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The Best Audio Player for Mac: Elmedia Player
  • Maximum support for media filetypes
  • Make use of WiFi sound systems
  • Settings for every aspect of your experience
  • Broadcast to Chromecast, AirPlay, DLNA
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Elmedia Player
4.8 Rank based on 131+ users, Reviews(131)
 
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Best Music Player for Mac - Elmedia

The Best Music Player for Mac in 2021: Make Your Choice


Why is music so universally cherished? It evokes and indulges some of our deepest emotions. That’s why it’s so important to have a well-rounded music player for Mac. The listening experience should be satisfying, convenient and seamless. It won’t be hard to choose with our list of the top music players for Mac. We’re sure one of them will resonate with you.

1. Top music Player for Mac in 2021 - Elmedia

When it comes to Mac music player preferences, Elmedia Player takes the lead. It’s made to the highest standard of audio playback among any audio player for Mac. Elmedia supports tons of audio formats like M4A, MP3, FLAC, AAC WMA, OGG, AC3, and more.

There’s no shortage of amazing features, like dedicated music volume control or the 10-band graphic equalizer. Fine-tune every minor setting to your liking - do it manually or through the use of thoughtfully curated presets. Not only that, but Elmedia Mac media player also lets you set up passthrough for hardware decoders - AC-3 or DTS for surround sound. This app acts as an audio receiver, letting you connect Macs together and play music through connected external speakers for a more wholesome experience. And finally, Elmedia Player takes care of your media library with an incredibly robust playlist feature, keeping your files neatly organized.

Best Audio Player for Mac

Pros:

  • 10-band equalizer for minute adjustments
  • A playlist feature to organize your music library
  • Audio receiver functionality

Cons:

  • Not completely free

2. VLC Media Player

If you’re looking for a free music app for Mac, there are few that can compete with VLC Media Player. While it’s predominantly a video player, VLC also offers solid audio solutions for music lovers. You get the same incredible support for audio formats as you get with video, not to mention the seamless streaming capabilities, and the easy-to-use playlist manager. There’s not much else to say, except that it’s definitely worth a try, especially if you’re not interested in unnecessary expenditures. In that case, VLC will provide something simple and easy to use.

VLC - Best Mac Music Player

Pros:

  • Wide range of support for audio file formats
  • Media manager helps to maintain a clean library
  • Completely free to use and enjoy

Cons:

  • Tagging files may be finicky at times
  • Very basic and minimal in features
  • Design and UX feel outdated

3. IINA

IINA is arguably one of the best music apps for Macbook in recent years. It’s mainly because of how natural the UI and UX feel in the Mac ecosystem. You can rely on IINA to play any of your music files. It integrates Apple’s native gesture controls, dark mode, Touch Bar and mouse and trackpad controls to give you the most authentic macOS feel. You can adjust your sound with the built-in audio equalizer, stream music from the web and broadcast it to local devices. If you’re busy, play music in the background while you browse or work with the picture-in-picture mode.

Audio Player for Mac

Pros:

  • Authentic macOS feel throughout the whole app
  • Robust audio equalizer and audio controls

Cons:

  • Some advanced users might find it overly basic

4. Pine Player

Unlike the other applications mentioned so far, Pine Player is an exclusive music player for Mac. It offers support for tons of formats like MP3, FLAC, APE, AAC, M4A, WAV, WMA, DSD, SACD ISO, and others. It offers incredible sound quality thanks to its Oversampling Filter, which converts compressed MP3 files to a higher sample rate. You also get to experience a very enjoyable listening experience with crossfade and gapless playback functions; they allow you to quicken the song transitions and play albums seamlessly. All in all, with this free music player for Mac, you’re guaranteed a smooth experience.

Best music player Mac Application

Pros:

  • Many supported formats
  • Smooth and enjoyable music listening experience
  • Free app

Cons:

  • Highs and mids aren’t very crisp
  • UI layout isn’t too user-friendly

5. Vox

Vox is another popular music app for Macbook users due to the plentiful features it offers. This app is easy to get into because of its user-friendly design and UI. Vox supports all kinds of audio file formats like ALAC, DSD, WAV, AIFF, and more. It’s an all-in-one music app that gives you access to thousands of radio stations, playlist customization and a rich audio listening experience. Although this app is free, some features are locked behind a premium paywall. For $4.99 a month, you unlock advanced features like gapless playback, a built-in 10-band equalizer, unlimited cloud storage space, a refined studio-like listening experience, playlist syncing, deeper customization options and a lot more. If you’re a heavy music listener, this app will be worth your every penny.

Music player for Mac

Pros:

  • A comprehensive app for music enthusiasts
  • Feature-rich, with support for all kinds of formats
  • Sync available between Mac and iOS devices
  • Unlimited cloud storage

Cons:

  • Has a subscription fee
  • Very CPU-intensive

6. Colibri

Colibri is not a free app, but it’s a paid music player Mac users will definitely enjoy. It boasts a high-fidelity lossless playback experience with formats like FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, DSD, TTA, and more. One notable point about this player is its incredibly low CPU and battery usage, which a lot of users appreciate. Pick up where you left off with this app as it keeps your track history. Colibri works in the background by updating your library and deleting corrupted files to deliver the most gratifying listening experience.

Elmedia Audio Player Mac

Pros:

  • Small footprint and low CPU use
  • Minimal battery use

Cons:

  • No trial version; you’ll have to pay up
  • Can be slow when opening a large number of files
  • UI is not very friendly

7. Clementine

As a music player for Macs that’s been around for a while, Clementine offers a host of helpful features that can be appreciated by music lovers. Gain the ability to search your music library, create smart and dynamic playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX, transcode music formats and do tons more. With Clementine, you can also play any audio CDs without issues, search for any uploaded songs in Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox, get access to radio and streaming resources like Spotify, Grooveshark, SomaFM, Magnatune, Soundcloud and more. As you can see, this app is packed with features.

Note: However, as many users have noted, it seems as though support for this app has stopped since their last update in 2016. If you run into issues, don’t expect any support from the dev team.

Clementine Mac Audio Player

Pros:

  • Lots of features
  • Free app

Cons:

  • Outdated UI across the whole app
  • No support since 2016

Find the best music player for Mac in the year 2021

For your convenience, we’ve arranged some highly desired features in a compact list. This chart will help you decide easily and quickly on the music player of your choice.

Top features the best Mac music player should have:

  • Extensive audio format support
  • Local network streaming, i.e. to Smart TV
  • Playlist creation and personalization
  • Audio fine-tuning
  • Built-in audio equalizer
  • Audio playback adjustment
  • High-fidelity audio playback

FAQ

Here we answered the frequently asked questions about music players for Mac and their features. Hopefully, they can be useful for you. If you still have any questions on playing music on your macOS devices, please leave them in the comments below and we will answer as soon as possible.
  1. Open the Music app on your Mac and click "File" on the menu bar and select "Add To Library" or "Import".
  2. Find the file or folder you want and click "Open".
  3. Adding a folder will import all the contents of that folder to your Music library.

Another way to import music to your Macbook is by dragging and dropping files and folders from Finder directly to the open Music window.

Apple Music is free for new subscribers for a trial period. After this trial period, your subscription will be renewed on a monthly basis. You can choose from one of three subscription options:
  1. Student ($4.99/month)
  2. Individual ($9.99/month)
  3. Family ($14.99/month)

With the introduction of macOS Catalina, Apple decided to ditch iTunes - as previously known, and replace it with Apple Music. This change comes with three new apps - Apple Music, Apple TV, and Podcasts.

Elmedia Player
Requirements: OS X 10.9+ , 59.66MB free space
Version 7.17(2353) (6 Dec, 2020) Release notes
Category: MultimediaApplication
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