problems compiling players

[Kirchner, Eric C.]

This question isn't directly related to sound, but hope someone can give me
a pointer -- I have tried to compile a great deal of players -- trying to
find one that will work with the libraries I have right now, but Many of
them TAR says are bad -- Its so many that I think I am missing something --
I try to untar using 

tar -xvf {filename}.tar 

is there a different command line -- or are my tar's really corrupt...?

Eric