Tagging your Music Collection (and other related stuff)

[Calvin6s]

Sorry if this has been a thread before.  I did a search and didn't see a thread devoted to this, but maybe I just used the wrong keywords.

Current "entire" music collection setup for desktop:

Player:  foobar2000 (I've heard it is the best for customization, low overhead and format ability)
Preferred Format:  FLAC (quality and open format) and mp3 (portability)

So first, if anybody has recommendations outside that player and formats, please share.

Second, my first desktop player was, surprise, Windows Media Player.  I didn't really have a problem with it other than it didn't play FLAC without modification.  I really liked the ease of setting ratings so I could play 4 and 5 star playlists in random order as well as quickly find albums or artists.

I don't see a ratings setting on foobar2000.  Also, I would like the ratings to be permanent so I don't have to redo the whole thing if I move computers or change player.  So basically tagged as 1 through 5 on the file itself in the metadata.  I think that is harder with FLAC than mp3, but I'm not an expert.  I'm about to set ratings again on my collection (since WMP didn't save them on the file that I know of), but it has to be the last time doing it from scratch.  And hopefully there are enough common tags between the formats and players that it isn't a chore when it is transferred.

I've googled some things, but because I don't consider myself very knowledgeable on serious song collection tagging, I could easily take some bad advice when I use "The Whole Internet" as a source.  I'd imagine there are a few serious music collector's here that have already cleared this hurdle and tested it to satisfaction for years.

Thanks in advance.