Media Player for OS X, What's out there? Options

[ozmosis82]

I've decided that I'm going to jump onto the Apple wagon and get an iMac as my next computer. Are there any media players out there for OS X as good as foobar2000? (Curse the fact that there isn't an OS X version!)

I realise that I can Boot Camp it and have Windows running on a separate partition, but... well, I'd like to keep my options open.

EDIT: Grammar

This post has been edited by ozmosis82: Nov 18 2006, 09:38

[krmathis]

You might want to try:
* iTunes
* Play
* Cog

You have to decide if they are "good" enough!

[geardoc]

You might want to try:
* iTunes
* Play
* Cog

You have to decide if they are "good" enough!

Play has some promise. Its no iTunes or Foobar yet, but can play flac. I've been using Cog
to play flac files and think I'll switch to Play. There isn't anything on the Mac
that is as cool as Foobar on windoze or Amarok on linux.

[Nick E]

... I realise that I can Boot Camp it and have Windows running on a separate partition ...

You can also run Parallels and have access to programs running on both OSes at once. However, I suppose there's the cost factor to consider. Boxed copies of Windows don't come cheap.

Besides those players mentioned, I guess there's Songbird. And there's VLC - which you will probably want anyway for its ability to play a wide range of video formats.

I'd say iTunes is the king the hill right now--it really is an impressive, versatile and multi-facted yet usable piece of software. There's nothing on the market that can touch it as an all-rounder. But it may not do specific things you want to do. For example, if you have some albums ripped as single files with a cuesheet, you'll be out of luck. And I don't think anything else on OS X yet mentioned will play such files either. If you want that try XLD.

[MichaelW]

iTunes works fine for popular music -- I use it for synchronizing my iPod.

But I also have a lot of unpopular music that I ripped a long time ago with inconsistent or poor tagging, which needs to have a hierarchical directory structure for navigation. The only player I've found that can easily produce a hierarchical playlist to match the directories is Audion 3, which is no longer being developed and which has not been converted to Intel code. I find it works OK, except that there is a brief hiccough during the first track it plays in a session, presumably while Rosetta does its stuff.

I am no expert, and would be delighted to be shown something I don't know about. But I'm pretty sure there's nothing to match f2k, and I'm weighing up Bootcamp vs Parallels myself.

[Blankwire]

iTunes for OS X is world apart from the Windows version (essentially the same look with a big performance increase). I would try that first, then start searching if it's not what you're looking for.

iTunes used to be able to play Flac files by simply changing the extension of the files, but I'm not sure if that's still the case.

[vkeios]

iTunes with XiphQT is pretty good.
I personally use MPD with the Theremin client though.

[Nick E]

iTunes used to be able to play Flac files by simply changing the extension of the files ....

You can put a FLAC file in an Ogg container, as opposed to having it in a native FLAC container. (And then, of course, it has the file extension .ogg.) You can play those files in iTunes if you install this.

It is possible to convert FLAC files to Ogg FLAC under OS X using Max. I wouldn't want to myself, since I use lossless for archiving rather than for listening--and if did want to play lossless files I'd look for something that played native FLAC rather than Ogg FLAC, and have to convert all my FLACs.

But, yeah, if that's what someone wants, it can be done.