Music player recommendation

I've pinpointed my recent system crashes to Winamp 5.5 and its inability to maintain system stability. However I'm keeping it for the time being since I don't know of a good alternative music player (Windows Media Player doesn't play all the formats on my PC).

Here's what I'm looking for:
1. Able to recognise and play lots of different file formats (e.g. ogg, ogm, it, mod)
2. Decent sound quality from my internal speakers
3. Free
4. No DRM issues (I think that's why Winamp crashes my system)

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

Try VLC Media Player. It plays just about any media format there is.

 

Take a look at this thread, lots of recommendations. On first post you'll find links for Foobar2000!

 

I've heard about that one, I thought that was mainly for playing videos though.

Is it Vista compatible? Any issues I have to watch out for?

 

Which one? VLC or Foobar ?

 

I have no issues with Winamp at all (note that I don't use Vista).
Just a question, did you try deleting all the plug-ins that come with it? I uninstall all the plug-ins except for the Media Library and a couple of others. Probably won't fix your problem, but I guess it's worth a try?

 

I was referring to VLC.

Thibault: I've never had to delete plug-ins before for Winamp. I've also read on the Vista program compatibility page that there are DRM issues with Winamp so I'm attributing the crashes to that problem.

 

foobar2k. The best there is.

 

I've looked at the link provided by n0elia, however it seems foobar doesn't support two of the file formats present in my system (those are really old and date back to the DOS era however I don't have mp3 equivalents).

Does VLC play legacy file formats?

 

I would suggest you get foobar2000, plays everything vlc plays and it is low on recourses and doesn't have all that bloatware that usually comes with a player, it just plays, and if you want themes you can easily get them and make it look tons sexier than other players.

 

foobar2000 is by far the best for me. it does require some customization to be really good though. it even sounds better than winamp for me.

 

I haven't touched a thing yet. I just use it how it is.

 

I just installed the Zune software.. looks better than any other media player out there and runs great. Works well for me.. but I don't know if it will support the file types you need.

 

well, foobar becomes a lot better with columnui. i also like SSRC for foobar