Adventures in Music Player Software for the Mac

[Lee]

For Mac fans out there interested in computer audio, I have some observations about three music player packages. When I first started in computer audio I read Art Dudley's column recommending Decibel which I purchased and was quite happy until I tried Pure Music with the Berkeley Alpha setup which bypasses all the Core Audio paths in OSX and plays back in integer mode. That took my playback to a whole new level.

This weekend I met Jim Fairhead of Tenor and we got to talking about all sorts of things including computer audio. I mentioned how great Pure Music sounded and he said he was a huge Pure Music fan but when he discovered Bitperfect he figured he would try it and he thought it sounded even better than Pure Music. And it was only a $10 app too!

So I had been auditioning Pure Music and the trial period ended today so I bought Bitperfect yesterday. So far it sounds as good as Pure Music.

I will keep trying more albums but I am impressed so far and it is by far the cheapest option I know of.

[flez007]

I am still using Puremusic, I do like its interaction with iTunes as GUI, does Bitperfect works the same way (as a layer-up app for iTunes)?

[MrAcoustat]

Please keep in mind this is MY personal choice, i am not ready for computer music on my MAIN system BUT in my computer room for BACKGROUND music it's fine, what i do is import all my cd,s in ITUNES lossless and for NOW i'm very happy.

[wgscott]

Bitperfect is a great deal.

Another one worth checking out is Audirvana Plus. It originally started as an open-souce initiative, but now costs about $50. I use it almost exclusively in iTunes-integrated mode (i.e., works the same way as BitPerfect, with iTunes as a front, so you can use Remote.app, etc, to control it). At the moment, I think it is the only way to get integer mode on 10.8.2 (direct mode, avaliable as a beta-test release). It also works like a stand-alone player, similar to Decibel. I've never tried the expensive options (Pure music, Amarra), so I can't compare, but these are both great options.