[Flac-dev] Core Audio player for OS X?

[Dan Pritts]

On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 10:29:15AM -0500, Scott C. Brown 02 wrote:
> There are a few flac players on OS X now, but none (at least none that i know
> of) seem to use Core Audio.  So they all freak out if i try to play a 24/96
> file. 

Without even worrying about your 24/96 issue, which OSX flac
player have you been using?

Here's what I've tried, and why it doesn't work well for me:
 - the old MacAmp player - very crashy

 - xmms - works, even with coreaudio output (xmms-coreaudio plugin,
   make sure to apply the patch that tells OS X that it's a realtime
   thread).  however, i have a second sound card (usb griffin iMic)
   that's hooked to the stereo, i'd like music to go there and system
   audio to continue to go to the main sound out.

   the coreaudio plugin actually has options for this but there is
   some sort of config file parsing bug so it isn't saveable across
   sessions.  And you have to *delete* the config files to be able
   to reconfigure it by hand.

   plus of course it's an x11 app and the UI isn't great as X11
   apps go in the first place.

 - VLC - i think this does use coreaudio, although maybe not.  It
   does allow you to select the sound output device.  However, flac
   playback is broken.  the audio output level goes up and down on
   a regular level SO it SOUNDS like THE volume CONTROL is BEING
   fiddled WITH.  wav & mp3 output is fine.

I ended up writing a perl wrapper script for vlc that first runs
the command line flac decoder and then tells vlc to play the wav
file(s).

On the off chance this is useful to someone else, it's at:
  http://people.internet2.edu/~danno/macos_flac_vlc_wrapper/

note that it will leave lots of wav files lying around in /tmp/vlcflac
that you'll have to clean up manually.  Also note that if you have a 
bad wav file it won't retry decoding it, you'll have to delete it.

danno
--
dan pritts        Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but
danno at umich.edu   even he never conceded an entire metropolis to
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