Audiophiles who delve into the world of computer audio have hundreds of software tools from which to choose for organizing and playing their libraries, but I’ve found none to compare to…

MusiCHI Suite. a ripper, player, tagger, and file manager that is ideally suited for serious collectors, particularly jazz and classical listeners.

It’s not freeware — it runs about $54 at the current exchange rate — and there is not a Mac-native version yet (though it runs very efficiently under BootCamp), but there simply isn’t any other software suite out there that has the sophisticated ripping, search and metadata editing capabilities of this bad boy. MusiCHI’s develoment wizard Philippe Watel continues to seriously tweak the suite — and yes, there’s even a free 21-day trial edition so you can kick the tires and see if it’s your cup of tea.

MusiCHI Suite is up and running on a barebones Windows 7 quad core box on my home network, with most of the media files on a networked Drobo. I’m loving it.