Foobar2000

Here's a great audio program for anyone who likes their players lightweight--it won't take up much RAM or system resources, and it won't muck up your screen with frills. But it does a fantastic job at playing audio. For one thing, it handles a wide array of audio formats (including those that many other popular media players don't support), namely MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC/Ogg FLAC, WavPack, .wav, AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA, and WMA. If you come across an audio file that Foobar2000 won't play, you can download components that will play additional file formats.

The application offers a lot more as well, including an equalizer and the ability to rip CDs. You can convert files between audio formats, too, and the app also does a nice job of handling tags for files.

Anyone who gets audio files from assorted sources will welcome one of its better features, ReplayGain. Files from different sources often have varying volume levels, which means you often have to adjust the volume whenever a new file starts playing. ReplayGain automatically normalizes them, playing them all back at a similar volume.

Downloads can give you even more advanced features, such as the ability to do a binary comparison between two files to see whether they are identical. Even so, Foobar2000 is missing one thing: the ability to burn CDs. So if you're hunting for disc-burning software, look elsewhere.