Any Inexpensive Products to Compare with Amarra at this time

[Encore]

Just to make sure I've got it right - COG is a plug-in for iTunes?

 

EDIT: Sorry, found it, it's a player. Any judgement on its sound?

 

[church_mouse]

Paul, I accept that Play is not perfect, but I can't quite come to terms with your comment that its library/playlist management is "atrocious".

 

My music is stored as FLAC rips on an external HDD connected to a MacMini which I run from my MacBook. Play sees the FLAC and reads the tags without problem. Then, using the browser which slides out to the right of the main UI, I can see my music by looking at the whole library, or by using the automatic sub-folders of artist, album, composer, genre, playlist, smart playlist. Adding to the currently playing playlist is simply drag and drop, or by right-click options. This is simple but effective and I do not see why you find it atrocious.

 

I must qualify my findings by accepting that, as you will have guessed, I do not rip using i-Tunes. For historic reasons, which I have maintained because they work, I rip in EAC using an external drive connected to my pc, with the rips going to an external HDD for safe keeping, and I copy the rip to my HDD connected to my MacMini. All tags are checked and corrected on the pc using Media Jukebox 12.

 

[rudyy]

Count me in as having trouble with Play.

It started up ok, but didn't pull in all of the track info.

 

Out of 4500+ music files (mostly AIFF, with a couple hundred MP3s) it came up with file info for 16 MP3s.

I could not find the help I needed at its website, either.

Running Snow Leopard on a late 2009 Intel iMac.

 

Songbird is really nice if I can just figure out how to level the volume across songs.

Any ideas?

 

[pj]

I guess it was a bit strong - I'm happy to downgrade that to clumsy and clunky.

 

Things like the Browser pane not remembering it's status between launches are a pita. The lack of iTunes lib integration is a show stopper anyone who has an iPhone or iPod.

 

regards

Paul

 

 

 

[church_mouse]

Paul, I have not had the browser pane issue to refer to - it always takes me back to my where I left off.

 

Perhaps my avoidance of i-Tunes has worked in my favour on this occasion. I do have i-Pods, but I sync them to my mp3 collection using Media Jukebox and the pc - again, works a charm and getting Media Jukebox to separate out my Flac from my mp3 is a doddle.

 

[Wayne C]

At the current state of play would most folk agree that Cog has a better Sound Quality than Play I have yet to install either of these as im having my Mac upgraded!!, I aint that bothered about the interface looking possibly basic!, I mean foobar is basic but you get a great sound which is ultimately what we are after I hope.

 

Wayne

 

[pj]

Are you running 10.6? I noticed the Play codebase has a few bits and pieces that are deprecated under SL so I might be getting bitten by side effects of that.

 

cheers

Paul

 

[church_mouse]

Wayne, I have tried both Cog and Play, as well as VLC, Songbird, and i-Tunes (i-Tunes using Fluke, or by converting my FLAC to AIFF). To my ears, I could hear no difference between Cog and Play, so I chose Play because the library function and UI worked better for me (though others clearly have had problems).

 

I could hear a difference between Cog/Play on the one hand and Songbird/i-Tunes on the other and preferred what seemed to me to be a clearer sound from Cog/Play.

 

I have also been messing with Neutrino (a free 30 day trial period) following a suggestion on this site, but that has not been a success - it did have problems reading the metadata on my FLAC, so artist went to genre and album to artist. Also, as my rips are FLAC, it used VLC to play them and I find VLC sits somewhere between Cog/Play on the end and Songbird/i-Tunes on the other for sound quality.

 

[church_mouse]

Paul, no my MacMini uses 10.5.8.

 

I did use Play with SL when I initially used my MacBook with external HDD as the source. I had no problems with Play providing I used the last stable version. I did experience issues, mainly tracks disappearing from the now playing list, with some of the updates. Indeed, even on the MacMini I am sticking with the stable edition until I have a desperate need for the automatic rate switching in the latest release ( I see sbooth is talking of a completely new C++ audio engine in a forthcoming release - that may cause me to update).

 

[catastrofe]

I posted this question in another thread. . .

 

Does anyone know how the "automatically adjust sample rate" feature works? I run a MacPro with Lynx AES16e clocked externally feeding my DAC. Wondering if/how this all works together. . .

 

Thanks,

 

Bob

 

 

[Encore]

But what is an AU?

 

[cfmsp]

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Units

 

 

it's a format for an audio plugin.

 

clay

 

 

[MichaelHowell]

I'm not sure who asked for the link to VOX, but here it is:

http://www.voxapp.uni.cc/

 

I like it when I use my laptop instead of AppleTV.