iTunes Alternatives

[Cressy Snr]

Because I decided to go back to the Mac Mini, direct Toslink connection to my M1 DAC, I have been investigating alternatives to iTunes as the music player.

There are a couple of problems I have with iTunes on the Mac. One is the fact that it does not support FLAC and I am not prepared to piss about with conversions just so I can use Apple Lossless. Another is the lack of any ability to switch sample rates on the fly, meaning that if you try to play a mixed playlist with hi rez tracks interspersed with vanilla 16/44.1, the Mac just down samples the hi rez track to the lowest common denominator. You could of course set the output to 24/96 but then most of your stuff gets up sampled then the M1 DAC up samples that to 192K, which is a lot of processing to inflict on a digital signal, and whatever the naysayers would have you believe, unnecessary processing is very audible with digital music, IME.

I have tried three players

BitPerfect, Audirvana, Songbird and Decibel.

BitPerfect is a free app that intercepts the audio data and hooks into coreaudio so that sample rates change according to the requirements of the track being played, preventing unnecessary signal processing from happening.

It is an improvement on the standard iTunes data output and gives better sound than iTunes on its own. unfortunately it is a complete pain in the arse, looping bits of music for no reason and generally misbehaving half the time.
It is no longer available on the App Store; perhaps the author is doing a rewrite.

Audirvana does the same thing but has a flashier interface. It too improves on the sound quality of iTunes, but again suffers from instability and glitches in the output, at least on OSX 10.8.1 Mountain Lion. No excuse IMO as it is a paid for app.

Songbird is a project run by the Mozilla foundation to make an open source music player and does not allow sample rate switching on the fly, but it does support FLAC and sounds very good indeed, far better than iTunes, but it does not behave itself, pixellating album artwork and laying down a black square over the sidebar every time a new track starts. Total pain in the backside I'm afraid.

Decibel by SBooth.org is by far the best player. It takes over coreaudio and changes sample rate on the fly, just like Audirvana and BitPerfect but without the misbehaviour. The sound is stunningly good and for me at any rate is the best I have heard from digital by a country mile.

For $33 Decibel very good indeed and it supports FLAC, unlike iTunes.
iTunes on the Mac is a bit like Internet Explorer used to be on Windows, woven into the system so tightly that it becomes such a pain in the arse to use anything else, that you give up eventually and just use it for a quiet life.
For your average music lover, iTunes is perfectly adequate, easy to use, beautiful looking and has the largest library of downloads in the world.
Trouble is it sounds crap, really crap. However until you come across something like Decibel, you are unaware that there is anything better out there and the iTunes ecosystem makes it more difficult than necessary to find out that the sound quality is not that great. But then again iTunes was not built with audiophile sound quality at the forefront, since it originated in SoundJam, which was an mp3 music management app from before the iPod was even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye.

All Mr Boothe needs to do now is make an app for iPad that can control Decibel remotely. That would be the icing on the proverbial.

[Mike H]

Very interesting, in that I don't think it sounds crap at all. Plus TBH I can't tell the difference between m4a, mp3 or wav, although any audible difference when compared to a CD player, would be due to the PC's audio adaptor. Same for DVD's, Internet streaming etc., it's all perfectly adequate.

[Cressy Snr]

Very interesting, in that I don't think it sounds crap at all. Plus TBH I can't tell the difference between m4a, mp3 or wav, although any audible difference when compared to a CD player, would be due to the PC's audio adaptor. Same for DVD's, Internet streaming etc., it's all perfectly adequate.

Hi Mike, you're right, perhaps crap was a bit of a strong word. iTunes is as you say, perfectly adequate, but Decibel gives a far better sound on the Mac platform. I can't say how iTunes sounds on the PC. The Windows digital sound environment is likely to use different processing to the Mac.
Interestingly you are the third person to indicate that iTunes sounds better doing its stuff via a PC than it does via the Mac. Odd indeed. Perhaps Decibel brings Mac sound quality up to PC standard

Also, I too can tell no difference between AAC iTunes downloads and AIFF or WAV. I do hear a difference between high res and the equivalent 16/44.1 file though.

[Mike H]

Yes that is interesting, re iTunes on PC vs Mac. I have no idea why!

[Cressy Snr]

here are a few screenshots of Decibel.

This one shows the player window with the track metadata pane next to it.



This one shows the access pane showing the music library. From here you select what you wish to play and click a button to add it to the player window.


Finally the player window on its own. The folder on the desktop is where I keep my hi-rez files.
Folders of these can be simply dragged and dropped into the player window, whereupon they can be played straight away.


The whole experience is simple, intuitive and flexible.

[Cressy Snr]

A nice feature of Decibel is the memory play function, which fills up the RAM with your music before sending it out to the DAC, making the audio data path relatively immune from any other processing going on in the CPU.
A bit like playing your songs from a USB stick but using the internal RAM as the store instead.

Hog mode is also nice as it locks anything else that might produce sounds, out of the audio path whilst Decibel is operating although most of the competition offers this too.

[Mike H]

Like the wallpaper.

[Neal]

Sounds good Steve, very tempted by the Mac Mini, shame theres no iPad app to control it though...any ideas if one is in the works?

[Cressy Snr]

Sounds good Steve, very tempted by the Mac Mini, shame theres no iPad app to control it though...any ideas if one is in the works?

Hi Neal,

He's currently working on Decibel 1.3 and is hoping to release an iPad remote app to go with it.
However long that takes depends on the amount of work he has to do to implement sandboxing (whatever that is)
It seems that sandboxing is a requirement for all new apps if developers want to distribute them through the app store. Apparently there have been a number of attempts to introduce apps to the App Store that have turned out to be malware when vetted.
So as usual a few arseholes have spoiled it for the majority, causing Apple to have to bring in stringent security measures, sandboxing for third party apps being the way they are doing it.

For now then we are stuck with having to use the TV monitor and the keyboard/mouse to make Decibel do it's thing. TBH I don't find it that much of a bind. It is bit like putting on a record, or putting a disc into a CD player in that there is some degree of physical interaction needed to play music.

I still look forward to Steve Booth getting his update and his remote app out though

EDIT
found out about sandboxing. The operating system disallows third party apps from making calls to the system kernel, or only allows specific calls to be made ie the app is only allowed to occupy a tightly controlled environment and must be made to work within that environment and it's restricted access to the system kernel. If the developer can't get his app to work under these rules, then the OS maker's attitude is "tough shit pal" Can't blame them really.

[Mike H]

So as usual a few arseholes have spoiled it for the majority

Of course.

[chris661]

My only complaint with iTunes is when you add new tracks.

It runs the HDD flat out until its done, rendering this (quite powerful) laptop rather slow, with iTunes itself being pretty much unusable.

Perhaps its an artifact of running software that was intended for another OS.

[Cressy Snr]

Sounds good Steve, very tempted by the Mac Mini, shame theres no iPad app to control it though...any ideas if one is in the works?

Just an update.
As an interim measure with Decibel I found a nice little app on the App Store called Remoter VNC. This allows remote access to the host computer's desktop, from where you can basically do what you like.

I can access my Mac Mini via NetBios and my login password, from where I can launch Decibel and operate it from the iPad.

The basic app that I have offers NetBios and Bonjour. You can add SSH, Telnet and RDP as in-app purchases, but for numptys like me, the basic app is perfectly adequate. Price is £2.50.

[Neal]

Excellent, I'm in the US next week so will check one out...

[jack]

..I found a nice little app on the App Store called Remoter VNC. This allows remote access to the host computer's desktop, from where you can basically do what you like... Price is £2.50.

There is an Android equivalent (for free) if you don't have an iPhone/Pad - https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... dVNC&hl=en

[Cressy Snr]

..I found a nice little app on the App Store called Remoter VNC. This allows remote access to the host computer's desktop, from where you can basically do what you like... Price is £2.50.

There is an Android equivalent (for free) if you don't have an iPhone/Pad - https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... dVNC&hl=en

Aye, looks like a decent app as you say Nick.
I mean, using a silent PC/Mac Mini direct out to a DAC has now become a no-brainer, if you are either moving from an obsolescent Squeezebox or just starting out with file-based digital audio.