Foobar 2000 or MediaMonkey v.3?

Thank you for the responses.

I just downloaded the free JRiver Media Jukebox and copied some tracks from my WMP library. Definite improvement in clarity and soundstage compared to WMP - not huge, but its there.

Mike19

I think it's the same for Media Center and Jukebox... MC has a free trial too and does more stuff than Jukebox. I think it may also sound better.

Go into the options, PLAYBACK... DSP... OUTPUT... AND PLAY WITH the bit rate and sampling rates some. Defaults on mine were 16/44... switching upwards both settings improved things fairly dramatically. Albeit, the noticed changes were more noticeable using my main stereo rather than my PC, naturally.

Depending on your OS you may wish to select WAVE vs. Direct sound. A good ASIO driver will further improve things, if a USB device is being used.

I recently compared MediaMonkey MediaCenter 13 vs. Foobar 0.9.6 both with ASIO output and found MediaMonkey less clear, with a more muddled sound, particularly in the mid range, and considerably less dynamic range. MediaMonkey is also fat in the low end to the point of being inaccurate. I compare all these to my regular stereo setup (meridian, mccormack, martin logan) for accuracy.

Foobar has always been my app to beat as far as sound quality, though it is considerably less user friendly. columns_ui helps. I'd love to hear of any real competitors...

Er, that was supposed to be MediaMonkey vs. MediaCenter 13 vs. Foobar. My order of preference for sound is:

1. Foobar
2. Mediacenter
3. MediaMonkey

My order of preference for UI is:

1. MediaMonkey
2. MediaCenter
3. Foobar

I'm using JRiver Media Jukebox 12 and it is a far cry better in sonics then WMP9 that i was previously using. I am using the WAVE and not the Direct sound and that also improved the sound in my system. I agree witht he previous posts about gaining soundstage and just overall better presentation. The sound card i am using has a thing called "pure wave" and that sounds really good. Blindjim, i read on the JRiver forums that there is no sonic improvement going from Jriver media jukebox to the JRiver media center. The only advantage there is that there are more features for pictures and videos etc., where as the jukebox is just for streaming your audio files. If anyone has compared the two and can speak to the contrary i would certainly like to know as it may be worth the investment. I just want to stream audio and if there is an improvement to that end then i may do that upgrade but like i said the information i read from administrators on that forum indicate otherwise.