So simple under Windows, and almost impossible to find for Mac.
An audio player that:
- starts up in under half a second
- plays the most important formats without gaps (aac/mp4, flac, mp3, ogg, aiff, wav)
- does not skip the beginning of the audio files no matter how short they are
- can auto-load and play all files from the folder it played the first file from
- is more like 3MB in size, not 30MB
Under Windows, there's 1by1, billy, winamp, XMplay and many others. All free. Yes, free!

Under Mac, I have yet to find a similar player:
- VLC takes ages to start
- Cog has memory leaks and sometimes stops in the middle of the playlist
(Yesterday it only played two files no matter where I started playback in the list,
today after sleep mode it froze up ate 11GB of RAM and effectively blocked the whole system)
- Vox is bloatware and sometimes plays short files in a playlist twice
- Winamp for Mac cannot even just drag&drop a number of files to the playlist and play, and pops up 100s of notifications, finally filling up the whole screen
- iTunes is even bigger bloatware (but it's not made for playing audio in the first place)
- QuickTime player is the most stupid player I have ever seen
- Ecoute does neither support file-open nor drag&drop, only playback from the iTunes library

Many players that look good at first will fail when playing hundreds of short samples.
I could use my commandline mplayer, but hey, it could be a bit more comfortable in 2015 *yes*

It does not happen often, but I feel quite stuck at this point.
Good suggestions are very welcome!

A while ago, Stevitch already suggested a the great and compact Ocenaudio, now I'm only missing a free, good file and folder player of comparable quality.

Thanks guys.

 

Spacebar.

 

On my Mac, VLC taks, oh, "half a second" to start; audio starts playing as soon as it's dropped into the window.

 

What version of VLC are you using?


@jaxyflash
You haven't read my post, have you?

 

Some hints:
- MPlayer OSX Extended (Normally a video player, solid Swiss product)

Code:

http://mplayerosx.ch/

Other players @

Code:

http://www.jriver.com/audio.html

Code:

http://www.macmusic.org/software/cat.php/lang/en/id/7001/

Not much available for Mac, that's true!

 

Try Audiofile Engineering's Fidelia. It'll automatically import all your iTunes playlists, plays more formats than iTunes (including FLAC) and, instead of relying on iTunes' "Sound Enhancer", you can stack up to three 64-bit AU inserts on the outputs.

 

@fiction : Sorry mate, but I can't see a workflow scenario when one needs a player that "does not skip the beginning of the audio files no matter how short they are" - I mean really, put kick samples in a playlist?
On the other side, VLC starts fast as @Stevitch also confirms if you really want to use a 3rd party. But iTunes is a very powerful beast for playing audio files (and way more better organizer than one can make within a folders structure) if you have the patience to adapt a little bit to it's required workflow. Usually all the needed apps are present in Mac world - some of the redundant ones, not so much. But if you insist on having windows habits on OSX world, you'll have many headaches. Cheers!

 

*yes* jayxflash is right.
You'll have troubles with MAC if you're too much attached to Windows.
iTunes IS a media player!

Code:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes

QuickTime player is a cool player, not the best one but useful.
It depends on your needs, if you're an audiophile you'll search
and choose the one that covers your needs.

> Test, test again and listen! <
What others write about it is another piece of cake.

 

Clementine

 

Yes! That's exactly my workflow when quickly previewing sample kits outside of the DAW. For me this is the fastest way to find the right sample, and that's why quick reaction to keyboard shortcuts and precise playback is so important.

I don't doubt that iTunes is good for proper management of tagged music files. But that's not the case for usually non-tagged samples.

I admit that I've come to love the little Windows goodies, and I might have to get used to "Mac way of thinking" - anyway, what surprises me is that the tools do in fact exist (Vox, Cog, Winamp) but they're either so buggy that they still seem to be in alpha state or their features are too limited for this purpose.

VLC looks like the best option still, will try a clean install again.

 

Speed, usability and proper playback of files and folders are my main concern, nothing else fancy.
If you have a Windows machine, just try Sheepfriends "billy" (500kBytes) or mpesch3 "1by1" (only 180kBytes) to see what I mean.

 

Looks like a nice alternative to VLC!
Unfortunately it's buggy as well. If I select a number of files in finder and "Open with..." ==> Clementine it will only play a fraction of each file.
I have to open it and drag the files to the playlist, then it works.

It seems exceptionally hard to develop a properly working audio player on Mac OSX

 

Boomer

 

Hi,
The "Snapper" from Audio ease was perfect, doing exactly what you're after, a dream... BUT, a huge BUT, now it's so buggy that you never know when it'll crash your Mac. I'm in the same situation as you and I tried so many softwares, nothing does it for me. Maybe try SPlayerx ??? I've got the feeling Apple doesn't want a good player on Mac because of their iTunes QuickTime things...

 

Snapper is coolest fish around (but really buggy as you mention), Clementine icon is my second favorite, I loved seeing those things on my dock



What about this?

 

Thank you! This one is not free but it's definitely a keeper. It plays files exactly how they are, does gapless playback, and loads AUs.
Using the free Flux StereoTool, I can even watch the stereo width of files while playing and easily identify stereo samples that are in fact blown-up mono files.
Great one. And it looks & sounds good.

 

Wow, great one. AudioFinder really seems to be a special one.
Being able to step through a list with cursor keys and instantly listen to each file is a big plus.
AU and even REX support and teh many other fantastic features are another biggie!

Thanks a lot!
Man, I can't imagine any other forum where I would have received so much valuable feedback

 

If it's primarily for previewing kits/samples I second Jayxflash's suggestion of just using spacebar in finder, then you can move up and down the list with cursor, like you say you want..no good for Rex files etc though.

 

Vox.

 

I got into using Fidelia after later versions of iTunes started to get buggy and weird (and do things like mess up playback on gapless albums like Pink Floyd's "The Wall"). Audiofile Engineering makes some great software, although Triumph, which replaced their great two-track editor/CD authoring software Wave Editor, is kind of a mess. Thankfully, Wave Editor still runs in later versions of OSX, though it's hard to find.