Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with osx and mp3

Looking for a leightweight MP3 player that plays nicely with OS X.

darainwa — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:20:26 -0800

Is there a good lightweight, skinnable MP3/AIFF/FLAC/etc. player for the Mac? As someone who finds iTunes to be overkill for my day to day use, I have been using Vox (previously Tool Player) for several years now. Unfortunately, Vox has issues with 10.6, is crashy when switching between formats, and has no real playlist support. I used to use Quintessential Player back in my Windows days and MacAst (previously MacAmp) back in my OS 8-9 days.

I'm looking for something with a feature set similar to these two media players as they did pretty much exactly what I wanted (playlists, no video playback, no library, skinning with alpha transparency, etc.). Ultimately, I'd like to be able to skin it to look like this, but I'd settle for something that's lightweight, with no library but some playlist support.

(Before anyone asks, VLC is out because it doesn't parse MP3 metadata in it's playlist. Cog is pretty close, but is lacking a few key features: repeat a single track and a mini player being the two big ones.)

Lightweight MP3 app for OSX?

rathikd — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:09:37 -0800

Looking for a lightweight MP3 app for OS X, any suggestions? I'm looking for something, preferably free, to preview MP3s in OS X in a way they don't automatically get dumped into iTunes. And before you jump on VLC, no. Nothing wrong with VLC, it's just not the droid I'm looking for. While we're at it, anyone know of any good ID3 editors for OSX? Bonus points if these two apps are the same but not necessary.

Thanks.

Researching going legit with dubiously sourced music collection

superfurry — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:55:59 -0800

Legitimizing iTunes Library. I have *ahem* a friend. This friend has a reasonably large digital music collection being managed by iTunes on a Mac. He would like to understand the cost of ensuring this collection is 100% legal, having realized that the vast majority of it is not. Purely out of curiosity, this *ahem* friend, has decided that maybe it would be a worthwhile thing to look into the cost of legitimately purchasing all the music in his digital collection. When this friend thinks about the fact that his largely ill-gotten music is being managed by iTunes, and that the iTunes Store probably 'stocks' a large proportion of this music, there might be a cool iTunes plugin that can do some amazing trick to give him a very good idea what the cost would be of purchasing all this music. Seems like a great opportunity for Apple to develop something like this.

Is there such a thing ? No matter whether it uses the iTunes Store, Amazon, etc.

It should be a plugin for iTunes or some other clever techy thing rather than manually doing an album count and then working it out from there.

Would also be ideal if it were OS X compatible.

Handily sync generic mp3 player on mac?

kickingtheground — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:42:32 -0800

Are there any handy utilities or iTunes plugins to help sync my mp3 player (which appears as simply a mass-storage drive) from my macbook? [Something like a mac version of badapple.]

fetching itunes album art in os x

willmillar — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:44:31 -0800

i have a 12,000 track itunes music library in os x. some of the tracks (~10%) have album art with them, but most do not. all tracks are tagged properly, and in theory should all have album art with them. i've tried itunes built in fetcher and many third party programs for adding album art. i can't recall names of programs, but most were very poor and would crash or not work at all. i would like to fetch art all together, because i don't want to go through 12,000 songs track-by-track. any ideas? thanks! -will

What tools exist for OS X to manage my music library?

Loto — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:17:27 -0800

What tools exist for OS X to manage my music library? My music collection is a huge mess, and I would like to fix this. I use iTunes to keep track of everything but there isn't really a way to make sweeping modifications to tags, to check the validity of the tags and titles, or to remove doubles.

My question is this: Are there any programs available for OS X (preferably free) to manage a music library? To remove multiple copies of the same song? To fix ID3 tags and song titles? Album art?

Thanks!

How to shorten an MP3 without clipping the ends?

howling fantods — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:30:48 -0800

I have an mp3 I'd like to use as a ring tone, but it's 2 seconds too long. I don't want to cut off the beginning or end, but is there some other way to shorten it to 30 seconds? What software (OS X please) can do this? I realize some options might make it sound slightly off, but it's a ring tone so I shouldn't be too bothered by it.

iTunes to Flash?

emelenjr — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:00:21 -0800

What's the best way to turn an iTunes (Mac) playlist into a self-contained Flash player that will play the music in that playlist? It seems like someone should have already figured this out and created some kind of script that can do it, but I haven't been able to find any such thing.

MP3 Tag Help in OS X

gyrom — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:38:16 -0800

Anyone know of an applet that creates MP3 tag info from file names for Mac OS X? We just made the switch from Windows to Mac, and have only hit one snag. My SO has his entire MP3 collection sorted by file name (i.e. "Artist - Song.mp3") without any meaningful tags or metadata. Now that the PCs are gone, he's realized that iTunes doesn't care for his old naming system. I'm not up yet on Mac software so don't have any solutions at hand and haven't found anything through searches. Any suggestions from Mac-types for an applet that can create the MP3 tag info from his file names (in Mac OS X) would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Some music doesn't load in iTunes for XP but works fine on Mac

TurkeyMustard — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 11:25:58 -0800

Some music copied from an Mac drive to a Windows drive doesn't load in iTunes on Windows XP. I have about 190GB of music (about 35,000 songs) on a FAT32 drive plugged into an ordinary tower Compaq via USB2. The music was formerly used in iTunes on Mac OS X 10.4.8 on a big HFS+ drive, but I copied it off to other drives, reformatted the big drive (which is less than three months old) as FAT32 and then copied the music back.

However, when I import the songs into iTunes for XP, only 90GB (about 19,000 songs) show up in the program. They all show up fine in iTunes for Mac OS X. Both are using the latest iTunes. I've tried numerous reimports with no luck. I've also tried a smaller drive, with a subset of files, but only part of those showed up in iTunes, too.

Thinking it might be a problem with copying, I've also copied the data over a second time to the drive reformatted as NTFS. I've also tried copying the data from Mac drives to the Windows drive using the Macdrive software to mount the Macs in Windows. I've also tried copying using SMB filesharing, using FTP, and using a weird Parallels-folder-sharing combo. All with no change in how many files import.

So, what I'm looking for is ideas on what might be the problem. Is it strange Mac-only characters or Mac-only names? I have a lot of international music with foreign characters. But shouldn't FAT32 handle accents, tildes, umlauts, and whatever just fine? Just in case, I ran a few scripts that clean up a bunch of strange characters, but it didn't seem to change the number of songs that would import.

Is it possible metadata embedded in files cannot be used? Some of the music probably does include metadata in various kinds of ID tags, and maybe also includes album art (though I have no way of determining that, I think).

Are there permissions or privileges that should be changed on the copied files?

Any ideas or tricks to try would be appreciated. I'm reluctant to just abandon 100GB of music.

Finding mp3 metadata in OS X's Finder?

p3t3 — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 02:18:06 -0800

Is there a way to get my Mac Finder (10.3.9) to see mp3 data such as bitrate and tag metadata? That is one thing I like about Windows XP, you can hover over an mp3 file in Windows explorer, and you get bitrate and tag data. But in OS X, even if you go to view file info, still not all the info I wanted. I just downloaded Audiofinder for working with audio files, and while it is pretty cool and plenty useful, I was sort of hoping it would also address this pet peeve of mine- but still no bitrate/tag data.

I don't use iTunes that frequently and I'd like to be able to access mp3 info without opening it - ideally simply within the Finder. Is there any sort of hack or utility that ads this functionality?

How to get Firefox 1.5 to stream MP3s?

ubueditor — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 12:06:54 -0800

Wah! MP3s no longer stream in my browser window in Firefox 1.5 for OSX 10.3.8. When I go to Prefs --> Download Actions, there is no MP3 extension. The upshot is that I have to completely download an MP3 file before I can hear it and even worse, it only opens in QuickTime. Can anyone help me return Firefox to its default stream MP3 setting?

OS X MP3 player with good "shuffle" ability?

odinsdream — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 16:55:02 -0800

Looking for: OS X MP3 player with good ability to scroll through long files easily and accurately. I'd really like an easy way to go through MP3 files that last about an hour or two (downloaded radio shows, commentaries, etc.) with a nice long shuffle bar. iTunes has a scrollbar where one pixel this way or that way shifts me about a minute or two in the audio. VLC doesn't seem to be any better. Audion is only slightly better. If the scrollbars were just longer!

So, what I'm looking for, is a free mp3 player that lets me say "Whoa, what was that?" and shift back 10-15 seconds, or scroll through a show to find a particular phrase or segment.

Any ideas?

Unfair use.

dontrockwobble — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:35:00 -0800

How to capture audio from a DVD movie on MacOS Tiger? I searched and came close, but if the answer to this specific question is here already, I am sorry that I overlooked it:

Does MacOS Tiger deliver the tools necessary to allow me to play a DVD movie that I own and record a few seconds of the audio into MP3 or other type of audio file? If not, how do you recommend I do this?

Hardware/software recommendations for MP3 DJing on a powerbook?

rfordh — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 12:21:27 -0800

I want to use my powerbook's impressive mp3 library to DJ portions/all of my radio show. What hardware/software do I need to make it happen? Specifically, should I use Traktor or something else? What kind of external soundcard do I need? What should I avoid? I need to be able to have one track playing out to the mixing board, and upcoming tracks on cue in my headphones. My understanding is that Traktor can handle sending audio on two different channels like this, and that all I need is the external hardware with enough outputs, right? Do I need something like the M-Audio Firewire Audiophile or is there a cheaper solution? Per this question I've been tagging my mp3s with bpm, but it also mentions an external mixer. Would that work as well/better than an external soundcard? Something like the Hercules DJ, or what?

Final hurdle: If I wanted to run the whole thing from the board back into my laptop to record an mp3 for podcasting, could I do that on the same hardware without problems? OS X 10.3.7 on a G4 1.5ghz powerbook with 512MB RAM, btw. Thanks.

MP3 to MIDI

whatevrnvrmind — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 11:10:21 -0800

I'm looking for a program (freeware or shareware) that will convert an MP3 to MIDI for OS X?

Mac mp3 stream players?

lbergstr — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 11:29:09 -0800

What Mac software should I use for listening to mp3 streams? I stream a lot of albums off a private Andromeda server. iTunes is sort of annoying: I have to delete streams from my library after listening, and Andromeda playlists arrive out of order (I believe these are .pls files?) Are there better programs for this, or am I using iTunes incorrectly?

Mac Defaults to QuickTime

ascullion — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 07:17:25 -0800

Potentially-really-obvious-mac-question-filter. Why does Safari want to open MP3 streams in QuickTime no matter what I do - and how can I stop it?

I'm looking for some utility to convert MP3s to WMA format under OS X

mkelley — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 19:56:57 -0800

MP3 to WMA in OS X, EI.EI.O. I'm looking for some utility to convert MP3s to WMA format under OS X. I have a cheap "MP3" player that will either take some proprietary format of MP3, that will never never ever work under OS X, or takes Windows Media WMA files, no matter what platform. It can run from iTunes, the Terminal, or some magic. Anyone have any ideas? I've been looking through a couple of groups for the RCA Lyra, and have a setup under a dog slow VirtualPC that allows this. But would rather work under my spiffy OS X iBook.

What's the best free software to extract Albumwrap mp3 files in OSX?

matteo — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 11:59:35 -0800

What's the best free software to extract Albumwrap mp3 files in OSX? thanks DISCLAIMER
of course this question is ONLY about PERFECTLY LEGAL albw files