nohitter151s idea is good. I am using AIMP2 for this. It is a pretty good winamp alternitive, with a lot of nice features and a pretty good sound quality.

My preference is just to associate all audio file types with another (more lightweight) program, like Media Player classic or VLC or even Winamp lite. That way you can use a low-resource program which will open quickly in order to preview files via windows explorer. When you want to listen to your whole library, then you open MM.

I think it would be a really good idea to have a preview pane handler for the next version of MM. A lot of times I like to preview a song I've downloaded before adding it to my library. If I keep MP3s associated with MM, I have to right-click the file and choose Open With... If I keep them associated with WMP, I can just select the file and click "play" in the preview pane.

Dave