The release of macOS Catalina brought a significant paradigm shift in iTunes. Apple tree decided to split the app into three media-specific apps—Music, TV, and Podcasts. The Music app retains the core features of iTunes and can manage both local and deject music libraries.

While Apple made some excellent blueprint choices to simplify the Music app, some people may not discover all these changes to their liking. So unless you're tied to the Apple tree ecosystem and accept no choice but to use it, consider switching to one of these alternative music role player apps for Mac.

i. VOX Player

vos hi-res music player for mac

Vocalism Player is among the few audio players that can properly handle how-do-you-do-res music. It'southward our meridian recommendation for the best hi-res music players for Mac. The secret sauce of the Vocalization Role player is fabricated up of its proprietary sound engine, broad range of audio control settings, and preferences.

The app supports file formats FLAC, MP3, ALAC, DSD, PCM, APE, CUE, M4A, and more.

The tabbed interface is divided into five parts: Playlist (to add tracks from your calculator), Collections (including Local, iTunes, and Synchronized), Library (including Vox Deject and iTunes), Queue, Cyberspace Radio, and SoundCloud.

Unique Features

  • Sync with your Music library and update it on application startup. An extension from the VOX website is needed to use Apple Remote and AirPods with VOX.
  • The premium subscription gives you unlimited online storage and avant-garde audio settings, like Hog fashion, tweak buffer, crossfade, output channel setup, and more.
  • Configure an equalizer with over xxx presets and manual 10-grid settings for fine-tuning.
  • Y'all can even stream music straight to Sonos speakers.

Download: VOX Player (Free, subscription available)

2. IINA

IINA beautiful music player for mac

IINA is an open-source audio and video player for Mac. Since it's based on the native Swift programming language, the user interface fits the modern Mac blueprint philosophy. The app allows you to command playback navigation and book with the Affect Bar, Strength Touch trackpad, and other gestures.

Click File > Open and choose a folder that contains your audio files. IINA will instantly switch to music mode showing playback controls and album fine art. To enable this, go to Preferences > Full general and check Switch to music fashion automatically.

Unique Features

  • Shop unlimited playback history. Head to Preferences > General and cheque Enable Playback History. Then, press Shift + Cmd + H to open playback history.
  • If you're listening to an audiobook or podcast, you lot tin quickly navigate between MP3 chapters to skip topics.
  • Support multiple key bounden configurations, including IINA, MPV, VLC, and Movist. If you lot use a different video actor, yous don't have to recollect various shortcuts.

Download: IINA (Free)

3. Cog

cog open source music player for mac

Cog is an open-source music player supporting file formats like WAV, ALAC, Opus, Vorbis, RealAudio, DTS, Musepack, and many more. The dual-pane interface integrates the "file drawer" with the playlist window to the left.

The file tree pane is collapsible; yous're free to cull any music folder. To get started, elevate and drop the music folder into the file drawer. In the right pane, you'll see all the tracks, with configurable columns.

Unique Features

  • Configurable output device setup and born support of ReplayGain either for albums or tracks. Caput to Preferences > Output to tweak the settings.
  • Seek through or skip a track or anthology with hotkeys to control the playback. It fifty-fifty allows the Last.fm app to control media keys.
  • Support of Soundfont and MIDI plugins. Useful for musicians to synthesize music with loops, vibrato effects, and velocity-sensitive volume irresolute.

Download: Cog (Free)

4. Strawberry Music Player

strawberry music organizer and player

Strawberry Music Actor is a comprehensive music organizer and cross-platform music player. The app is a fork of the now-defunct Clementine. There are many avant-garde features that users will capeesh to manage their music collection. It comes with a cover managing director, tools to manage playlists, music transcoder, and tag editor.

Past default, the app supports WAV, FLAC, WavPack, MPC, TrueAudio, AIFF, and Monkey'due south Audio. To get started, caput to Preferences > Collection and click Add new binder. Also, enable Monitor the collection for changes to update your playlist whenever you add new albums.

The left pane allows you to group music by album, artist, and year. To add a track, Control-click an anthology and choose Append to electric current playlist, or Queue them to play side by side.

Unique Features

  • Integrates with different services, including music streaming (Tidal, Qobuz, and Subsonic), album art (MusicBrainz, Discogs), and scrobbling (Final.fm, Libre.fm, and ListenBrainz) services.
  • Prove lyrics with an option to choose from providers like AudD, Genius, Musixmatch, and more. Tweak album art (by going to Tools > Cover Manager) and show the background paradigm of an album while playing music.
  • Edit metadata to fill in missing track information. To do this, Control-click an album and cull Edit track information.
  • Plough your music library into smart and dynamic playlists. Any playlist you favorite appears in the dynamic tab, while the smart playlist organizes songs based on specific criteria.

Download: Strawberry Music Player (Free)

v. DeaDBeeF

DeaDBeef customizable music player

DeaDBeeF is a modular, cross-platform player. Right out of the box, it supports many audio and chiptune formats, like MP3, OGG, FLAC, NSF, VTX, VGM, and more. Whatever formats supported by FFMPEG work with the app. The developer has ensured to use the native UI toolkit in each platform to deliver the best experience.

Click the Add File or Folder push to direct add your files from the Finder. With the support of a tab-based interface, it's possible to add different kinds of music to your playlist. Control-click the tab to either rename files, close the window, choose the playback order, or add a new playlist.

The columns are configurable; y'all tin add, edit, or remove columns. To show the album cover, Control-click any column and choose Add Cavalcade. In the dialog box that appears, select Album Art from the dropdown menu. And so, Control-click again and select Group By > Creative person/Date/Anthology.

Unique Features

  • Easy to use tag editor with the support of various metadata and tag formats, including ID3v1 to ID3v2.iv, Xing/Info, and VorbisComments.
  • eighteen-band graphic equalizer and other DSP plugins. The app also supports gapless playback and replay gain for either album or track.
  • Supports Title Formatting scripting compatible with the popular Foobar2000 app.
  • Transcode sound files to other formats. Just Control-click whatsoever rails and cull Catechumen.

Download: DeaDBeeF (Free)

half dozen. Pine Player

pine player with amazing equalizer controls

Pine Role player is a how-do-you-do-res music player for Mac. On starting time launch, the user interface might expect compact, and information technology may seem to yous that every functionality is crammed into a unmarried window, with illegible text and a poor font selection, merely despite its shortcomings, this app is feature-rich.

Information technology supports MP3, FLAC, APE, AAC, M4A, WAV, AIFF, WMA, BIN/CUE, and more than. To become started, add a playlist or cull File > Open up to add a folder. At the bottom, in that location'southward a dropdown menu to change genre, and you tin can also shuffle, import, and export playlists.

Unique Features

  • Supports various kinds of PCM formats. It can play sound from xvi- to 32-bit files and reproduce clear sound quality by supporting a maximum of 768kHz.
  • Use an over-sampling filter to requite y'all a better listening feel. You can also sort playlists past album title or runway.
  • 12-band graphic equalizer with over 27 presets. Information technology also supports crossfade and gapless playback.
  • Transcode music to another format, edit metadata, and add album covers.

Download: Pine Player (Costless)

Which Music Player for Mac Should You lot Use?

In that location are valid reasons to go along using the Music app. Information technology'south unproblematic to use and has a great collection of music. But if y'all don't similar subscriptions or have lots of albums, try out these alternative music players for Mac and see which one fits your needs.

Image credit: fizkes/Shutterstock

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About The Writer

Rahul Saigal (180 Manufactures Published)

With his Grand.Optom Degree in Center Intendance Speciality, Rahul worked equally a lecturer for many years in the college. Writing and teaching others is e'er his passion. He at present writes nearly technology and make information technology digestible for readers who don't sympathize it well.

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