do all software players play equal audio quality

[kuldeepsingh]

technically is it possible that softwae audio players like winamp, itunes, window media player, real jukebox etc .... play same quality of mp3 or audio cd. coz i have tried listening to all players same piece of music with no extra sound effect and found a little variation in every case.
if its do so , which player you found to be best. my choice came out to be window media player, then itunes

please comment

 

[adason]

hi kuldeepsingh,

I have compared cd's (not mp3's) played by quite a few software and found huge differences.

I found winamp the worst of all, media palyer pretty bad, itunes better, creative the best

Once Creative external soundcard Extigy with upgraded power supply was used, the sound was close to my main standalone cd player.

 

[cowanrg]

i personally use foobar2000 with an ASIO plugin through my HTPC. the sound card is an M-Audio Delta410. the media files are ripped from cds in APE (lossless) format.

this setup is my main music player and it sounds better than my $1500 denon player.

its not so much the software as the configuration. there are a LOT of ways to configure each one. depending on your soundcard, one could sound better or worse than another. winamp certainly can sound great but it needs to be setup properly.