Let me clarify
I am switching to Mac because it is a gift BUT I will still have my windows laptop for games and now apparently audio.
Jeez everything sounds so complicated on Mac. but I will probably keep my windows for audio and games most likely so it looks like I’ll be downloading foobar on my PC
LOL. It’s complicated if you try to do something un-Mac-like such as playing FLAC. But even then, so far as I know you just install Audirvana, JRiver or Roon and you’re home free. And on the hardware side many people use Macs precisely to avoid Windows driver hell.
Yes you don’t want to be in Windows driver hell. I would much rather use a Mac for studio work because it just works and has no strange issues lol, they are more reliable for that type of use then windows regarding audio devices. I’m just stubborn and still use Windows and Linux lol
Free audio player pine player on mac can do flack and even has some neat eq settings but has basically no features
see I guess that’s where I’m lacking. I haven’t optimized windows to its full capabilities using Linux Ubuntu or anything like that because it seems like so much work, but then looking at Mac it just seems so simple with no customization and I’m kinda stuck in-between. but that’s a whole other can of worms lmao
but I think I’ll try downloading one of those things on the Mac and transferring my Interstellar songs to see if they can play.
I’m also going to rip them off my cd today to compare the ones I downloaded for free and the actual ones and see how they compare to each other in sound and properties like bit rate and size
Yeah there wont be any issue with flac on mac with those players. They sound like wav files and take up less space.
You can get pine player off the app store too
DeaDBeeF on linux can read Flac. Bit-perfect audio is as easy as “output = alsa”, “sound card = without any conversions”.
There’s also a waveform plugin, like Zeos’s Foobar.
I can vouch for DeaDBeeF. Was using it when I first switched to Linux, but now that I am so deep in the rabbit hole that I started using terminal-based players.
quodlibet is also a really good player that supports MacOS
It’s not really so complicated. There are very good, simple options for Mac, but they’re not free. Roon really is stellar for exploring your library, integrating TIDAL and Qobuz, handling different formats, etc., etc. It’s just ridiculously expensive.
I have heard many good things about JRiver and Audirvana as well (still not free, but affordable). I have explored the free Mac options like Pine and DeaDBeeF but they’re either really unintuitive or lack critical features.
If you want free, I recommend using XLD to rip CDs to ALAC and loading them in the Apple Music app. This yields good quality with low complexity. If you want a better, more “audiophile” level of computer based playback, give JRiver, Audirvana and Roon a closer look. Look at them as any other audiophile investment like you do when you look at a DAC, Amp or pair of Headphones.
Have you ever used foobar 2k on mac?
Also Audirvana and JRiver are pretty nice
Edit: it doesn’t look that interesting though since it looks like a mobile version of foobar, but you could use wine and windows foobar.
I tried Foobar2k on Windows and really disliked it so I wasn’t interested in trying an inferior and even more complex implementation on Mac. For my situation (1.2TB of lossless music stored on a NAS, multiple computers around the house, etc.) Roon is very well suited to my needs and worth every penny. It’s also beautiful and easy to use.
Jriver is apparently subpar on Mac
Ah, well it’s fine on windows lol, was mainly commenting from a windows perspective
Yeah. When My PC is built I’m probably go for that for its home theatre options. I have Audirvana on Mac its really simple and can import existing itunes libraries if you got them. Plus Tidal and Qobuz interaction without the expense of roon.
One PC thing I’ve been looking at that offers no explanation for what it does is something called JPLAY FEMTO
Isn’t it an improved network implementation? Think they also possibly have done some code optimization for more accurate playback (or so they claim)
That’d be interesting. Literally no explanation on their website though
Think it’s trying to compete with a roon server perhaps (although I don’t think it could)
so audirvana is a viable option on Mac?
Yes I have it on my mac, the only truly interesting thing is that it mutes everything else while its on but you can turn that off in settings. Also ReplayGain is terrible don’t use it
so then foobar is free? and looking at z use it seems like would be good no?
or how much is audirvana