[Nick Zwar]

For Windows at least, there are a few alternatives, like Foobar2000 and especially MusicBee, which feels like an iTunes on steroids, as it can do pretty much everything iTunes can and then some. Plus it handles both FLAC and ALAC files. I very much like and also use MusicBee and it does some things I enjoy that iTunes can’t do, most importantly multiple genres.
Originally, I ripped with iTunes, but when I checked my ripped collection with AccurateRip a few years later, I found that several CDs I had ripped had considerable errors that iTunes didn’t report them. EAC is much better at these corrections, if EAC detects an error while ripping, it reads the sectors again until it either can read them or it flags them in a report; as far as I know that’s true for XLD as well.
My HP laptop is not hooked up to my home stereo though (or any speakers really, just the built in speakers), so I never use these programs to listen to music, just to tag and curate my music collection.