If you are planning to use your PC to listen to music, connecting it with an amplifier and hi-fi speakers, you are going to need some applications that will let you handle your collection – from converting audio between various formats, to creating compilations, etc. – and first of all you need to make sure you get the best possible sound quality. It’s been a long time since I use my PC for music, so that what follows comes from first hand experience and not from abstract calculations, guessings or reproductions of what other people might say.

If this can help you form a better estimation of my judgments, I should say that I prefer rather a balanced sound, sweet, smooth and clear, with a full body, including all the middle area, natural bass, mild treble.

The Source of Sound: If you use Winamp as the main source – and not the default Windows Media Player, you will enjoy a large community of users who create useful plugins extending the functionality of Winamp. Regarding sound quality itself, you might like to try a Kernel Streaming Plugin that will let you bypass the Windows native mixing system and achieve hi end sound, without the need of extra drivers. Note that this bypassing might prove only theoretical, while in reality differences are not audible.

Media players can be a burden to various PC configurations; if you experience problems when you use Winamp, or if for any other reason you don’t want Winamp, try Foobar2000, an equally great player, supported also by a (smaller) library of important components (plugins), such as the Wasapi plugin for hi-fi sound.

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