FooBar rocks!
I'm an admitted audio-quality biggot, so when a coworker introduced me to the audio player utility FooBar, I was skeptical of his claims of it being a better mousetrap. But, now after a little time switching back and forth, listening to the same music on Media Player 9, and FooBar, I have to admit its lack of a descent UI is definitely compensated by its incredible audio-processing.
Check it out...you may lose your handy blog-tool hooks, and may miss the nicer UI, but if your an audio-freak, you will quickly forget about those minor annoyances.