Introduction – or – isn’t iTunes enough?
First of all I have to mention that I love iTunes. It is a fantastic media player and organizer, with all the playlist options, the Genius feature, the iTunes store etc.
However there are certain occasions that I would like to play an mp3 with a player other than iTunes:
For example, before adding a new track on the iTunes library, I first have to quickly listen to it and evaluate it. Or if I plug-in an old disk with mp3 files, and want to play easily a selection of them.
When I used to be a PC, Winamp was the perfect solution for quickly playing mp3 files.
When I became a Mac, I tried using VLC for that matter.
VLC is an excellent video player, with lots of options, but as an mp3 player was pretty poor (at least on the Mac). I had occassionally skipping on tracks, and the interface isn’t specifically built for music files.
Thus I went through Google and some of my favorite Mac forums to find a decent free mp3 player.
The application that I liked most as you can figure out, is Vox.
Vox – Interface
Vox has an excellent minimal interface, which rapidly fires up and does its job, i.e. playing the music files.
The main window (as shown below) gives you the basic info of the track, as well as the default playback controls.
While playing an audio file, Vox automatically adds on the playlist all other audio files that can be found on the source folder. Therefore you can easily select another track without going back to the Finder.
By clicking on the i button on the top-right corner, you get some extended info about the audio file, as well as view the associated artwork (if present).
The Vox dock icon is pretty slick, and has an animated badge that shows the current track’s progress (position).
The equalizer window can be opened via the main window. You can select one of the preset equalizer settings, or customize them.
Vox – Extra features
Vox gives you the opportunity to add various music effects on the track that is currently played. As you can see on the screenshot below, you have options for Time Stretch, Pitch Shift, Chorus, Reverb/Distortion, Echo/Compressor, Flanger/Phaser.
With Vox you can also export an audio file into one of the other supported file formats with enabled effects.
Vox – Preferences
Preferences are well-organized and let you set Vox according to your needs.
You can enable/disable Growl notifications, change the interface, window behavior and much more.
Last.fm/Audio Scrobbling is also supported.
Conclusion
Vox is a simple and lightweight music player (not an iTunes alternative!) that provides quite a lot of options.
It supports a variety of music file formats including FLAC, MP3, AAC, Musepack, Monkey’s Audio, OGG Vorbis, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, IT, MOD, XM and Games Music and it is completely free.
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Hey,
I am going to give VOX a try. I got tired of itunes and vlc ( you are right sucks for playing music.)
looks pretty aweome
I had exactly the same problem and I was looking for a software exactly like this. It’s amazing. Thank YOU!
Perfect, just what I needed!
Cheers from Brazil 🙂
Yeah thank you. I just switched to a Mac after 13 years of PC. Used Winamp all the time and got used to it. Now I need something for Mac and hate iTunes because it’s so big and has all kinds of features I’ll never want to use. All I want to do is play a single file and close the app. Done. Play another. Done. Etc.
…except now their website isn’t working so I can’t get it
Greg is correct, we can no longer access the website. Can someone please provide a link to the most recent version of Vox.
TIA,
Bill
After searching around I found another app called Cog. Not as functional as Vox appears to be but it’s a simplistic player and better than VLC
Also looking for a site to download this, sounds great!
I found the program on download.com, but when I downloaded the zip it told me the contents could not be opened.
Cheers.
it’s reachable there … 😉
http://www.voxapp.uni.cc/
Brett,
Thanks for the link! Just the other day I found another freeware called Cog though I don’t think it has as many options. Works great for playing music folders w/o having to build a library! But I couldn’t get Cog to stream BCNOnline Comedy Radio (still need VLC).
http://cogx.org/
Thanks brett but I just downloaded it and unarchiver wouldn’t allow me to unzip it. “The contents can not be extracted with this program”.
Anyone else try to download and install from this link?
scratch that, redownloaded and gonna try to reinstall now
How do i create a playlist ?
Playing only on current directory is quite annoying.
Like everyone else, many thanks for posting this. It’s about as close to winamp on the mac as I’ve found so far.
I really don’t get people who rabidly suggest iTunes is the bee’s knees to audio players. If you want to listen to a mp3 that you’re not intending to keep, why on earth would you want to import it into iTunes media library first? Absolute madness.
Anyway, thanks again!
You are absolutely right, thanks for the comment.
I compared quality of sound mp3 played with iTunes and with Vos, I should say iTunes sounds better. Or I dont know how to configure Vox correctly?
One problem with vox: you can’t edit the mp3 details in the player
I just stumbled on to this app just now and tried it. Thanks for the comments and insight. This app seems to be exactly as described and it is almost exactly what I was looking for as an alternative to iTunes (on the Mac) for sampling or testing MP3s without having to import into my iTunes library.
I too am a WinAmp and iTunes user. I have both a Windows laptop and Mac laptop (one is employer’s). I use WinAmp to DJ dances as a hobby, not a profession (it’s a cottage thing). I don’t need the ability to mix, I just need a simple playlist that is easy to change the sequence of songs on the fly. WinAmp offers exactly that, where iTunes does not.
So that’s the one thing missing in Vox for me: the playlist. I like the fact that it automatically retains the source folder as a path, but I would prefer the ability to control/adjust the sequence of the songs on the fly.
If anyone can suggest such an app for the Mac I would really appreciate it. I’d like to cut the umbilical cord from my Windows laptop once and for all.
Stee
Stee, did you find another utiltiy where I can have the Vox advantages but also run a playlist with files from more than one folder? i have been looking for hours on the web, there just doesnt to be anything like it!
Seb
Just the ticket! Except the URL in your post has been taken over by one of those spam sites. I found the right site at http://www.voxapp.uni.cc/
Couldn’t you just quick-preview the song on your desktop or your finder by pressing space? I mean, its great for simply listening to your songs. Is vox any better in that regard?
I am trying to use Vox maybe I am able to hear the old musics of Nat King Cole that I have already installed
eso ya no existe
la pagina esta cerrada.
ok, it is great however:
while playing a song that is in the playlist you cannot que another one! as soon as you drag and drop the new file into the playlist it starts playing the new song!!??? without finishing the current played song, but also it deletes the existing file, why??? hmmmm
brilliant. itunes is rubbish.
working link, checked on 10/1/2012
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24852/vox
Great application, just a small problem. Dont play MP3 😦