Mac OS X Music Players - alternatives to iTunes - Page 124

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chawanwit 

Very long thread and didnt have time to read all of it. Anyway can someone please recommend a music player for use with macbook pro. Preferably something that can adjust the bass. thanks

I bought Bitperfect for $10 and demo'd Amarra and Pure Music for two weeks each on my MBAir.  Amarra is the one I settled for.  Amarra has a detailed equalizer and you can adjust the sound about anyway you want. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by solserenade 


I see your point:. The "media control keys" on the keyboard would control iTunes instead of Fidelia.

I found a nice trick... if you open Quicktime basically in background, keyboard keys will not control iTunes anymore however, it will however control Songbird or any other music player with the shortcut keys plugin.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RUMAY408 

I bought Bitperfect for $10 and demo'd Amarra and Pure Music for two weeks each on my MBAir.  Amarra is the one I settled for.  Amarra has a detailed equalizer and you can adjust the sound about anyway you want. 

Thanks for your recommendations,

however from their website there are so many options and all are quite expensive. (more than 100$)

Is their anything cheaper you can recommend or should I go with the 10$ Bitperfect.

Also how does these music players differ from iTunes?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chawanwit 

Thanks for your recommendations,

 

however from their website there are so many options and all are quite expensive. (more than 100$)

Is their anything cheaper you can recommend or should I go with the 10$ Bitperfect.

 

Also how does these music players differ from iTunes?

I found Bitperfect better than standard iTunes but it would not handshake with my DAC (Audioquest Dragonfly) consistently.  I would suggest doing free demo's and see what works best for you.

I don't know how I've missed this thread until now. I'm still looking around for the ideal music player for Mac. Right now, I'm pretty much settled on Audirvana because it offers a good balance between sound quality and acceptable interface. Fidelia is much easier to use, but the playlist function is a major PITA, especially if, like me, you buy or rip music in FLAC fairly frequently. (For those who don't know, Fidelia uses playlists, but it won't arrange them any other way than date added). I tried Amarra, but honestly found it overly complex and irritatingly built to cater to iTunes (where I keep all my lossy music).

I wanted to like JRiver's Media Player, but it seems to be more like a port than an app built for Mac OSX. Also, I couldn't work out if there were plans to offer iZotope, or similar, support. To my ears, iZotope sounds better than CoreAudio. I've got no idea what JRiver offers. It didn't offer the same quality sound as Audirvana. Now, what I liked about JRiver is that it had the best potential interface of all the players I know. It is easy to find tracks in the app. It scans specified folders (I keep all my FLAC tracks organized in folders, so this was helpful) and will, if I remember correctly, create playlists that you can then see in the app. The thing is, I'm just not convinced that JRiver is doing this properly. Maybe they should just offer a Mac virtualizer, like WINE.

Well I just noticed a big difference in sound quality comparing Songbird to other media players listening to M83!!! At first i thought i was losing my mind because I had no eq's on, no change of volume, just literally pause and playing on both players. The easiest way to explain the difference in SQ is that songbird just removed one extra plane of glass from view compared to itunes, so you to see/hear the music that much more clearly. At first i thought it was possible volume normalization or some jazz like that, but it definitely wasn't. Reverbs would tail off longer, i started hearing instruments that i never heard while I'd stream the exact same song via Rhapsody, vocals popped out more, everything just got better!

The easiest tracks IMO to compare this SQ change with on the M83 "Hurry Up We're Dreaming" album would be: Intro, Splendor & Wait. I played flac's in Songbird and alac's in iTunes. Also, for the record, i even played the alac's in Songbird just to cover my bases and make sure the conversion didn't make it sound different, and yeah it wasn't the conversion. Songbird just is better for lossless listening, and 320 listening as well . I'm going to make Songbird my primary lossless library from now on.

My only complaint is that sadly when I tried looking for a flac player on my iPhone, none could compare to the SQ that the desktop Songbird app put out, even the actual Songbird player in the App Store . I was comparing the stock music player, Songbird app & the Aphex arual exciter app when listening to the M83 tunes, and they're pretty much all close to the same, except for the dsp in the Aphex player that I honestly love. So for portability wise, you're best bet IMO is to get a copy of that Aphex Aural exciter app, and play alac's off that using the dsp for extra clarity. 

Now I'm officially gonna be "that guy" who says you GOTTA listen to your lossless collection via Songbird from now on!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Strongg 

 

My only complaint is that sadly when I tried looking for a flac player on my iPhone, none could compare to the SQ that the desktop Songbird app put out, even the actual Songbird player in the App Store .

Well yeah, your iPhone has different hardware compared to your computer, so of course they're going to sound different.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Strongg 

Well I just noticed a big difference in sound quality comparing Songbird to other media players listening to M83!!! At first i thought i was losing my mind because I had no eq's on, no change of volume, just literally pause and playing on both players. The easiest way to explain the difference in SQ is that songbird just removed one extra plane of glass from view compared to itunes, so you to see/hear the music that much more clearly. At first i thought it was possible volume normalization or some jazz like that, but it definitely wasn't. Reverbs would tail off longer, i started hearing instruments that i never heard while I'd stream the exact same song via Rhapsody, vocals popped out more, everything just got better!

 

The easiest tracks IMO to compare this SQ change with on the M83 "Hurry Up We're Dreaming" album would be: Intro, Splendor & Wait. I played flac's in Songbird and alac's in iTunes. Also, for the record, i even played the alac's in Songbird just to cover my bases and make sure the conversion didn't make it sound different, and yeah it wasn't the conversion. Songbird just is better for lossless listening, and 320 listening as well . I'm going to make Songbird my primary lossless library from now on.

 

My only complaint is that sadly when I tried looking for a flac player on my iPhone, none could compare to the SQ that the desktop Songbird app put out, even the actual Songbird player in the App Store . I was comparing the stock music player, Songbird app & the Aphex arual exciter app when listening to the M83 tunes, and they're pretty much all close to the same, except for the dsp in the Aphex player that I honestly love. So for portability wise, you're best bet IMO is to get a copy of that Aphex Aural exciter app, and play alac's off that using the dsp for extra clarity. 

 

Now I'm officially gonna be "that guy" who says you GOTTA listen to your lossless collection via Songbird from now on!

I seriously doubt that a music player would make that huge difference but anyway. I have songbird and it's my favorite so far but for other reasons. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by IA64 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Strongg 

Well I just noticed a big difference in sound quality comparing Songbird to other media players listening to M83!!! At first i thought i was losing my mind because I had no eq's on, no change of volume, just literally pause and playing on both players. The easiest way to explain the difference in SQ is that songbird just removed one extra plane of glass from view compared to itunes, so you to see/hear the music that much more clearly. At first i thought it was possible volume normalization or some jazz like that, but it definitely wasn't. Reverbs would tail off longer, i started hearing instruments that i never heard while I'd stream the exact same song via Rhapsody, vocals popped out more, everything just got better!

 

The easiest tracks IMO to compare this SQ change with on the M83 "Hurry Up We're Dreaming" album would be: Intro, Splendor & Wait. I played flac's in Songbird and alac's in iTunes. Also, for the record, i even played the alac's in Songbird just to cover my bases and make sure the conversion didn't make it sound different, and yeah it wasn't the conversion. Songbird just is better for lossless listening, and 320 listening as well . I'm going to make Songbird my primary lossless library from now on.

 

My only complaint is that sadly when I tried looking for a flac player on my iPhone, none could compare to the SQ that the desktop Songbird app put out, even the actual Songbird player in the App Store . I was comparing the stock music player, Songbird app & the Aphex arual exciter app when listening to the M83 tunes, and they're pretty much all close to the same, except for the dsp in the Aphex player that I honestly love. So for portability wise, you're best bet IMO is to get a copy of that Aphex Aural exciter app, and play alac's off that using the dsp for extra clarity. 

 

Now I'm officially gonna be "that guy" who says you GOTTA listen to your lossless collection via Songbird from now on!

 

 

I seriously doubt that a music player would make that huge difference but anyway. I have songbird and it's my favorite so far but for other reasons. 

I can't quantify differences in sound, but I do hear a pretty subtle between in sound quality between iTunes, Audirvana, and Audirvana Plus. I agree that those iTunes alternatives seem to remove a sort of veil covering the sound and music just sounds cleaner.