[wootwoot]

I am not going to beat around this bush. I hate iTunes as an mp3 player. I have never had an ipod before and I am sure that iTunes is good for organizing your mp3s and putting them on your ipod but when it comes to just playing songs it seems lacking. I am looking for something similar to winamp to play music on my mac. I find that even winamp 2.x seemed far easier to use and more customizable when it came to just playing music. I know the flames are going to kick up but I am just not a fan of itunes, do you guys have any recommendations on a good mp3 player?

[Tomchu]

* Cue the stories from everyone else about how iTunes works well for them, without actually offering an alternative suggestion.

[philm]

Well, iTunes is the daddy of MP3 players on the Mac. It's all opinions of course, but I don't really agree that it 'seems lacking'. That said, if you go to versiontracker.com and put 'MP3 player' in the search box, you get a load of alternatives which you might wish to explore.

[Big Mac]

May we ask what, specifically, you don't like about iTunes?

[crazyjohnson]

Drag-and-drop music to import. Press play. What else do you need to do?

Seriously, it would help if you were a little bit more specific. What kind of advanced features do you need to "just play music"? Alternatively, what do you like about WinAmp that iTunes cannot accomplish?

You have a fairly simple goal, namely, "just playing music." I don't see how most apps could fail you. If you were looking for specific "advanced features," on the other hand, then we might be able to talk. That being said it would be contradictory to need "advanced features" to "just play music."

Originally Posted by wootwoot 

when it comes to just playing songs it seems lacking.

[Adam Betts]

Audion?

[mduell]

With Crossover Mac you can run WinAmp on OSX. (link to success story)

[DuckRacer1]

What do you not like about iTunes? Is it too bloated? Too clunky? Too "big"?

Anyway, you could always try Songbird.

Songbirdnest.com | Songbird Media Player

[mhuie]

The problem I see with iTunes as a music player is that when you just want to play a song, it adds it to its "Library" and keeps it there, even if the music file dissapears.

Sometimes you just want to play a few songs just to listen to them without any automatic organization. I download music all the time off the web, be it short clips, samples, etc, and its a pain to have to clean up the iTunes library afterwards.

[cakey]

VLC works well.

[TheoCryst]

I just use Quicktime in those situations. Works well for one-time playing, and no additional software to install!

[ballison]

just go to itunes preferences and uncheck 'keep itunes folder organized' and 'copy files to itunes music library...'

voila!

[vinster]

I always liked a program called SoundJam. It was actually the predecessor to iTunes. Apple brought the IP and development resources for SoundJam, discontinued it and then released iTunes. You may be able to find a download link with some searching.

That being said, I still think iTunes is the best mp3 player available.

[fisherKing]

open a window in column view, and play the files from the finder.
you can even find an app called folderplayer (i think...) that will play all the files in a folder.
(try versiontracker).

i preview audio files this way, BEFORE i add them to itunes...

[kmkkid]

Cog is a simple straight forward audio player.

Cog - News

[Thraxes]

I use VLC for listening to Audio files and Albums that I don't want in my main iTunes Library. It works just like Winamp and hence is "good" - unlike the Windows VLC version (no drag and drop rearranging of the playlist is the largest deal-breaker).

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Thraxes 

It works just like Winamp and hence is "good" - unlike the Windows VLC version (no drag and drop rearranging of the playlist is the largest deal-breaker).

I guess spreading FUD about Windows is fun and all, but you shouldn't make up things so easy to disprove. The Windows port of VLC fully supports drag and drop playlist rearranging; I just tried it.

[Ganesha]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

I just use Quicktime in those situations.!

[grmpybryan]

Why does ITunes insist on renaming my music directories for me, and how can I stop it? For example, my library contains directories named something like "Henry, Joe". When I drag the directory into ITunes, the directory gets changed to "Joe Henry." That makes me a bit insane http://forums.macnn.com/images/smilies/bang.gif. How can I override that?

Thanks

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by grmpybryan 

Why does ITunes insist on renaming my music directories for me, and how can I stop it? For example, my library contains directories named something like "Henry, Joe". When I drag the directory into ITunes, the directory gets changed to "Joe Henry." That makes me a bit insane http://forums.macnn.com/images/smilies/bang.gif. How can I override that?

Thanks

Preferences --> Advanced --> Under "General," uncheck "Keep iTunes Music Folder organized"

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by Tomchu 

* Cue the stories from everyone else about how iTunes works well for them, without actually offering an alternative suggestion.

The hurdle that any other player must overcome (IMHO) is the EQ setting on a per-song basis.

Due to bad microphone placement, bad tape storage, shoddy equipment, and stoned and/or
unqualified audio engineers... there is just too much variation in equalization out there -- from
song to song, decade to decade -- to withstand listening to any *range* of music out there...
without having an EQ setting tied to every song. (It need not be unique, one size fits many).

If you're only listening to Soundgarden and Nirvana and so forth, maybe it's not so critical.
I am just amazed how badly some music was recorded and/or "digitally mastered". Volume
settings alone is NOT enough. Sound quality is everything... and compression techniques
don't improve or degrade it as much, by comparison. (Again, MHO).

Anyway, unless there's something out there that can read and implement all the EQ settings
which I have stored and linked to all my songs... then I'm basically tied to iTunes. Forever.

[grmpybryan]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

Preferences --> Advanced --> Under "General," uncheck "Keep iTunes Music Folder organized"

I tried that. Unfortunately, ITunes still likes to rename the directories to its preferred style.