[PJ G4]

Which of these two MP3 players gives the best sound and features. Are there any others to consider. Please give reasons why you feel one is better than the other in terms of sound. Thanks

[Chuck_star]

Audion is a great player with excellent sound. (no encoding)
Sound Jam is the best all around package and worth the money. Some say that SJ doesn't sound as good as audion. This used to be true. Now there are many plugins available for SJ such as realizer which enhances sound. Any skin made can be changed to SJ. And the encoder is excellent. Every encode has been flawless. Once you own it, you can't live without it. And no I don't work for C&G.

[bleen]

I've liked SoundJam for a while. If you want to go real cheep check out what Apple has. QuickTime can understand and play MP3's and if you have OS X Apple has included a program that can play Audio CDs and MP3's.

[poocat]

hey. just wanted to say that i think audion is great. it sounds very good (better than most other players imho, but i haven't heard the newest sound jam...) and it looks incredible, which... well, it's pretty.
either way i'm sure you'll be happy.

poocat.

[Cipher13]

Audion is the best player easily.
SoundJam is the best package.
Get Audion.
Get the X Fusion skin for Audion too...

Cipher13

[jaguarandi]

I'll have to vote against using QT for playing MP3s, mainly because:

• It has no playlist capability.
• It does not have a graphic equalizer (or any plugins to help tailor the output).
• It slows down and stutters when it is not the selected application, even on newer Macs.

I haven't tried the QT5 preview yet, perhaps it fixes some of these issues?

Anyway, I use SJ (full version) because of its (excellent) built-in encoder, since I have tons of CDs that need to be ripped for portable use and haven't been satisfied with any other encoder. That said, if Audion offered a built-in encoder that was the same quality as their player, I would likely switch.

//e

[druber]

I'm an Audion fan, but frankly I use it more for listening to Shoutcast stations than to mp3s. I don't know if SJ supports streaming, but since my work computer's on the network, I listen in through Audion all the time. Granted, it can be hard to find a station that plays to your tastes, and if they change IPs or names you can lose them, but there are hundreds of stations out there. Even I can't complain too much, and I'm very, very petty.

[olePigeon]

I would suggest neither and go with Unsanity Echo. (http://www.unsanity.com/)

It's by a few former Amp programmers and it's simply awsome. It's still in beta but damn is it cool. It comes with a full freatured equalizer and speed adjuster, and also specialezes in visual effects. You can even run the plugins in full screen mode.

[blizaine]

I like Audion as well...

However, I find myself using SJ more because of the features.

It has good Streaming support too.
It also ties together with toast very well for burning, which is my favorite feature.

If you want a cool looking app that has good sound - go with Audion
If you looking for an app has lots of features and ties in with Toast to burn MP3's right from a playlist, without conversion to AIFF - go with SJ

[er1c]

Sound App is great and free.

I do like Audion for sound quality when I am listening.

Sound App is great for ripping, converting and such..

[orlgummo]

SoundJam is fantastic, and offers more features, but Audion is simpler and maybe a bit less resource-heavy. At least that's my experience.

Still, I'd have to agree with a couple of the above posts--you'll be very, very happy with either of these apps. Both are splendid, like the companies that develop them.

Hope this helps.

Audion 2 now has a plug-in architecture and beats soundjam with loads more included features thanks to this.
Audion 2 feature list:

* Full support for MP3 encoding
* DJ style crossfading: mix music tracks from any source in real time
* Linked Playlists: playlists that automatically update as the Finder updates
* MP3 Editor: a handy waveform editor. Cut, copy, and paste sections of MP3s
* Popularity Ratings: rate songs and sort playlists based on your tastes
* Album Cover Support: view album cover art while navigating a playlist
* Face Hue Shifting: hundreds of color variations available for each face
* Multiple Control Windows: open many players for maximum flexibility
* Console Window: a single, clean interface for managing plug-ins
* Play Counter: keep track of how many times songs have been played
all this and it's still the best looking MP3 player around.

[bmedina]

I don't understand why people say Audion sounds better than SoundJam. I've used both on some pretty nice speakers (Monsoon MM-1000s), and SoundJams decoding seems much cleaner. Audion puts too much emphasis on the midrange for my tastes, and it struggles to boost the low end without distortion. Additionally, SoundJam's equalizer's ability to regulate the preamp filtering to prevent distortion is invaluable.

[bipto]

With the Realizer plug-in, SJ beats Audion for sound quality. Anyone saying otherwise simply hasn't tried both. It's no contest.

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b i p t o
e w e a s e l . n e t

[schwa]

I'm a long-time Audion/n2mp3 user, and have been really happy with it. I paid for the upgrade to Audion 2 and will be probably ditching n2mp3 (although I may keep the extension active- see below). I played around with the demo of SJ but didn't wind up buying it. Here's my assessment-

- SJ was a nice all-in-one package, but I think Audion 2 has leapfrogged it in terms of features.
- Audion 2 lets you use SJ plug-ins, which is nice for visuals. You can now use toys like White Cap with Audion.
- Audion has nicer faces.
- Honestly, I do think it's goofy though that SJ effectively *needs* the Realizer plug-in (made by another company) to sound good.
- I haven't seen benchmarks, but I would assume that SJ encodes faster on a dual-proc machine, since it has MP support. Audion now supports Velocity/Altivec like SJ, and it's wicked fast.
- n2mp3 has this really sweet extension that provides desktop CDDB support. So when you pop in a CD, it automatically looks up the info in the CDDB and displays the CD title as it's volume name, and names each track on the disk for you. Unfortunately, it's become the only reason to use n2mp3 at this point, which is a shame- they were making a killer encoder before anyone else. YO APPLE- BUY THESE GUYS! Bundling the extension into the OS would be sweet.
- SJ has some nice features that I don't really use- you can stream through a re-broadcaster (e.g. Shoutcast, Live365), and you can record directly through the input jack. Given Audion's plug-in architecture, I imagine that the latter of those could be done with a little programming grease by someone else.
- I found Audion's features to be plentiful, but the new version could honestly use a little UI polish. A few too many windows to manage.

All in all, I'm sticking with Audion. Hey, C&G gets my money anyway for Conflict Catcher, and I like to spread it around the Apple software community, ya know?

As much as I like Audion, Panic can't seem to make this software stable enough to use. The new version has crashed on me three times in four uses; two Type 2 errors and one Type 3 on quit that locked up my machine so hard I had to use the hardware reset switch ro reboot.

I like Audion, but nothing has been able to convince me it isn't just flash over substance. Skins are just skin deep, after all. The new encoder is extremely slow and of poor quality compared to SoundJam and N2MP3 (both of which used official, licenced MP3 codecs, and it shows). I want very much to like it, but I don't.

On the other hand, SoundJam is a solid, reliable piece of software with a low amount of CPU drag. I can encode an entire CD worth of songs in the time it takes to play just the first song -- and do it while said song is playing. You can use any Audion skin with it you like (though Audion's annoying tendency to hide certain controls behind pointless key-modifier combos makes this an unsatisfactory solution).

If you want a totally free player, SoundJam also has a free version which is the same core as the pay version. And SoundJam is already usable on Mac OS X, if you are looking to that platform in your future.

AUDION is the better player - both in terms of sound, and also in terms of providing a less cluttered and more elegant UI.

if these were music keyboards, then audion would be the professional Kurtzwiel or Ensoniq workstation with a few controls that can be combined in many powerful combinations, wherease SoundJam would be the bargain button-overload gee-whiz effects box where you press this button and all the sounds will come out even if you can't really play the thing keyboard.

[leperkuhn]

All right, here's the deal - if you really think soundjam puts out bad sound, you need to look at what speakers you have it hooked up to. I use soundjam with bose 201's and a kenwood receiver. it sounds excellent. I honestly think those of you that are complaining about sound are biased because you are using the built in imac speakers.

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Jonathan Haddad

[mugwump]

Quicktime 5 Preview 2 still sputters when using other programs, ESPECIALLY other Quicktime intensive ones such as the lovely Final Cut Pro.

The stock version of sound jam does not sound as good as the new quicktime enhancements, but maybe i'll check out the enhancement plugin.

But it must be said that the new quicktime digital video codec is quite insane. All video looks tremendous now on the computer screen, and output to video is stunning.

I think you really have to ask yourself what you use your MP3 player for. Do you use it at the top of your desktop with visual plug-ins and multiple skins, or like me, do you put it away in he background to play through your playlist while you work. If you do the latter, then Audion has a smaller "footprint" in terms of RAM usage allowing you to run other memory hungry programs like Photoshop or DreamWeaver in the foreground. Then if you are actually using it for a party, or want it as the top app on the desktop Audion 2 can do full screen Visuals, DJ style crossfading between songs, and has nicer looking skins in the first place.

The CSM plugin and it's Applescript ability is extremely helpful with Audion as a background App as well. Try them all out (SJ, Audion, Unsanity, MacAst) and chose the one you like the best, but make sure you are buying the right tool for the job. Make sure you know what you are really using the application for.

[jerry]

Audion 2 rocks!!!!!!!
I started with version 1.5 and all I have to say it WOW.....the sound
is great and the new features...SoundJam who?

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Jerry
Corpis.com

Is SJ the only one that will encode from inputs on the Line In jacks?

I have two fairly good setups hooked up to my Mac: Altec Lansing ACS56, and Bose speakers w/a cheap Midiland sub. Audion sounds clearly better on both, especially on higher bit-rate MP3s and CDs. With SJ, as soon as I begin to mess with the audio settings, the sound becomes awfully distorted. Too much focus on the treble, not enough bass or midrange. Audion sounds way better, in my opinion. Also, Audion's UI is much better looking than SoundJam's. And Audion's encoder actually isn't AltiVec enhanced--yet it's still just as fast as SJ with Altivec! I can't wait to see how fast Audion will be with AltiVec support.

[ndpatel]

what you may want to consider if you haven't become accustomed to either of these apps is soundjams's place in the mac world as the primary interface for all those nifty MP3 players out there. if you start using soundjam, and set up playlists and such, when you plug in you rio or whatever, you just have to drang n drop over to put music on the player. if you use audion, you'd have to open SJ regardless, and set up playlsts and such anyway. fight redundancy whenever possible, i guess.

Audion 2. Without a doubt. Sound quality is such a perceptual thing. What sounds good to me may sound like crud to you. Audion sounds "warmer" to me. SJ just seems more sterile.


ifred

I'd just like to say that the whole sound quality issue really isn't worth the fuss people are giving it.

I used Audion 1.5 extensively before switching to the latest version of Soundjam, I also tried out Audion 2 when it was released. With tailored equalizer settings either app makes virtually identical sound. Even through my nice Sony headphones. I cannot tell the difference in sound quality between the two apps.

I prefer Soundjam on the whole, it seems much more reliable and easy to use than Audion. Plus, I can't stand Audion's incredibly confusing playlists. The CD Audio playlist functionality is downright bad.

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/phloppy :: [email protected] :: sasquatchamo