How simple and what exactly are you wanting (just playback, library management, tagging, ripping, syncing)? There's quite a few good programs. Foobar is one of my favorites, but I haven't honestly looked into things in quite a while.
Take a look at songbird. It's got a pretty simple interface and it seems to do the job well. After quitting Itunes myself, I bounced around to a few different players before settling with songbird.
I've heard good things about Songbird but I want my media player simple, so I use Foobar. I've also used it with my own extensions for so long that I don't think I could use anything else. It takes a while to get the interface right, but once you do it's awesome.
I personally love WinAmp (Pro is worth the $19 to me, as well). It is not as intuitive as some of the others, but the latest versions make it so easy to tag mp3 files in batches that it is a necessary tool for me. If I needed to sync an Ipod and was more used to Itunes and other media players that have a more modern interface to them, I would use Media Monkey. That being said, I may be a little emotionally involved with WinAmp since I've been using it for years since it was the only real game in town other than Windows Media Player (at least early on).
FYI, as far as sound quality goes, I can tell you for sure that WinAMP 5.03 with the IN_MAD.dll as an input plugin and standard waveOut as output sounds noticeably better than both Songbird and MediaMonkey. MP3s have more dimension and separation of instruments in WinAMP, rather than sounding flat and lifeless as in Songbird and MediaMonkey. I do believe I have the latest versions of those two BTW.
I like Winamp. It has iPod support. Fooled around with Foobar for awhile, but ultimately decided it was too much of a time sink since I was constantly tweaking it. Haven't even heard of Media Monkey. Songbird seemed interesting when I tried it, but it definitely needs more development. It seeks to emote the itunes experience though, so I imagine once it matures it may wind up being a popular alternative.
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