The introduction of the MP3 player enabled people to play their music anywhere, but it has had an unfortunate side effect: Folks have sacrificed the awesome audio quality that the compact disc delivered in exchange for ever tinier music players, simpler room-to-room streaming, and the flexibility to buy songs instead of entire albums. So while the convenience of digital media just keeps getting better, the sound quality itself has suffered.
Plugins for Audiophile Music Players. Technical and DIY. In: Computer-based. If you’re looking for an audiophile player on the Mac that supports VST, there isn’t one. A proprietary plug-in if you will, called FHX. It does a darn good job and is reasonably priced. The best software shuffler I know of, at twice the price, is the Ircam. Sssssshhhhhh—I forget what music was playing, but as the sound faded away, I could hear a loud hissing coming from the 2011 i7 Mac mini I was operating headless with Roon 1.3 to play files over my network.Checking the mini's shared screen on my MacBook Pro revealed that it was completely unresponsive, so I yanked its AC cord, after which it wouldn't boot up.
It doesn’t have to be that way. You can get sublime audio quality from compressed music files—files that you can store on a central server and listen to in any room in your house, and transfer to an MP3 player for enjoying just about anywhere.
I’ll show you how to rip tracks from CD and encode them to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), which will deliver compressed but bit-by-bit accurate copies of your music (much in the way that zipping a text file with a compression algorithm can reduce the size of the file without losing any of the text). All you need is a PC with an optical drive, some free software, and your collection of audio CDs.
I’ll also discuss several hardware products that can stream music from your PC or network-attached storage (NAS) device to your home stereo system, even though they may be in separate parts of your home. And as a bonus, I’ll teach you how to calibrate your speakers to your listening environment to achieve the absolute best sound possible.
If you buy music online because you’re interested in acquiring specific songs, consider that most online music merchants—including Apple’s iTunes store—don’t offer high-quality music. They use lossy codecs such as MP3 and AAC with bit rates that max out at 256 kilobits per second. They want you to cram as much music as possible on your PC or portable device with little regard for audio fidelity. When you listen to music encoded this way, you’re not hearing everything that the recording artist created.
Buying and ripping CDs is old-fashioned, but in doing so you enjoy much higher audio quality (and you have a factory-made copy of your music in case your hard drive ever fails). If you can’t bring yourself to buy an entire CD to acquire one track, you can find a handful of online retailers selling music encoded in lossless formats. Music Giants, the biggest fish in this small pond, offers a broad range of pop, classic rock, jazz, and world music encoded in the WMA Lossless format. Linn Records presents a fine collection of classical, jazz, and Celtic music encoded in the FLAC, WMA Lossless, and MP3 formats. Much of the Music Giants catalog is free from DRM restrictions; none of Linn Records’ offerings is saddled with the annoying technology.
Music Streaming Systems
The Sonos Digital Music System and Slim Devices’ Squeezebox Classic and Squeezebox Duet are some of the best audio-streaming products on the market. All three enable a do-it-yourselfer to assemble a sophisticated multiroom audio setup for a fraction of the price of a custom-installed system.
Plenty of other alternatives are on the market—including Media Center Extenders that can stream both audio and video from a host PC, NAS box, or central server to your entertainment system—but if you’re looking for high-quality audio, these three products deliver tremendous price/performance ratios.
These devices can operate on either wireless or wired ethernet networks; the Sonos can create its own proprietary wireless network so that streaming music won’t consume your other Wi-Fi network’s bandwidth.
The Sonos music streaming system and the Logitech Silm Devices Squeezebox both support FLAC, but neither supports WMA Lossless. The Squeezebox does come with PC software that can transcode WMA Lossless files on the fly, but that requires storing your WMA Lossless files on a PC as opposed to a NAS box (since that kind of device can’t run the software). You’ll have to transcode DRM-free WMA Lossless files yourself in order to stream that music on a Sonos system (a tedious process that’s impossible with encrypted files).
For Mac users, iTunes is the undisputed king of media managment and playback. Every new computer comes with it pre-installed, and if you have an iPod, iPhone, or iPad, then you’ll need it for syncing media and backing up your device locally.
There are valid reasons to dislike iTunes though. The rise of Spotify and other similar services have made iTunes less useful or event obsoleteSpotify Your Music Collection: The End Of iTunesSpotify Your Music Collection: The End Of iTunesSpotify is no longer content to just compete with radio, now they're competing with the idea of even owning music.Read More. Another big issue is the lack of ownership in digital mediaThe End of Ownership: Netflix, Spotify, and The Streaming GenerationThe End of Ownership: Netflix, Spotify, and The Streaming GenerationStreaming media is convenient, but you're giving up something important: ownership of digital media.Read More. But perhaps most pressing of all is the fact that iTunes is bloated and slow.
Yes, you can hack iTunes for better usability8 iTunes Hacks For Improved Functionality8 iTunes Hacks For Improved FunctionalityiTunes is a rich and feature-packed music management application, but that doesn't mean there's not room for improvement. Some simple changes and additional features can make the application even better.Read More but it’s not enough for everyone. Unless you’re absolutely tied to the iTunes ecosystem and have no choice but to use it, you may want to consider switching to one of these alternatives.
TomahawkAudio Player For Mac
If you want a modern cross-platform music player that’s feature-complete and smooth as cream, then Tomahawk may be the one for you. We mentioned it as one of the best music players for Linux4 Linux Music Players That Deserve Your Attention Now4 Linux Music Players That Deserve Your Attention NowWhich Linux music player is the best? We compare four excellent music players you may not know about.Read More and that’s certainly true for OS X as well.
The real draw of Tomahawk is that it aims to be an all-in-one solution for all of the various music services available on the web. Why juggle half a dozen different apps and sites when you can consolidate all of them into TomahawkUse Too Many Music Services? Consolidate Your Music With Open-Source Social Player Tomahawk [Cross-Platform]Use Too Many Music Services? Consolidate Your Music With Open-Source Social Player Tomahawk [Cross-Platform]Some users may wonder whether they should stick with music streaming services and ditch downloading songs to their local drives, or simply rely on the streaming options, because let’s face it, music streaming services are..Read More? It’s just easier that way.
Tomahawk supports plugins that let you “plug into” different media networks, including Spotify, YouTube, Google Play Music, Deezer, and even Amazon Music (which is actually better than we expected it to beWhy You Should Give Amazon Prime Music a Second ChanceWhy You Should Give Amazon Prime Music a Second ChanceThere are several reasons why you might want to give Amazon Prime Music a second chance. It certainly deserves much more credit than it's currently getting. Read on to find out why.Read More). Spotify support, for example, lets you sync playlists into Tomahawk.
If you’re going to use Tomahawk, we recommend going with the nightly release because it’s the most up-to-date and has the most cutting-edge features. The downside is that it may be prone to bugs and crashes. If you only need basic functionality, the stable release may be better.
Vox Player [No Longer Available]
A lot of Windows-to-Mac converts tend to ask about any good music players that are similar to Foobar2000. Unfortunately, at this time, no such alternative really exists. Vox Player is probably the closest we’ve got, but more so for its minimalist design than its resource usage.
Indeed, Vox Player can be quite greedy at times with CPU and RAM, sometimes even on par with iTunes! But it’s a nice alternative to tryStop iTunes From Taking Your Media Keys Hostage: Use Vox InsteadStop iTunes From Taking Your Media Keys Hostage: Use Vox InsteadStop iTunes from launching, and use your media keys with a program you don’t hate. Here’s how.Read More because it doesn’t have much feature bloat.
Vox Player comes with all you’d expect in a music player and it’s fast. Not only does it support FLAC playback, but it can also play high-resolution audio files if you’re into that. Music management is clean and straightforward, it has built-in internet radio, and you can also connect it to SoundCloud and Last.FM. There’s a lot to love about it.
One other feature to note: Vox comes with a 14-day trial of Loop, a cloud music storage service. With it, you can easily keep Vox for Mac in sync with Vox for iOS, and music you’ve stored in the cloud can be downloaded to either device for offline playback. Loop usage is optional.
For apps similar to Vox for high-resolution files, take a look at this list of the best hi-res music players for MacThe 5 Best Hi-Res Music Player Apps for MacThe 5 Best Hi-Res Music Player Apps for MacIf you're an audiophile who prefers high-resolution audio, iTunes simply won't cut it. So here are the best hi-res music player apps for Mac.Read More.
Clementine
If you’re looking for a feature-packed but lightweight music player, then you really can’t go wrong with Clementine. This nifty application is all of the power that you need without any of the excess. It gets updated about once a year, which is nice as well.
Music management is probably Clementine’s top selling point. It comes with a cover manager, queue manager, playlist management tools, music format transcoder (with FLAC support), CD ripping tool, and an advanced tag editor for batch editing music files.
Out of the box, Clementine can integrate with about a dozen different internet services, including cloud storage services (Amazon Cloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, to name a few) and music streaming services (Spotify, SoundCloud, Last.FM, Subsonic, plus more).
It’s not the prettiest application, and it’s plainly obvious that it’s based on Qt4, something you’ll recognize if you’ve used Qt4 applications before. You can tweak the appearance a bit, but nothing major so you’re stuck with the clunky default interface. It’s not that bad, but it does leave a lot to be desired.
Nightingale
Do you remember Songbird? It was an open source music player released back in 2006 that drummed up a lot of hype and anticipation due to its potential. It was shut down in 2013, but by then users had already forked the code and created an alternative called Nightingale.
So if you were a fan of Songbird and want something similar, or if you want a lightweight open source music player that still gets updated, then you really ought to give this one a try. It will likely be everything you expect it to be.
Key features include a skinnable interface, advanced library management, gapless playback, replay gain, built-in web browser, and extensions that can add even more features like integration with certain web services. It can also play DRM audio locked by Apple FairPlay and Windows Media.
The one big downside to Nightingale is that development has slowed down since 2014. Yes, it will still work just fine and the important functions are all there, but if you run into any bugs or if you’re looking forward to some other features, fixes will be a long time coming.
Quod Libet
Quod Libet has a funny name — it means “whatever you wish” in Latin — but don’t let that turn you away. This open source music player, which was designd to be cross platform from the get-go, was released back in 2004 and continues to receive regular updates to this day.
Not many people have ever heard of it, which is a shame. It’s a simple piece of software and nothing about it will blow your mind, but it’s intensely practical and easy to use. The simplicity of it makes it the closest antithesis to iTunes currently available on OS X.
And it’s packed with features: supports for all kinds of media formats (including FLAC), smart replay gain, ratings-weighted random playback, Unicode tags, built-in Internet radio, configurable user interface, advanced library management, and so much more.
Which Music Player Do You Use?
I know there are lots of valid reasons to keep using iTunes. I don’t want to say it’s terrible and everyone should switch away, because it isn’t. I still use it to manage my podcasts, so I do realize that iTunes has a role to play even despite the bloat and what not. And if you’re using Apple Music, you have no chance but to use iTunes for playback on your Mac.
But if you deal with a lot of downloaded MP3s and streamed songsThe Pros And Cons Of Streaming vs Downloading MP3sThe Pros And Cons Of Streaming vs Downloading MP3sI've been a long-time user of streaming music services – from Pandora, to the now defunct online music locker Lala.com, and now as a monthly subscriber to Rdio.com. If you have a computer and a..Read More from lots of different locations, maybe one of these alternatives might actually play out better for you. It’s much more convenient than bookmarking several different internet radio sitesWhich Internet Radio Sites Have the Best User Experience in the Browser?Which Internet Radio Sites Have the Best User Experience in the Browser?Exploring the web players for various Internet radio services to see which ones offer the best experience in the browser. What good is a great radio selection if the player is frustrating to use?Read More, for example.
Which music player do you use on OS X and why? What’s wrong with iTunes? We’d love to hear from you in the comments down below!
Explore more about: iTunes, Media Player, OS X El Capitan, Streaming Music.
Best Free Music Player For Mac Audiophile
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