converting 24bit files to wav or lossless just take too much HD space
and my notebook didn't surppot 24bit.
just looking a mac soft like foobar on win

I am not certain that what you're looking for exists. Most Mac developers don't care enough to bother with proper ath-based dither.

Unfortunately there is no player like foobar for Mac... Every alternative has something missing (either replaygain, equalizer, gapless playback, useful DSP plugins or something else). 24bit to 16 bit dithering on playback however is functionality I would not look for so badly. Ask yourself - does it really make any difference you can hear?

It is CoreAudio's official agenda that it doesn't modify your audio and that dithering is an application's task. You can always plug in a high quality AudioUnit for dithering anywhere in the signal path.

This agenda is, for example, the reason why you have never needed quirks as exclusive hardware access modes, that bypass the system mixer, just to get bit perfect output on a Mac. You just turn up the volume to 100% and that's it.

I also question which Macs hadn't had a 24 bit capable DAC onboard in the last years?

iTunes has an equivalent (scans your files automatically)

iTunes has it

iTunes has it


Which are you missing?

DSPs... VLevel comes to my mind first, for pleasant night or background listening. And iTunes equalizer is not precise enough for making a fine-tuned presets for my headphones or even to attenuate 'boomy' frequencies from my cheap 2+1 speakers.

When it comes to gapless - does it work with Nero encoded AACs and Lame MP3s...?

Other iTunes shortcomings - problematic OGG and FLAC support (when it comes to tags), no MPC and WAVPACK support (my favourite lossless codec, and converting to ALAC makes me no happy), no cuesheet support. Foobar's converter is a tool I use regularly (ie. for lossless to lossy conversions for portable player), as its' mass-tagging capabilities. And does iTunes have 'queue' option..?

I missed that part in OP post... I just checked a 4 years old Powerbook G4 (the oldest Mac notebook I have access to) - and indeed it is 24-bit capable.

I understand. If your main music machine is a Mac and you desperately want this, you can plug AudioUnits (or VST through a AudioUnit wrapper) into your signal path. There is a guide on macosxhints.com how to do this with Soundflower. It's not a easy to setup as most things you would be used to in OS X, but it works and can deliver excellent quality.



Sure.



Lacking support for a variety of formats is a point. I have everything ALAC and AAC (two separate libraries on the same machine) for mobile so I'm not missing anything. If you want to keep a heterogenous collection, iTunes is not appropriate, though. At times of 0.06 € a gigabyte I'm not that much into lossless comparisons anymore and stick with the most compatible for my ecosystem. If I ever want to move to another, XLD can convert my whole collection losslessly to another format in half a day.

iTunes has an excellent mass tagger and it's really nicely extendable through AppleScript. I have build up quite a collection of scripts over the years. Dougscripts.com is also a good ressource.

Thanks for the tips!

Yes, with LAME MP3s (just don't know about Nero files). I believe, OTOH, that Sound Check is not as versatile as Replay Gain (I can't find an "Album Gain" setting--if I'm wrong, I'll be grateful if someone tells me).

I use iTunes--it plays music, and I can find my albums--but I could wish for a port of foobar2k.

Album Gain is sadly missing from iTunes. You can get it with either MacMP3Gain, or iVolume.