What's your audio player?

When I switched from Windows to Mac to learn code, I missed using the audio player I had. It was a small app called Billy (https://www.sheepfriends.com/index-page=billy.html), and it was this freeware audio player that honestly didn't do much other than the basics.

Anyway, now that I'm on a Mac I use something called Vox (https://vox.rocks/), but am curious what you all use!

Comments

[Austin S. Hemmelgarn]

I generally use VLC (videolan.org/vlc/). In short:

• It runs on everything I care about (and quite a few things I don't).
• It offers a great deal of configuration, but doesn't need any manual changes to the config in most cases (that is, it usually Just Works, but you can usually fix it easily when it doesn't).
• It does videos too, so I don't need extra software for the rare cases I'm watching local media on my computer.
• Unlike most other media players, almost everything is optional at compile time, which is bit for me since I use Gentoo as my main OS.

[Saurabh Sharma]

+1

[Tomasz Buszewski]

I use Qobuz for streaming, and Vox for, well, streaming, from Vox Cloud. Spotify for things that either aren't on Qobuz, but this is rare.

I remember using Poweramp back in the Android and mp3 days. Man, it was so weird, it was the only decent player that didn't add any gaps.

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

Exactly! I think Poweramp has continued development but it doesn't work well on my latest phone (Motorola Moto G), which is a shame.

[Tomasz Buszewski]

I think today local file players are a niché, thank to streaming services like Spotify. 10 years back I remember Foobar 2000, Winamp and all these players that could play my collection. Couple of years ago, when I was trying to rekindle my love for some Polish band and listen to their music from a hard drive, I couldn't find a decent player for Mac (Vox is okay, but I found it late).

Also, fun fact: I remember Winamp being the music player. Now it's discontinued for years.

[Jakob Christensen]

Yes, Winamp was leader of the pack back in the day. I think it is still alive though? winamp.com

[Tomasz Buszewski]

I had the old info, Winamp was acquired by some other company and is, in fact, alive. Sorry for misinformation.

[Ben Halpern]

Audio player

I use Spotify/Tidal mostly 😄 (And Quicktime to answer the actual question)

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

I forgot I'm in the minority as someone who doesn't stream music 😅

[Michael Tharrington]

I'm a big fan of Winamp.

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

I never got into Winamp; what do you like about it?

[Michael Tharrington]

It's lightweight (well compared to iTunes at least), I like the variety of themes, and it holds a special place in my heart because it's the first software I ever used for playing music (back in the Napster days when I was in middle school) ... I also quite dig the minimalistic, old school look of it sans theming.

[Glenn Carremans]

I don't have any music/audio files anymore on any of my devices, I started using Spotify (premium) 3-4 years ago and never looked back. I really like that it continues playing in the same genre/style after the playlist or song has finished and the weekly album with suggestions based on what I have listened before.

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

So there was Billy, which was all I really needed. I liked that it was lightweight and just worked. Never crashed and didn't have a bloated UI -- probably brutalist by today's standards.

Now I use Vox since I refuse to use iTunes. I'm not a huge music person though and I'm just too lazy to upgrade (unless someone suggests a better one 😁).

Oh, and on my Android phone I use Google Play Music, and used to use Poweramp. It was a bit buggy on my phone though so I just went with the stock app.

[Transient]

I tend to stream Spotify (or less frequently, YouTube) while developing or doing college work now, simply for the recommendations. Any other time I use Google Play Music as I have a huge library on it. The only reason I avoid GPM while working is because I don't like to keep switching tracks and changing up my playlist order to avoid distracting songs. Occasionally I'll use AIMP for anything I'd like to hear in FLAC, but that's often when I'm not doing much else, or if I already have it open.

[Will G]

Can we get some love for command line players? For example cmus and I also recommend mps-youtube for easy youtube listening from your terminal. For the macOS folks out there if you liked Winamp this player is pretty cool :) github.com/maculateConception/aura...

[OnFileNotWanted]

check out open cubic player ,after mpd && ncmpcpp its truly a tihng of beauty in CLI
cirrusuk.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/...

[]

[OnFileNotWanted]

Im a big fan of MPD musicpd.org , clicking the image will take you my always on 24/7 MPD instance running on an old raspberry pi model B the audio is mostly tech talks etc.

[David Farrell]

I use SoundCloud as my music source of choice.

For a long time, I used SoundMate (non-free) which brings soundCloud as a native app to the Mac.

I tend to get stuck in my ways and forget to checkout alternatives once I settle on something.

However, whenever I get a new macbook, I use it as a fresh start to re-evaluate configurations, processes, tools, etc.

With my last update, I decided to try a fresh search for native sound cloud support. This time I discovered SoundCleod which is 1) free and 2) A little bit better in some ways than SoundMate.

SoundCleod hasn't had a new release in awhile, but the latest stable release is working fine for me so far.