The Best Free Media Player for Vista?

So what is the best overall media player for Windows Vista? To find this I am only worried about how it handles music, so videos and podcasts play no role in my decision.

For quite some time I have been using Windows Media Player 11, it covers most of my needs as a media player, but I still feel like there is still something missing. So I have downloaded a couple of other free media players to see which one is the best for a vista user like me. I have been using these media players for the last month give or take a bit.

Now before I start evaluating each one some things to note are that I am on a 64bit Vista os with a Core 2 Duo processor. I also have quite a bit of songs that I have bought over the years, that each program must be able handle.

So on to the programs. I will be comparing:

Foobar2000 0.9.5.3

Media Monkey Free version

Windows Media Player 11
Read the Review

Musikcube 1.0

Songbird 0.6

Winamp 5.53
Read the Review

Basically I pulled up osguide.net’s audio section for windows and downloaded all the media players, so that I could truly find the “best” one.

Another side note: Itunes is not included in this because I cannot stand it, it is ridiculously slow on windows and IMHO a piece of crap, it has crashed way to many times. So Itunes is out of the question and not even being reviewed.

So over the next week I will be writing reviews on which media player I personally think is best, for general music listening.