![]() ![]() If you have another version of OS X your mileage may vary, but this is worth a try. The senescent MacBook in question runs OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard). ![]() You can then drill down to the folder where the music is stored. If it’s on an external hard disk, keep going up one level in the file browser until you come to a list of technical, Unix-looking stuff, then open “Volumes” and you’ll find your disk drives listed. Tell foobar where to find your music (File > Preferences > Media library). Grab a copy of the latest foobar2000 installation package here, click on it, and again just follow your nose. In Wine-speak a Windows program is called a “prefix”. Once the disk image has downloaded, click on it in the usual way and follow the prompts. You can find one listed at Softpedia (be sure to get the 1.2.2 binary). Installing Wine on a Macintosh is not a trivial matter for a non-geek like me: a tutorial is here. ![]() It works reasonably well under Wine in Linux: and Wine is also available for Intel-based Macs. My favourite music player is foobar2000, which runs on Windows. If on the other hand you want a music player that builds a database to allow browsing and searching, as far as I can see your only native-Mac options are iTunes + Fluke, Songbird, Clementine, Fidelia and Amarok. VLC is great, and if you just want to play one album at a time and are completely familiar with your collection this is the one to use (hint: sort the playlist by “Author” to get the tracks in the right order). Fidelia is commercial software and I am too cheap to go down that road – the MacBook I’m using for this is on its last legs. Amarok is primarily a Linux player, but the OS X version is very definitely in beta. Although Clementine looks promising, it’s in its early stages my copy refused to work. It apparently also has problems with Lion, the latest OS X. Vox is nice, but ignores track numbers – it plays tracks in alphabetical order, which is especially disastrous for classical music. In any case my experiment with it was not a success. Songbird is not a particularly lightweight program and I believe development has ceased, or the project has changed hands, or become commercialized. Many people dislike iTunes itself, though, and want a lighter-weight alternative. ITunes does not support FLAC, though you can use Fluke. If you’re reading this, I assume you already have a collection of FLAC files, possibly acquired while you were using Windows or Linux as a computing platform, and now wish to play them on a Mac without the tedious business of conversion to some other format. Finally, FLAC is Open Source software, non-proprietary, with no restrictions on its use. It uses a clever technique of decompression on-the-fly, a bit like ZIP, so that, while FLAC files are themselves compressed, they are unzipped as they play. Unlike WAV, it is able to store metadata – track titles, etc. Lossless codecs, however, are perfect for keeping an exact copy of your music, whether for archiving or as a guarantee against further changes in technology: once you start converting one lossy format into another (MP3 to AAC, for example) there is a rapid fall in quality.įLAC has other advantages as a lossless codec. If an MP3 file has been made at a high enough bit-rate (the maximum is 320 bits per second), hardly anyone can tell the difference. Many other music file formats (like MP3) are “lossy” – in order to save disk space, they leave out some of the data. Before bothering to read on, check “About this Mac” to see whether you have an Intel chip.įLAC is what’s known as a “lossless audio codec”, which means it’s a music file format able to retain all the information from the original source. Please note: this solution is for Macs with Intel chips only. ![]()
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