfol and Sonique were by far the better players when they still were in developement. Sadly though, the K-Jöfol team were headhunted over to WinAmp and Sonique was bought by Lycos (The Google of it's days), which was the death for both players.

Why do people say it's hard to edit tags in iTunes? I edit tags quite often with no issues.

Given that I like to listen to one song over and over again in an endless loop and only change it once every 10 minutes or so, I never really had to move beyond YouTube Repeater.

no player handles tags as well as MP3tag LINK