I started using WMP9 and found it was a really nice program. I really liked how when I ripped a CD using WMA Lossless that it retrieved jpeg files and provided information on the artist, all releases by the artist, etc...

I notice a lot of talk about Foobar 2000 and decided that I'd download it and try it out.

I played a WMA Lossless file using WMP9 and compared it to a FLAC file played on Foobar 2000. Now both files are lossless so there shouldn't be any difference between them, correct?

However the FLAC played on Foobar 2000 sounds noticeably better. Is this my imagination? I know this isn't a true ABX test but the difference is sound quality is just so significant I wanted to know if anyone else experienced something similar.

Is there a problem with WMP9 and does it produce inferior sound quality?

If the answer is yes, then I'm faced with a tough decision. Use inferior sound with WMP9 and have the jpeg files and artist information, or go with the better sound quality, but lose the aforementioned goodies. Is there any way to get both?

Most likely your WMP9 has spoony equalizer settings or other preferences set that are effecting the sound in a negative way. Disable all that crap, and your WMA Lossless files should sound just like your FLAC files.

Keep in mind that the WMP audio ripper doesn't operate in secure mode, but in burst mode, which is subject to errors and corruption in the bitstream, especially if your CD-ROM isn't a superior DAE performer.

With that being the case, it is technically quite possible that a rip of a CD using WMP9 to WMA Lossless sounds inferior to a rip made using a secure mode ripper and FLAC.

Edit 1: I think there was a Lyrics3 plugin for fb2k, that will allow you to save song lyrics and information about the artists and songs in the files, but not album covers. All that extra jazz really isn't standard, often breaks gapless playback, and often greatly increases the size of your files with information that is duplicated in every file, like every song containing a copy of the album art.

Edit 2: If you are bent on using ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, Lyrics3, etc. tagging and including things like album art, lyrics, artist information, a discography, whatever, then consider using EAC to rip your files to a single large WAV, encode the single WAV to MP3, and write your extra data to that single MP3 file. Then use EAC to export a CUE sheet for the MP3 file; fb2k will be able to play that back just fine and you don't need to worry about gaps between tracks or other tag-induced bugs. It might not nicely download all the extras automatically, but you'll have a much higher quality end result than WMP would ever hope to produce.

Both WMA Lossless and FLAC are lossless codecs, so there should be naught difference, with equalisers, DSPs and other sound-modifying stuff turned off.

Just as a caution: Make sure to uncheck copy protection in WMA9 options if you decide to go with WMA Lossless. You don't want to format your hard disk, or transfer your files to a new computer one day and find that you can never play them back again.

At first, I thought WMP and Foobar sounded different. However, capturing the output of both and comparing them in CEP, they are in fact the same. That said, I find WMP slows down to crawl when you have more than a couple thousand files in the Media Library.