FLAC on the Mac with Remote Control Options

[JohnB]

I have my CD's ripped to my Mac in Apple Lossless, however I've been thinking that I should consider an alternative, more universal format such as FLAC. Thus I converted my library to FLAC using Max and now have FLAC versions available. My problem in making this switch completely is finding a good program to use as a player. I've been using iTunes and the Remote app on my iPhone/IPod Touch and find this integration to work exceptionally well - it connects quickly, the navigations is fast, the shuffling works perfectly. So I am trying to find something that gives me the same capability yet does so with Flac files. I know about Play but it lacks the music management and remote controllability of iTunes. I've been playing with Songbird which feels like it is about 80-90% there just not quite perfect (especially the remote part, I have the Songbird Remote which is nice, just wish it handled the navigation from artist better - it navigates to an alphabetical list of songs instead of albums. Same is true of the shuffle capabilities, just not as rich (or maybe it is just lack of understanding).

 

While I can use VNC to do this it isn't as nice a solution for those times I want something quick, plus I find the screen distracting (where my iPhone can just be turned off and on quickly). Oh, I should note this is on a Mac Mini. I should also say that while I would like to make this change I'm not completely sold that I have to make it. I've been happy with the way things are so in some ways I'm like why mess with something that works yet at the same time I'm not a huge fan of being tied to iTunes and Apple's software/encoding.

 

Does anyone know of a good alternative for the Mac?

 

[ldolse]

If you don't like Songbird then you might want to try Music Player Daemon and MPOD. It's a Unix App, but you can install using Fink or MacPorts.

 

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki

http://www.katoemba.net/makesnosenseatall/mpod/

 

Install from:

http://www.finkproject.org/index.php

http://www.macports.org/

 

Macport's version of MPD was broken last time I tried it, but it might be fixed by now.

 

edited - I'd missed the part where you didn't like Songbird the first time...