Best Mac audio player?

Famous Mortimer said:

I've been reading this thread with interest, as I'm having some trouble with my music.

I've come back to Macs after 5 or so years away, and have a splendid iMac which does everything I want, apart from play music properly. I've got a fairly large music collection (60,000 or so files) and the other players all struggle. Play, Clementine and Songbird all seem promising but crash, or just don't seem to do what you need them to do.

So, I have two options, that I can see. Convert all my FLAC files to m4a and just use iTunes, or go for one of the paid options on the app store, like Enqueue. I just want to be able to tag my files and see my entire collection in the organiser.

So, any advice?

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I have around 30,000 music files, plus numerous audiobooks, podcasts and other media, and despite it being far from perfect, I still haven't found a better solution than iTunes. I have all tracks organised carefully by genre and by using Apple Scripts all the labelling for all my songs is correct and tidy. Clementine, Songbird and the like are all promising but they don't cover everything and aren't in the same league as iTunes for depth of functionality in my experience.

For viewing your entire collection iTunes certainly achieves that with several interface options. I personally ripped all my music at 320 kbps (using a high quality encoder as not all 320 kbps encoding is the same) and personally I can't tell a difference. For me having CD/FLAC quality is more about ease of transferring and altering the file medium at any time in the future rather than sound quality these days.

60,000 songs might take some ripping, although you could queue them all up on a fast computer and then just leave it ripping for a week or so.

BlackMangoTree said:

Use XLD to decode your FLAC's to ALAC's very simple and easy to do. With a new iMac the job will just take a few hours. All metadata will be carried over including artwork and XLD wil even delete the FLAC for you.

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How did you get artwork onto FLAC?

If you have artwork in your Flac files or as a jpg in the folder XLD will see it and add it to the ALAC.

It won't take a week lie the previous poster said you could do it over night on a new iMac.

TMRaven said:

Unless you have some iTunes specific audio filters on, I have a hard time believing you're finding a difference in the quality of your music from music player to music player.

Audiophiles use different media players because of their features and ease of use for 24/96 files, not because of sound quality differences (if there is such a thing)

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I tried several demos and finally bought Amarra. It is not cheap, but if you catch them at RMAF or some other show you can get it relatively cheap. It is by far the best sounding playback for high-end gear, uses fixed point, is bit perfect, has a parametric equalizer, etc. They actually have a button where you can compare Amarra playback to iTunes, and the difference is stunning. I tried PureMusic, Decible, and others and I kept coming back to Amarra.

Amarra also lets you use the software on two different computers. I use one license for my tube set-up, and the other for this semi-tube set-up.

Player for Mac OS X

There is also a player for Mac OS X, it's called G-Ear, it plays your music from Google Music (Google Play) or whatever it's called now. It is constantly evolving! Available at http://www.treasurebox.hu

I now completely settled with Spotify.
Being able to click any artist as it is a link or click albums is great. The way you can download subscribe to playlists, search for playlists, make your own, start radio stations is pretty awesome.

For the most part though simple navigation is just by far the best. I wonder why not every player displays artists as links.
Spotify could be better at handling local data but that is not its main purpose and it could be more efficient in battery power. On pure listening it is a joy especially for all those that don't already know exactly what they want to listen. Good for music freaks and good for the legere type that just wants to listen to something.
Apps like Classify are incredible. I don't have a big collection and it is so easy to find the music I like without test hearing everything. Some people know so much music and so many movies. I just want to find the stuff I like and this system is perfect.

I think the comedy stuff pretty cool. There are so many programs online. There is no equalizer and no sync for iphone without using the spotify app.

From a pure enjoyment perspective it beats every other player I ever tried by a huge margin. I used from foobar, winamp to itunes most of the usual suspects. The interface and playback is extremely smooth and works well only the AIR underlying base is a negative. A compiled C++ would lengthen battery life, then again quality and stability would probably go down. Programming is just easier on that platform and they did a great job.

Here is a nice article from Headfonia in regards to OS X Audio Players:

http://www.headfonia.com/os-x-audio...na-pure-music-fidelia-decibel-and-bitperfect/

leighleelei said:

Winamp has a mac version...

http://www.winamp.com/mac

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no flac, wv, ape?

thanks, but nope

Hi,

I was also disappointed by the available music players for Mac. On Linux, I have used Amarok 1.4 earlier. When I switched to Mac, I have mostly used iTunes and Songbird but I had my problems with both.

What I wanted was basically a player which is simple, can handle an infinitely large music directory and has a PartyShuffle/DJ-mode function. It should also support all most important sound formats (flac, ogg, mp3, m4a, wma, ...) and maybe some other things.

Because I didn't found that, I started my own Open Source project: http://albertz.github.com/music-player/

It is simple and is all centered around a main queue (looks a bit like the old Winamp, XMMS or other simple players). The main queue is always in PartyShuffle-mode, though. I.e. it shows some of the recently played songs, the current songs and the upcoming songs. It plays always the songs from the top of the queue and then removes it from there. Once the queue becomes too empty, it intelligently adds new songs to it (based on context and ratings).

It is also powerful, e.g. it has its own volume loudness normalization algorithm. And is has Last.fm scrobbling support. And some other basic things.

It supports basically all existing sound formats.

Because it is Open Source, everyone can contribute and make it better. The code is simple and mostly Python, so it is easy to work on it.

There are solutions to issues

First of all. you can use FLAC files in iTunes using a small applet called FLUKE...which I have and use a lot. It is set up to boot at startup and and lets me play any FLAC files natively in Quicktime and iTunes. I hate how very invasive iTunes has become, and am going to eliminate it in favor of Amarra...with Boom as an added punch for my music. I also have iTunes blocked in Little Snitch.

Apple is ridiculously controlling, and has not learned anything from what happened to Microsoft.

I also stay with Snow Leopard, as everything after that OS adds more bloat and less function....with a slower working OS. I also detest how invasive Apple has become with Mavericks, and removed it fast. If I need Mavericks, I boot from an external drive...run what I need...then go back to work in Snow Leopard...the last real Apple OS that works.