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No good Music Player under Mac OS X?

wowser said:
The only other file i would like iTunes to play would be .shn files. I mean, what the hell is 'Monkey's Audio'?
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Yeah, Flac and Shn would have been a great welcomed feature, versus yet-another lossless format that only Apple knows about.
 
if the original poster has Fink or darwin ports installed, they could just install XMMS. It has of the neccesary codecs. (at least on my debian box, it does.) I had to add a plugin for Musepak (so i could encode to aac :p )
 
wowser said:
The only other file i would like iTunes to play would be .shn files. I mean, what the hell is 'Monkey's Audio'?
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Monkey's Audio files are another lossless format, IIRC better & faster compression than both Shorten and FLAC. I used it to encode all my cds onto DVD before University. Proper fast encoding, and they don't need to be fully decompressed before use.
Can't remember how i listened to them on my Mac, though :-/
I used Whamb player for quite a while, have a look. For XMMS users it should feel slightly more like home than iTunes.
 
What about Toast with Jam? I just read the review that MacBytes linked and it sounds like it has some pretty cool features (track-by-track fades and transitions to burnt CD, and post-processing of the rips being high on the list). Anyone have any experience with this?

It's PC world, but oddly enough the review seems to be 90% written from experiences running Toast on an iBook. ;) EDIT: Oh, I see, the column's called Mac Skeptic. Cute.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,116507,00.asp
 
songbird

I just installed songbird, seems to have some of the qualities you requested. Worth a try I think. I found itunes not to be usable for me as well, mainly for it's lack of (automatic) flac support (I have my entire library in this format)

edit: haha, didn't see the age of this thread.. oh well, hope you found something by now :p
 
I think banshee is great, if only I could get hotkeys for it. So im waiting on amarok, hope it supports hotkeys.
 
A perfectly valid reason for not using iTunes is that it wants to add things to the library instead of just playing files it is given. When you want to work with 200gb+ of tracks already sorted by directory on external drives this just doesn't work.

I have found library based mp3 players abhorrent since their conception and generally avoided them. It's a shame winamp isn't available for OSX, name aside it is my favourite option for windows. I don't like foobar for the same reasons I got a mac instead of using Ubuntu.

Anyway, opinions aside, check out Vox. It's a small simple work-in-progress Mac player (for many formats).

http://www.voxapp.net/
 
nruth said:
A perfectly valid reason for not using iTunes is that it wants to add things to the library instead of just playing files it is given. When you want to work with 200gb+ of tracks already sorted by directory on external drives this just doesn't work.

I have found library based mp3 players abhorrent since their conception and generally avoided them. It's a shame winamp isn't available for OSX, name aside it is my favourite option for windows. I don't like foobar for the same reasons I got a mac instead of using Ubuntu.

Anyway, opinions aside, check out Vox. It's a small simple work-in-progress Mac player (for many formats).

http://www.voxapp.net/
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If you don't want iTunes to copy tracks to its library then simply turn off that feature. Under iTunes->Preferences->Advanced, uncheck the box that says "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library". It will still add them to the library, but leave the files in place where they are.
 
DGFan said:
What is utterly bull is someone who can't make up their mind what format they want their music in :rolleyes:
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Agree.

Personally, I decided that MP3 was the best for me since it was format that would play on any player without additional CODECs or what have you.

So every music file I convert to MP3 if it isn't already there. The exception are the iTMS tracks that I have downloaded which are few.

I guess some folks just want to be able to play any format.
 
danny_w said:
If you don't want iTunes to copy tracks to its library then simply turn off that feature. Under iTunes->Preferences->Advanced, uncheck the box that says "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library". It will still add them to the library, but leave the files in place where they are.
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It is one answer what is bad in itunes: you can check a box, which says copy files to library, but whatever you do with the checkbox it will copy your music into library. Why?

I love Mac, but itunes does not respect me as a user. I do have music on CD-s. I can put it on my car and it will play it without put anything to library, create playlist, whatever. I just put the CD in the car and it will play. However I can choose between my folders. Easy and good.

In itunes I need to create a playlist, it will put it into the library (what i do not like) and I cannot see my folders (what I need, because I actually created my playlists: I put music into folders).

However I do have many problems with the interface. I like my music in wav format, but it is too big, so I create an mp3 copy for my phone... (you will have duplicate copy in your library, create new playlist, fill the mp3 tags to be able to see your stuff organized, you need to change the grab format, you need to do unnecessary steps...)

So if anyone have good music player to Mac I am curious ...

Thanks
 
peolple on here have already suggested songbird, if you want to convert something, i used to use switch to convert WMA, but then i ran out of files to convert so didnt need it no more. VLC will play FLAC, Lossless, wav, aiff, mp3. in fact it pretty much more or less plays anything under the sun. it may not be the most attractive thing in the world. but it works.

I personally like itunes alot better than anything else out there atm. its a darnsight more reliable than WMP was in vista, or XP. Although i hear winamp is supposedly good nowadays in windows :)

PTP
 
winamp is ok for windows. It is not run under Mac

My first need is a good player, which can does what my car player can: put mp3 cd and listen without do anything else.

I will try songbird. Thanks
 
sushi said:
Agree.

Personally, I decided that MP3 was the best for me since it was format that would play on any player without additional CODECs or what have you.

So every music file I convert to MP3 if it isn't already there. The exception are the iTMS tracks that I have downloaded which are few.

I guess some folks just want to be able to play any format.
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there are tons of reasons why itunes is rubbish. first of all it is clearly bloated. secondly, mp3s set up in itunes ard hardly compatible with other pmp's besides iphone/etc because it doesn't embed the artwork into the file. you have to do it manually which is ludicrous. plus itunes doesn't even have folder monitoring. lol.
 
Cog is about as close to Foobar as you're going to get using a Mac. It supports the following: Ogg Vorbis, Mp3, Flac, Musepack, Monkeys Audio, Shorten, Wavpack, AAC, Apple Lossless, Wave/AIFF, Video Game (nsf, gbs, gym, spc, vgm, hes, and more!), and Tracker (it, s3m, xm, mod).
 
It cracks me up that people are replying to posts that are 5 years old like they were made yesterday.
 
Consultant said:
Sounds like pirating and too lazy to convert the formats.

For some reason the music i BUY are in Mp4, MP3, or loseless (CDs), supported by iTunes.
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Music i BOUGHT is on CD-s (or on LP), but i do not want to take thousands of CD-s, when i cycling, skating or driving a car or do whatever, so i created my own mp3 collections, which are on mp3 cd or pendrive or sd card. I can reorganize my music again, but i don't want to. You don't need to be criminal to have trouble with itunes...
 
THX1139 said:
It cracks me up that people are replying to posts that are 5 years old like they were made yesterday.
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itunes has the same problems now, what it had 5 years ago...

However I need to install an itunes update almost every month...
 
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