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Sporty G · Jun 17, 2004, 04:32 PM

Hey guys, I just made the switch to a G5 from a PC and I'm looking for some suggestions on which free MP3 application I should use. Winamp, even on my archaic 300Mhz PII, didn't make so much as a dent in system resource useage and I'm hoping to find something similar for the Macintosh without having to try 20-30 different programs.

Thanks in advance for any advice!~

tooki · Jun 17, 2004, 05:28 PM

And, um, iTunes doesn't meet your needs?

tooki

ambush · Jun 17, 2004, 05:29 PM

iTunes is the best MP3/Mp4 player for Mac OS X out there. It'll blow your mind

mitchell_pgh · Jun 17, 2004, 05:32 PM

iTunes for me... everything else is just a "good idea".

Chuckit · Jun 17, 2004, 05:33 PM

iTunes is the best free audio player for Mac. There are others if you feel like shelling out, but iTunes is free and iTunes is good.

Sporty G · Jun 17, 2004, 06:29 PM

Sounds good guys, I'll check it out as soon as I get my machine all hooked up.

dampeoples · Jun 17, 2004, 08:05 PM

It should already be on the G5

chabig · Jun 17, 2004, 11:26 PM

The title of thread asked for a "light-weight MP3 player". I was going to recommend the iPod mini!

Chris

lavar78 · Jun 18, 2004, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by chabig:
The title of thread asked for a "light-weight MP3 player". I was going to recommend the iPod mini!

That's exactly what I thought when I first read it.

angelmb · Jun 18, 2004, 09:32 AM

Originally posted by lavar78:
That's exactly what I thought when I first read it.

Indeed !!! maybe then, the iPod mini is a good, light-weight MP3 device player

bmhome1 · Jun 18, 2004, 10:58 PM

A true "lightweight" MP3 player for OSX is MacAmp Lite X freeware that was discountined but still available for download:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7770

Link may be dead now. Have a 2MB .dmg somewhere to post.

bmedina · Jun 19, 2004, 08:18 PM

Yeah, iTunes isn't really lightweight, but does it really matter on a G5?

wataru · Jun 19, 2004, 09:27 PM

iTunes is just fine, especially if you turn off all unnecessary features like equalizer and sound enhancer, and either close or shrink (all the way) the window.

Tick · Jun 20, 2004, 01:03 AM

A good alternative to iTunes is audion

http://panic.com/audion/

Panic makes it, panic rocks

I love itunes though, give that a try for a week and you'll see why.

MindFad · Jun 20, 2004, 02:41 AM

Originally posted by Tick:
A good alternative to iTunes is audion

http://panic.com/audion/

Panic makes it, panic rocks

I love itunes though, give that a try for a week and you'll see why.

http://panic.com/audion/details/screenshot-1.1.jpg

Holy confusingly disorganized, Bat Man!

Tick · Jun 20, 2004, 02:47 AM

Originally posted by MindFad:
http://panic.com/audion/details/screenshot-1.1.jpg

Holy confusingly disorganized, Bat Man!

Well normally you wouldn't have all of those windows open, heh.

Funny Bugga · Jun 20, 2004, 03:34 AM

Go with the best, iTunes. Simple, yet powerful.

MindFad · Jun 20, 2004, 03:53 AM

Originally posted by Tick:
Well normally you wouldn't have all of those windows open, heh.

I know. I was just foolin'.

I actually just tried Audion out for the first time. It's not bad, but I didn't find it that great. Especially not for $30 and when iTunes is free and much more organized and easy to use.

SLam · Jun 20, 2004, 05:52 AM

Originally posted by Sporty G:
Hey guys, I just made the switch to a G5 from a PC and I'm looking for some suggestions on which free MP3 application I should use. Winamp, even on my archaic 300Mhz PII, didn't make so much as a dent in system resource useage and I'm hoping to find something similar for the Macintosh without having to try 20-30 different programs.

Thanks in advance for any advice!~

iTunes would be a good choice. Not only does it play your music and organize them, it even lets you burn cds/dvds. It slices and dices too. I use it all the time. Second would be Audion. I used to use this before iTunes got better. They haven't updated it in a while.

If you really want to go super light weight, there's always mpg123. Awesome command line program.

Tick · Jun 20, 2004, 07:54 AM

There is an aqua frontend in apple's sample code area. Now that is really lightweight

yukon · 12:42 AM

http://developer.apple.com/samplecod...P3_Player.html

No way in hell is iTunes concidered "lightweight", it's a behemoth compared to other players, playing an MP3 is about 10%-15% CPU on my G4, and it jumps to 30% when the little bar scrolls. It's also the greatest MP3 player around, envy of Linux (ever try Rythembox? augh). If only i could tell it to use mpg123 (or something that plays all MP3s).

There's also Mint Audio, not sure if that's still in development, by Unsanity I believe. There was also Mu (search the forums), but it was left to die. There's MpegToaster, using an altivec optimized version of mpg123 (3% CPU back when I used it), a bit old and unwieldly. Not sure what else is around, you might want to try XMMS in X11, but that'll be slower than iTunes, and no where near as useful (it's a WinAMP clone).

Still, you're on a G5, it'll be very low CPU usage, and iTunes will kick the ass of anything else around.

VEGAN · Jun 21, 2004, 07:02 AM

If you really want to go super light weight, there's always mpg123. Awesome command line program. [/B]

I agree, plus it has at least 4 GUI "wrapper" programs too! I remember having used "Mu", check out VERSIONTRACKER

yukon · Jun 21, 2004, 01:21 PM

Indeed. While mpg123 is the highest optimized (at least for x86 linux) of all MP3 players, it's also one of the least compatible modern programs. It's sorta like Quicktime, where the creators object to certain codecs or mutations of codecs, and refuse to support them. In this case, mpg123 does not support many encoders, as some of them try to cheat on the format to get smaller sizes, etc.

IOW, if you go the mpg123 route, the pleasant way of saying it is "You'll find all the MP3s you have which are encoded improperly and should be replaced", the nasty way is "Half your MP3s will just not play, and another quarter will start playing really fast". I'm not sure if mpg123 can handle sync errors, it might just stop playing the MP3 when it hits one (where iTunes would make a pop or skipping noise).

Of course, instead of 10-40% CPU usage, you'll see 1-6% usage (depending on CPU, if it's the altivec mpg123). Not sure, maybe there's another mp3 decoding library out there, I can only think of gstreamer.

hubert · Jun 21, 2004, 01:43 PM

my friend gerardo recommended sound destroyer. he told me that it will work with the brasilian ipod.

Arkham_c · Jun 21, 2004, 01:52 PM

Does it really matter how much CPU usage your mp3 player uses? Isn't that the whole point of pre-emptive multitasking? I can play MP3s on my iBook while I do a dozen other things, and it all runs smooth. I don't really care that the WindowServer is user 3.2% of my CPU, because my CPU is still 75% idle with 8+ programs running.

And on my G5, forget about it. That thing doesn't even max out both CPUs while running WoW, playing iTunes, burning a DVD in toast, and transferring a dozen torrents with Azureus.