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Audion was pretty popular back in the day. The developers have stopped develping it though. So the good news is that it's free, the bad is that it will never be updated.

Could you explain why iTunes is off your list? I'm always curious as to what reasons people have for not using it.
 
cr2sh said:
Windows Media Player.

*slap*

:p

If you don't like iTunes, you don't really have that much to choose from. Seems like it generally killed off the competition.

Cog is one alternative. It has native support for some additional audio formats (FLAC, Vorbis, Wavpack, APE), but it's very early in development (v0.0.4) and is pretty barebone...
 
I use Audion.

There's a severely minimalistic app called Cabrio. I tried it for awhile before deciding on Audion. I don't care for the way it "thinks" of playlists/windows.


I do not like iTunes. If I wanted applications that think they are smarter than me, and which want to "organize" my files, well heck, I'd get something Microsoft ;)
 
ahunter3 said:
I use Audion.

There's a severely minimalistic app called Cabrio. I tried it for awhile before deciding on Audion. I don't care for the way it "thinks" of playlists/windows.


I do not like iTunes. If I wanted applications that think they are smarter than me, and which want to "organize" my files, well heck, I'd get something Microsoft ;)

But music is already "organized," isn't it? Artist -> Album -> Song. It makes sense. Plus, you can turn off that feature if you really hate it so much.
 
ahunter3 said:
I use Audion.

There's a severely minimalistic app called Cabrio. I tried it for awhile before deciding on Audion. I don't care for the way it "thinks" of playlists/windows.


I do not like iTunes. If I wanted applications that think they are smarter than me, and which want to "organize" my files, well heck, I'd get something Microsoft ;)
It's funny that the "Keep Music Organized" feature is always the one that turns people off from iTunes. I guess if you have a method that works for you great. As has been pointed out, you can disable that feature. Personally, that is the feature I like most as I no longer have to spend a weekend renaming and reorganizing MP3s. I find it much easier to let iTunes handle the grunt work and I can spend my time actually listening. To each their own I guess.
 
If winamp is what you like, xmms from Fink would be worth a try.

VLC and mplayer can be used for music too.
 
BiikeMike said:
Besides Itunes, what is a good MP3 player software?
MacAmp Lite X 1.1 works like a charm under MacOS X 10.4.2. It is still available for download from various websites.
 
Cool, Thanks everyone.

Guess I'll have to try some of those, or just stick with iTunes. And yes, I do have my own organization system for my music, like it was said before, to each their own :)

I'm just used to Winamp
 
BiikeMike said:
Cool, Thanks everyone.

Guess I'll have to try some of those, or just stick with iTunes. And yes, I do have my own organization system for my music, like it was said before, to each their own :)

I'm just used to Winamp

Believe me, i used to be the same way till i really gave iTunes a chance. Now I love it
 
I don't understand this whole "personalised organisation system." Why would you want to even look through the file system? All it takes to find a song is a few keystrokes in iTunes and it's there. Want to move it to the desktop? Drag it there.

I don't think I've ever accessed the file system for either my music or my photos, iPhoto and iTunes do everything I need much better.
 
itunes isn't bad but some people have their files already organized the way they like them. On my ibook I use itunes because it's already there but I don't really have much music on my ibook so I haven't organized anything on the computer or the playlists. On my Windows machine where all my music resides, the only thing I use itunes for is transferring music to my ipod, otherwise I don't like it.

same with my photos, I can't begin to describe how much I hate iphoto.

The point is, some people have their own methods and the way they have things set up. Some software is non-conforming to those methods and tries to get people to do things in a way the 'programmer' thinks they should..ala microsoft. A prime example of this is iphoto but many feel itunes also runs along those same restrictive lines. Apple and Microsoft do not necessarily know best.

Personally, I don't want my software to import everything I want to listen to or look at. I would much rather point it to a folder and shuffle this or show me the pictures.
 
Chundles said:
I don't understand this whole "personalised organisation system." Why would you want to even look through the file system? All it takes to find a song is a few keystrokes in iTunes and it's there. Want to move it to the desktop? Drag it there.

I don't think I've ever accessed the file system for either my music or my photos, iPhoto and iTunes do everything I need much better.

If I want to listen "by the album" or "by the performer", iTunes is adequate, assuming of course that the imbecile who entered and uploaded the data to the CDDB server didn't put it in as "alan parsons" instead of "Alan Parsons Project", not to mention Disk 1 = "Umma Gumma Disk One" while Disk 2 = "UMMAGUMMA CD2" and I want the whole bloody album thank you very much.

But iTunes is klunky and annoying when what you want to assemble is a playlist of "Rock About Rock" where no two songs are by the same performer let alone from the same album. It is a task most easily performed from the Finder, and iTunes just doesn't interact with the Finder as nicely as other players.

iTunes is klunky and annoying when you've created 800 different playlists and you want to organize them hierarchically, with the Baroque portion of your Classical playlists all in one folder separate from the Romantic portion of your Classical playlists.

In the Finder, an Audion playlist is a file and you can alias it and put it in several appropriate categorical folders. Put your overall Playlist Categories folder in the Dock or the FruitMenu (Apple Menu) and you've got a minimalist but easily navigable menu for selecting what you want to listen to. iTunes is a screen-eating huge ugly sprawling thing, at least for browsing your playlists, and you practically need two screens to open the top-level folder of songs to drag them into a second folder constituting New Playlist 706 or whatever.

And it keeps doing automatic things you didn't ask it to do. Double-click a file you downloaded (let's say it's an MP3 of a funny tech support call) and damned if that file doesn't appear in your "Library". I'm sure it's a feature you can turn off. Just like you can probably keep iTunes from going on to play Led Zeppelin/Houses of the Holy when it finished playing the tech support call when all you did was double-click the freaking techsupport MP3 on the desktop. No worse than ferreting around in Microsoft Word's preferences to turn off spellcheck squiggly lines and talking paper clips and stuff like that, right?

Annoyingly stupid program.
 
I was a big fan of Winamp as well, but once I gave iTunes a chance, I never turned back. It took me a while, but I really warmed up to it. :cool:
 
Since we're posting opinions here ;)

iTunes is certainly the best player on Mac and one of the best on Windows.

But, personally, I'm a big fan of foobar2000, and there's no equal on the Mac (or any other OS for that matter). The degree to which it can be customized is very appealing to me. It's one of the apps I miss the most when I'm not using Windows.

Luckily, some people are developing a new player for OS X that hopefully will be as flexible as foobar2000. I hope it turns out well.

As for Whamb. It's decent enough, and I used it for a while, but I had some issues with it on Tiger, and the development of next version seems to be taking its time.
 
ahunter3 said:
And it keeps doing automatic things you didn't ask it to do. Double-click a file you downloaded (let's say it's an MP3 of a funny tech support call) and damned if that file doesn't appear in your "Library". I'm sure it's a feature you can turn off. Just like you can probably keep iTunes from going on to play Led Zeppelin/Houses of the Holy when it finished playing the tech support call when all you did was double-click the freaking techsupport MP3 on the desktop.


Is there a way to turn this 'feature' off? It is without a doubt one of the most annoying aspects of any application ever! Just because I downloaded a music file and want to listen to it does NOT mean I want it added to my library and I only want to play that one file.
 
prophet621 said:
Is there a way to turn this 'feature' off? It is without a doubt one of the most annoying aspects of any application ever! Just because I downloaded a music file and want to listen to it does NOT mean I want it added to my library and I only want to play that one file.

Easy.

  1. Right-click MP3 file
  2. Choose Open With
  3. Choose Other...
  4. Choose QuickTime Player or any player app you like
  5. Check the box Always Open With
  6. Click Open

And then you'll never again be bothered by iTunes adding a double-clicked MP3 file.
 
ahunter3 said:
If I want to listen "by the album" or "by the performer", iTunes is adequate, assuming of course that the imbecile who entered and uploaded the data to the CDDB server didn't put it in as "alan parsons" instead of "Alan Parsons Project", not to mention Disk 1 = "Umma Gumma Disk One" while Disk 2 = "UMMAGUMMA CD2" and I want the whole bloody album thank you very much.
So before you import, change the info about the CD, and submit it to the CDDB, so that way other people won't have to go through it.

But iTunes is klunky and annoying when what you want to assemble is a playlist of "Rock About Rock" where no two songs are by the same performer let alone from the same album. It is a task most easily performed from the Finder, and iTunes just doesn't interact with the Finder as nicely as other players.
So make a normal playlist instead of a smart one, and drag everything you want into there.

iTunes is klunky and annoying when you've created 800 different playlists and you want to organize them hierarchically, with the Baroque portion of your Classical playlists all in one folder separate from the Romantic portion of your Classical playlists.
iTunes 5 adds playlist folders, so you can have Baroque, Romantic, Classic, and 20th Century playlists inside the Classical folder

iTunes is a screen-eating huge ugly sprawling thing, at least for browsing your playlists, and you practically need two screens to open the top-level folder of songs to drag them into a second folder constituting New Playlist 706 or whatever.
So make the window smaller the way you can with almost any other window

And it keeps doing automatic things you didn't ask it to do. Double-click a file you downloaded (let's say it's an MP3 of a funny tech support call) and damned if that file doesn't appear in your "Library". I'm sure it's a feature you can turn off. Just like you can probably keep iTunes from going on to play Led Zeppelin/Houses of the Holy when it finished playing the tech support call when all you did was double-click the freaking techsupport MP3 on the desktop.
Funny, you praised the Finder earlier, and yet this is controlled by the Finder. It associates every MP3 (and any other audio supported by QT/iTunes) with iTunes. Get Info on any MP3, and took a look at "Open With"
Annoyingly stupid program.
It would be too easy ;)
 
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