Mac users: What program do you use for music playback?

Well it sure seems like that, doesn't it? I'm certainly not going to spend the money to find out though.

Thanks again for your help, Gabe.

 

I was fed up of iTunes deciding for me about my music organisation.
I moved o Mac some 10 years ago and the only thing I miss from my Windows computer is Mediamonkey which I consider far superior to any of the tested music manager but unfortunately they refuse to produce a Mac version even tough there are a lot of users requesting it.
The only two products I consider acceptable, for what I look for, are VLC and Swinsian but both have issues (for me, maybe not for most of you)
I always listen to my music through an Airtunes connected to my HiFi amp.
VLC plays through it with no problems. With Swinsian I get problems. Even setting the Airtunes as default output, sometimes Swinsian sends the music to the internal speakers and maybe the day after it works well with it (why?, no explanation!).
Another issue is with the artworks, that I like to see while the albums are playing. VLA doesn't show them with the Mac version but Swinsian does.
Since Artwork is less important, I have decided that for the moment I continue with VLC.
I hope some day Mediamoneky be published as native Mac application.

 

Is it feasible to run Mediamonkey in a virtual Windows environment on the Mac, using something like VirtualBox?

 

11 pages of posts and so many problems.

Why I went back to playing and buying CDs!
Plus they sound so much better than computers.

 

Still always baffled by these threads. I have my entire cd collection ripped to ALAC and though I seldom play it with iTunes as I've been using Roon pretty exclusively, I do drop the files into iTunes to let it organize them as it stores them in a nice clean Music/Artist/Album folder structure on my NAS where I have it pointed. I understand liking FLAC, but if you live in the Apple ecosystem, why not ALAC? I find a lot of folks complaining about iTunes based on misconceptions or they've never set up their preferences properly.

 

I was as well. As has been detailed in past discussions on this subject, if you jump through a few hoops and use some 3rd-party software, it is possible to tame iTunes and get it to work well, even with large libraries spread over several drives.

Some tips from me:

1) I keep each library on a separate drive. Drives are cheap, and they're big enough that they can hold many Terabytes and all the associated library files. And I back them up as often as I can.

2) I never rip CDs with iTunes. I rip the music with dBPowerAmp, which I think gives the user a lot more control over how the music is ripped and also how the files are named.

3) I name the files in a very specific way, in folders that are easy to locate, by artist and by album title. If there are multiple versions of an album, the folder provides that info.

4) I use Tag & Rename to embed metadata and images into the music files. I'm a huge believer in metadata, and only use file formats (like Apple Lossless, AAC, and MP3) that are specifically intended for metadata. WAVs won't cut it for that reason.

5) once I've done all that, then I just use iTunes to create playlists, play back music, and to load up my iPods. That's all I use iTunes for.

iTunes continues to get worse over the years, and as Apple makes the program "simpler to use," they alter and move around basic features in a way I find very annoying. Many thousands of hardcore users on the iLounge Forums feel the same way. But it is possible to have large libraries (over 100,000+ songs) and manage them with iTunes.

 

I have about 130,000 lossless songs on a backup HD. I use iTunes. Don't care about labels tagging etc. just to play music when I don't feel like playing records or CD

Works for me quite nicely.

 

Too late now, of course, but you can turn that all off with two checkboxes in Advanced Preferences (uncheck "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library").

 

I bring this question here, because no one on the Audirvana or Decibel forums seem to have an answer, or simply don't care to answer.

On my 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 I cannot seem to get Audirvana Plus or Decibel to recognize my headphones when they are connected to the front headphone jack. They are not listed as an option in the audio devices list of either program, though they do seem to work with iTunes and VLC. If I have the headphones connected to the front jack and play something in either Audirvana Plus or Decibel, the audio continues to route through my main computer speakers despite "Headphones" showing as the active option in the menu bar.

Now on my MacBook Pro, not a problem. If I connect headphones, A+ and Decibel automagically pump audio through them instantaneously.

Riddle me that?

 

I use Roon (DAC exclusive mode) and my iTunes music (and Tidal) sounds the best it ever has - Highly recommended.

 

Try going into that midi setting where you can set the audio output...

 

Amarra 4 is about to launch. If I can get my hands on an early copy, I will post my thoughts. I got a sneak preview at RMAF and it is a ground-up redesign. The new user interface is really awesome.

 

It's the first thing I uncheck!

There's other little organizational tricks I use such as Album Sort tags to make sure albums appear in order of date of release when there's two album releases in a single year and it wants to sort alphabetically.

iTunes has never really done anything to my library. The only issue I've ever had is that iTunes sometimes stops displaying my already-embedded artwork for random albums. So I select everything in iTunes, delete and then drag and drop the library in again. I'm guessing that iTunes takes each album cover and embeds it into an XML file for faster library viewing and it sometimes gets corrupt. I've reproduced the error on several machines.

 

Could I trouble you to describe exactly how you do this?

Would be much appreciated.

.

 

First:
• Select View / Show Sidebar
• On the Sidebar to the left, under the Library listing, select Albums
• Select View / Show View Options
• A little field selection window should appear. It should be View As: Grid, Sort by: Artist then: Year

Now let's look at a case example.

Two KISS albums I have came out in 1978. One was Love Gun, one was Alive II. Love Gun came out first on June 30th, 1977. Alive II came out on October 14, 1977.

If I don't sort them, Alive II will appear before Love Gun.

I want Love Gun to appear first. So:
• Right click the album / select Get Info
• Select the Sorting tab and under sort as I enter "1977 01"

Moving onto Alive II:
• Right click the album / select Get Info
• Select the Sorting tab and under sort as I enter "1977 02"

iTunes will sort everything for that year using that sort as field.

Comes in very handy when you want to organize many different masterings of the same album by when they were released.

 

This same method works for movies as well. Army of Darkness is listed as Evil Dead 3 on the sort as tab. This way it still groups it with the others- otherwise it wouldn't appear anywhere near the other films because of its name.

 

One more thing, while I'm thinking of it. These special sort fields aren't just limited to the laptop I enter them on. When I pull these up on the Apple TV or transfer them to the iPad, they sort in the same way I did here. Very cool.

If you use the sort as fields, you'll find yourself coming up with creative ways to sort your collection in a manner that makes sense to you.

 

Outstanding post.

Thanks for the time and effort.

.

 

You're very welcome!

 

1. Does Amarra really make that much of a difference over iTunes?
2. Is the new version a standalone app, or does it run on top of iTunes like the current version does?

 

Answering your first question, I tested out the Amarra before deciding on the Pure Music, and thought that it made a significant difference over iTunes .

 

And was Pure Music a significant difference over Amarra? Or was that a closer call?

 

Much closer call. And some people prefer Amarra, some Pure Music. My recollection was that they were close enough on my system that I gave some weight to the integration with Pure Vinyl, which I use. I've been happy enough with Pure Music that I've purchased it as a gift for my wife's aunt.

 

Thanks... I have neither at the moment, just Bit Perfect. Until recently my music server was an older pre-Intel Mac that couldn't run pretty much anything current, so I'm only just now looking into software upgrades I could make.

 

I use Audirvana Plus and love it.