Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#21

Post by orliesaurus » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #16

If you've already got VLC, which is open source, it can work and look similarly, just drag on some MP3 files and it turns them into a "playlist" and plays. Example: https://i.imgur.com/YoiWeDz.png .. bonus is it'll also play stuff like .mod, .xm and other old tracker formats.

Without going off topic and kudos to the developer...however i was thinking exactly the same! I use VLC everywhere because its open source and awesome. I really believed in the project since early on, in fact if you have been using it for 10years or so, like i have, consider donating! Honestly they deserve it!

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#22

Post by spython » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

They also have the Tiny Player for iOS, which completely bypasses iTunes.

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#23

Post by qwerty456127 » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

> Plays MP3s (also FLAC, AAC, AIFF and WAV)

What about OPUS?

The player looks really cool but OPUS (together with FLAC) is the audio format of today, not MP3 (in fact it is plain ancient and the worst option available today, worse than WMA, worse than Vorbis, worse than AAC, worse than OPUS).

As for me I've recoded hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s to OPUS already to save huge lots of space (which is very precious on a 128 GiB MacBook SSD as well as on mobiles) without loosing quality.

Did you know a 32 kbps OPUS podcast/audiobook sounds exactly the same as a 192 kbps MP3? The ratio is not this mind-blowing yet still very impressive for music files too: 128 kbits OPUS music file soudns like 256-320 kbps MP3.

Please add OPUS support and I will start recommending your player to everybody.

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#24

Post by carbolite103 » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

This is very nice! I've been using cmus as of late as I can keep it open in a terminal tab while I'm working, but I will certainly try this out.

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#25

Post by petercooper » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

orliesaurus wrote: post #21

petercooper wrote: post #16

If you've already got VLC, which is open source, it can work and look similarly, just drag on some MP3 files and it turns them into a "playlist" and plays. Example: https://i.imgur.com/YoiWeDz.png .. bonus is it'll also play stuff like .mod, .xm and other old tracker formats.

Without going off topic and kudos to the developer...however i was thinking exactly the same! I use VLC everywhere because its open source and awesome. I really believed in the project since early on, in fact if you have been using it for 10years or so, like i have, consider donating! Honestly they deserve it!

Good idea - I just sent some Bitcoin. To be fair, I don't think it is off topic as I've often learnt about alternatives in threads here. It'd be weird if it were frowned upon, so I'll happily take the downvotes as the price for sharing :-D

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#26

Post by khazhoux » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

Good stuff. For me, Winamp always was "just right." I'm one of the old school weirdos, I guess, that doesn't need endless recommendations from Spotify and Pandora, and just enjoy my enormous (yet growing) mp3/flac collection.

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#27

Post by mixedCase » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #23

> Plays MP3s (also FLAC, AAC, AIFF and WAV) What about OPUS? The player looks really cool but OPUS (together with FLAC) is the audio format of today, not MP3 (in fact it is plain ancient and the worst option available today, worse than WMA, worse than Vorbis, worse than AAC, worse than OPUS). As for me I've recoded hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s to OPUS already to save huge lots of space (which is very precious on a 1…

>without loosing quality

Yes, you did lose quality, Opus is a lossy format so whatever your source material is, you will lose some quality.

How important or noticeable that is will depend on the opus bitrate, your hearing and your personal preferences are. But just putting this as a warning for anyone reading.

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#28

Post by jitl » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

lachenmayer wrote: post #15

lostgame wrote: post #10

Features: • not iTunes You know, iTunes wasn’t so bad before they convoluted the UI/UX to shit...looking at the music app on iOS 5-6 vs iOS 10-11 is like comparing a walkway to a labyrinth. The amount of steps taken backwards in Apple’s UI / UX is staggering. Even the simple replacement of the Spotlight bar from an unobtrusive widget in the top right corner to a giant box in the middle of the screen, directly coverin…

Some really nice folks are trying to figure out the whole "not iTunes" issue - it's called hyperamp: https://github.com/hypermodules/hyperamp

> electron

HN hates election apps :-/

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#29

Post by AceJohnny2 » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #10

Features: • not iTunes You know, iTunes wasn’t so bad before they convoluted the UI/UX to shit...looking at the music app on iOS 5-6 vs iOS 10-11 is like comparing a walkway to a labyrinth. The amount of steps taken backwards in Apple’s UI / UX is staggering. Even the simple replacement of the Spotlight bar from an unobtrusive widget in the top right corner to a giant box in the middle of the screen, directly coverin…

I, and everyone I know, detest iTunes.

It has become the definition of feature creep, as it evolved from being a music manager/player for iPod to being the full "everything iPhone" manager, including backups and system updates.

Re: Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac

#30

Post by qwerty456127 » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

mixedCase wrote: post #27

qwerty456127 wrote: post #23

> Plays MP3s (also FLAC, AAC, AIFF and WAV) What about OPUS? The player looks really cool but OPUS (together with FLAC) is the audio format of today, not MP3 (in fact it is plain ancient and the worst option available today, worse than WMA, worse than Vorbis, worse than AAC, worse than OPUS). As for me I've recoded hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s to OPUS already to save huge lots of space (which is very precious on a 1…

>without loosing quality Yes, you did lose quality, Opus is a lossy format so whatever your source material is, you will lose some quality. How important or noticeable that is will depend on the opus bitrate, your hearing and your personal preferences are. But just putting this as a warning for anyone reading.

This is obvious. Whoever collects MP3 files already knows what a lossy compression format means. I don't mean recoding FLAC to OPUS can save space without loosing quality, I mean recoding MP3 to OPUS can save space producing a file of the same quality as the MP3 original is. Obviously it will have less quality than a FLAC/CDDA original but not less than MP3 (unless you actually set the bitrate too low). E.g. I am sure converting a 256 kbits MP3 to a 192 kbits OPUS means no loss anybody can hear and converting it to 128 kbits OPUS may only mean tiny loss almost nobody can hear. Speaking about lossy format implies there is always a loss from the mathematical point of view, no loss means no perceivable loss in this context.