bgentry
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2014
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With a thread this size, it's really difficult for a beginner to figure out what's what about all the different players.
I used the guide at the start of the thread and went through essentially all of them, and downloaded and evaluated 5 of them (I think). After about a month of using several players, and not being super impressed, I decided to give JRiver Media Center a try. Initially I didn't include it in my evaluation because it was a port of a PC program and the way it's listed in this thread makes it seem like a non-functional beta or alpha.
I'm glad all the other players had some sort of shortcoming though, because JRiver does just about everything I could ask for and it does it well. It's interface takes some learning. It's features aren't always obvious. But it does SO MUCH and has so many options, it seems like I'm only using a fraction of it's functionality.
The biggest pluses for me about this program are:
1. Presentation of the library. It's easy to find what you want and you can do most of that visually, and it's a pleasing experience. "Large beautiful cover art display"
2. "Auto import" allows it to scan one or more directories in near real time, adding a subtracting music files on the fly. This is more than awesome for situations like renaming directories (funny named album that you remove special characters from for example), everyday adding of new music, and of course trashing music you don't want any more. It even picks up new tags that I add from external programs should I choose to do so.
3. It's ability to find and save cover art is the best of any program I've tried. In 99% of albums I've tried, I've been able to find good quality, fairly large files, and have them saved to be used later. This is surprisingly hard to do with other programs; it's really cool that JRiver does it so well.
4. The developers are actively working on it, fixing problems, taking feature requests, and releasing very regularly. More regularly than I'm used to with almost any program of this type.
This mac port has it's issues here and there. Like I said, there's definitely a big dose of "that's not obvious, how do I do that?" going on with it. But if you get past that part, it's really a fantastic player.
If you're in the same boat I was a few months ago, trying to figure out which mac player to use to play high resolution audio, FLACs, etc, you should really give it a try. I'm glad I did.
Brian.
I used the guide at the start of the thread and went through essentially all of them, and downloaded and evaluated 5 of them (I think). After about a month of using several players, and not being super impressed, I decided to give JRiver Media Center a try. Initially I didn't include it in my evaluation because it was a port of a PC program and the way it's listed in this thread makes it seem like a non-functional beta or alpha.
I'm glad all the other players had some sort of shortcoming though, because JRiver does just about everything I could ask for and it does it well. It's interface takes some learning. It's features aren't always obvious. But it does SO MUCH and has so many options, it seems like I'm only using a fraction of it's functionality.
The biggest pluses for me about this program are:
1. Presentation of the library. It's easy to find what you want and you can do most of that visually, and it's a pleasing experience. "Large beautiful cover art display"
2. "Auto import" allows it to scan one or more directories in near real time, adding a subtracting music files on the fly. This is more than awesome for situations like renaming directories (funny named album that you remove special characters from for example), everyday adding of new music, and of course trashing music you don't want any more. It even picks up new tags that I add from external programs should I choose to do so.
3. It's ability to find and save cover art is the best of any program I've tried. In 99% of albums I've tried, I've been able to find good quality, fairly large files, and have them saved to be used later. This is surprisingly hard to do with other programs; it's really cool that JRiver does it so well.
4. The developers are actively working on it, fixing problems, taking feature requests, and releasing very regularly. More regularly than I'm used to with almost any program of this type.
This mac port has it's issues here and there. Like I said, there's definitely a big dose of "that's not obvious, how do I do that?" going on with it. But if you get past that part, it's really a fantastic player.
If you're in the same boat I was a few months ago, trying to figure out which mac player to use to play high resolution audio, FLACs, etc, you should really give it a try. I'm glad I did.
Brian.
