Best HTPC Music software?

[scootermaster]

I'm SLOOOOOOWLY building an HTPC, but I'm doing it software first ( ). My question to y'alls is this: What's the best jukey software out there? I mean, I still use Winamp for my mp3s, so what the hell do I know?

Music is going to be a HUGE (primary?) part of my HTPC, so it's not something I'm willing to skate by on.

So far here's what I know:

iTunes
+ COVERFLOW! (can't think of a better way to flip through CDs from your sofa)
+ It's simple
- No flac
- No ASIO/Kernel (Right? do I care about this? I intend to get a semi-pro sound card to pipe to my home theater system, so fidelity is an issue. I don't game -- except for emulation -- so I don't need an Audigy or something. I'm thinking something by mAudio or Yamaha. This makes a difference, no?)

Fubar
+ Flac!
+ Extensible
- Freakin hard to customize correctly
- Nothing pretty like coverflow (right?)

Windows Media Center Interface
+ Built in?
- Never used it

Ideally, I want to just have random access to my CD collection in full (or even better) fidelity than I would have through a CD player. But it needs to be manageable from the couch.


Ideas?

 

[The Boston Dangler]

windows media center is by far the prettiest and easiest interface for browsing albums i've used. unfortunately, WMP is a huge piece of crap. aside from the player's gui, FLAC support is a struggle, and reading tags is a fight to the death. avoid avoid avoid

foobar is great - performance, compatibility, customization, et cetera. but, like you said, it takes a lot of effort to set up, and you pretty much have to be a programmer to tweak it out properly. look at some of the screenshots posted by the hardcore people - they're sweet, but i have no idea how they did it.

right now, i'm using zoom player and just adding files from the explorer window. not so pretty, but it works. in XP, you can pick a picture for each folder, Vista kinda does this for you. there is a way of embedding a picture (album cover) into the music file, so the pic is displayed instead of a generic icon. zoom player has a file browser/ library thingy, buy i haven't fooled around with it yet.

you're not going to get better sound than the original, no matter what you do to it. in fact, the less done to the sound, the better. i found no difference in using the ASIO plugin for foobar, maybe i did something wrong?
XP or Vista?
are you going to use an analog or digital connection to the stereo? if it's digital, i would try the on-board digital output before buying anything else. if you're going analog, i suggest a card based on c-media 8788 chipset. $100. either way, you should do as little processing to the audio as possible (upsampling, effects, minimal eq, whatever).