It is very important to know the media players of Linux. Because there are not many of them pre installed.
Generally people don’t have essential know-how that which one is best based on features and user-experience. Every release has its own new entry in to league, but its worthily to know which of ‘em are there amiable. So here are some I can recommend from my experience.

1) Totem Media Player

Totem is movie player for the Gnome desktop based on xine and . It plays any Xine or GStreamer supported file. It support 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, stereo and AC3 pass-through audio output.
From user-experience it can be easily rated as best place to play your media even when there are plenty of players available. make it as a default player. It is definitely better audio player as audio is much more pronounced and clear and lastly detailed.
Download Totem Media player

2) VLC

VLC does not need any introduction. Its same classic media player that has magical power to play any yes almost any media file.
VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, avi, xvid, mp3, ogg and many new formats like mkv) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It has almost all functions which are there in its Window’s brother.
Download VLC

3) Amarok

It is the best option if you are fond of playing long playlists.
"Easily the best media-player for Linux at the moment. Install it now!" from Linux Format Magazine
It has variety of impressive addons like wiki-page of artist and lyrics and many more contemporary features.
So what are you waiting for.
Download AmaroK

4) MPlayer

It is specialized media player for Linux. It gives maximum space to you for playing video files.
MPlayer plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. Even you can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and WMV movies.
Download Mplayer

5) Xine

It might look like 10 years older than present time, but heart is younger. Xine is a free (gpl-licensed) high-performance, portable and reusable multimedia playback engine. Xine is faster than its companions.
Xine is one of the most supportive media package in LINUX OS environments. It has its own codec packs which can be easily be updated
Download Xine