I’m a bit of a music snob. It’s not that I listen to snobby music, but that I’m very particular about what I want in music playback. Back in February I bought my new MP3 CD player for my car audio deck and I’ve been loving it ever since. I mentioned in the post about it that I was then looking for the right MP3 player for my PC. I thought maybe MediaMonkey was the answer, but the one thing I really disliked about it was the database format. Databases crash. And usually when I’m counting on them not to. But it was better than MusicMatch, so I went with it. Unfortunately, I started having troubles ripping my CDs to MP3 format with it, and so still needed to have MusicMatch on board. Hmmm, I needed to do a rethink.

While reading through the extensive MediaMonkey forums, however, I came across a program title that I remembered most fondly. Five years ago, before MP3s were even a glint in my eyes, I used Quintessential CD as my CD player. It was small software, skinnable, and free. Just what I needed for playing my CDs on the PC. Someone on the MediaMonkey forums mentioned QCD and I thought “I wonder if that’s my old program?” Well, since QCD was a CD playing software, I didn’t really need it anymore, so I didn’t think anything of it. Until last night when I read another post mentioning it. And I got to thinking “what if they updated it to play MP3s?” They have! The initials are still QCD, but now the program is Quintessential Media Player!

Well, I downloaded the program, virus checked it, and installed it. I’m currently playing with it now, checking out the features. And I think this is gonna be The One! It’s doing, so far, everything that I want in an MP3 player.

• small skin footprint possible (song title/artist showing)
• stays in system tray while playing
• works with .m3u files
• works with subfolders in playlist folder
• rips & encodes (so far, only see .ogg encoding – will look for MP3 plugin)
• free

There are still some things I need to do to see how it works. I haven’t tried ripping a CD with it yet. If it can do that, and as MP3s (to be compatible with the rest of the MP3 players I own), then I’ve finally found my MP3 player software. And it’s an old favorite of mine anyhoo! Yay!

In other news, today is gregmce‘s birthday! And in an odd case of serendipity, it’s also marathongreg‘s birthday! Who’da thunk it?! Heh heh!

Happy Birthday, Greg! Hope you have a blast!

In other, other news, today is the premier of the new Doctor Who. WOOHOO! (Or should that be Woo Who?) For those of you in the UK, ENJOY! For the rest of us – hopefully we’ll get to enjoy soon enough!