In reply to:
I was wondering if anybody else noticed something similar with different software on their soundcards???
Decoding quality certainly can vary from one player to the next. However, if you're getting terrible audio quality from the latest version of Winamp, it's probably because you're using the EQ. Winamp's EQ sucks bigtime, and adds quite a bit of distortion. The same is probably to at least to some extent for the EQ's in other software players.
I use the MAD mp3 decoder plugin with Winamp, which does 24-bit decoding and sounds very good. (The 24-bit audio can be output directly if your soundcard support it, otherwise MAD can dither it down to 16-bit).
