+++
title = 'The Quest: Introduction'
date = 2011-12-28T04:56:00Z
+++

For as long as I can remember, I have been on a quest to find the perfect media
player for the PC. Obviously, the perfect player for a real audio system is a
well constructed turntable (like the one I just bought: [Audio-Technica
LP-120-USB](http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/turntables/583f30b3a8662772/index.html),
or the classic [Technics
SL-1200MK2](http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/technics_dj/prod_specs_sl1200mk2.asp)).
Since I spend most of my time at a computer, and I'm not always in the mood to
flip records, a good digital media player is something I really need.

Several years ago, the options for media players were pretty slim. The first
"media player" I remember using was the _Play_ button on the
[Caddy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caddy_%28hardware%29)-based CD-ROM drive
on one of my family's first MS-DOS PCs. Old disc drives had a four-conductor
cable that would run from the drive directly to the sound card for analog audio
playback without software. As software became more sophisticated, applications
were able to control CD playback. The first application I remember using came
with the sound card and was supposed to resemble a stereo system (it had three
"components", a pre-amp, that controlled the volume, a player that controlled
tracks, and a pointless "amplifier" window that did nothing). I also remember
using Windows Media Player (probably v6.x) and Winamp (v1.x and 2.x).

I never owned a Windows XP computer (thankfully), but went from Windows 98 to
Linux. In my early Linux days, I used a few players, including XMMS, before
settling on Amarok, which I used until only a couple of years ago. Amarok was
eventually rewritten into a totally different application using version 4 of
the KDE libraries. Once the KDE 3 libraries were removed from Gentoo Linux, I
was forced to begin my full-time search for the perfect media player. To this
day, I consider Amarok 1.4 to be the best media player around.

My standards are pretty high nowadays, and I have a pretty stringent set of
requirements. I've made a little contest out of my search, scoring various
players in several categories. I'll post the full list of requirements in a few
days, and I'll start posting reviews of the players I test as time goes on.