Free audio playback software for mac

Requirements: G3, G4, or G5 processor (G5 required for HD playback), Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

AudioRack is an audio player system for Mac OS X intended for use in live-assist and automated radio. AudioRack contains a "rack" of five players which can be loaded with audio files and controlled manually, or loaded and segued automatically under program control from a playlist (radio segues, not the iTunes style fades).
AudioRack has extensive AppleScript support which allows it to run unattended. AudioRack is also a database front end for MySQL that may be used to manage, organize and find the audio files that it plays.
AudioRack requires access to MySQL in order to run -- HOWEVER you can play audio files that are not in the database library without the files being automatically added to the library (as iTunes does).
Finally, AudioRack has a separate audio playback engine (called arplayer) that does the grunt work of playing the files (any file that quicktime will play) using a 10 second long ring buffer and Apples core-audio system. Unless your computer is really hung up, it wont glitch - even with sluggish networked audio files.
As long as the network can maintain the encoded bit rate of the file over ten seconds, it wont glitch. This does NOT use QuickTimes built-in (yuck) player! Did I mention that it is also an open source program so you are free to add, improve, and customize it?
Enhancements:
- Added "event notification" support for input and output VU meters in support of a new client application.
- Fixed a bug where closing a recorder that is waiting for a timed start causes arserver to hang.
- Added support for dividing the audio mixing workload across multiple processors, if available, on a player by player basis using Apples Deferred Render AuadioUnit - previously, mixing would only make use one processor. This feature is only enabled if more than one processor is detected on the host computer.
- Added GUI for setting up the IAX telephone.
- Fixed a bug causing IAX telephone callers to only be in the left channel.
- Fixed a "double memory free" that _sometimes_ caused a folder pick to fail.
- Fixed the outnames and innames functions for getting audio device channel names if the device supports it. AudioRack now uses these names in the arserver input and output settings panel if an device makes them available.
- Fixed the problem where you had to wait a minute after shutting down for the control port to clear before that port could be reused by running arserver again.

Audio CD Labeller 1.0.2 is a tool helping you use meaningful names for your audio CDs. The MacOS generically labels audio CDs withnames like Audio CD 1, by installing this version of the Audio CD Labeller, you can use the same CD names that the AppleCD Audio Player uses.

The Audio Update 2007-001 addresses an issue with version 1.0 of the Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update in which a popping sound might be heard with some external speakers on Intel-based Mac.

Audio Update is recommended for all users running 10.4.10 on Intel-based Macs and resolves an issue with audio.

Note: Version 1.1 of the Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update is not affected by this issue and does not require the Audio Update 2007-001 update.

M-Audio JamLab is a free and easy to use driver installer package for the M-Audio JamLab audio device.

NOTE: Once you have completed installation, connect the device to a USB port on your computer. The use of USB hubs is not recommended when using M-Audio devices.

System requirements:
- M-Audio JamLab device

Enhancements
- Optimized code to improve performance.
- Added support for Mac OS X version 10.5.

Audio Switcher 1.3 is designed as a professional and useful MacOS X utility that allows you to quickly switch your audio input/output between different components. It's designed to work with a device such as Griffin Technology's PowerMate.

Audio Switcher sits in the Status Bar, making it conveniently accessible from any application. Place it in your Login Items and it will be available whenever you login.

Requirements:

• MacOS 10.4+ required
• Download Audio Switcher v1.2.1 (408kb .dmg)

Bink is a "better-than-DVD" class codec - it compresses at higher quality than DVD at up to three times the playback speed! Bink uses up to 16 MB less memory at runtime than other codecs. It has been licensed for over 2,500 games since 1999!
Bink is a hybrid block-transform and wavelet codec that can encode your video using 16 different compression techniques (wavelet, DCT, motion compensation, a variety of vector quantizers, Smacker-style, etc). With all of these techniques in one codec, Bink can handle any type of video.
Bink also has a VBR psycho-acoustic based audio codec that is capable of 8:1 up to 20:1 perceptually lossless compression, so your audio will sound as good as your video looks. Other video codecs force you to license a separate audio encoder, but Bink has one built right in!
Another nice feature of Bink is that its technology was completely independently developed. We are not based on any MPEG or other committee standards (our techniques are quite different, in fact) of any kind, so the IP is safe, encumbrance-free, and (best of all) entirely royalty free. Thats why we develop our own codecs (both video and audio) - we dont want to be hindered by any third parties who see games as a side market rather than the target market. RAD has been developing video codecs for games since 1992 - our software codecs were being used before MPEG could even be played on a PC without a hardware decoder card.
The other big reason that we develop our own codec technology is because general video codecs are just not designed for games. They are designed to play movies in a nice little media player sandbox on a PC with little else going on. They use a ton of memory (Bink uses up to 16 MB less than other codecs), and they use almost all of the CPU. Bink is designed just for games - we arent trying to be a media player for the masses, or get integrated into some set top box, or stream video off the internet. Our only goal is great looking, easy to use, high performance video for your games.
The Bink SDK supports the Nintendo DS, the Xbox 360 and the Xbox consoles (using pixel shaders!), the Sony PlayStation 2 console, all versions of 32-bit Windows, the Xbox console, the Nintendo GameCube console, MacOS, MacOS X and GNU/Linux. It supports pixel shaders, DirectDraw, DIBSections, DirectSound, waveOut, Sound Manager, NGC AX, NGC MusyX, SDL_mixer, and the Miles Sound System.
Bink uses the YUV colorspace, so it can use overlays for hardware color conversion and smooth scaling on Win32 and Nintendo GameCube. On platforms with pixel shader support (DirectX 9, Xbox, and Xbox 360), Bink can use the GPU to do incredibly fast and incredibly high quality YUV to RGB conversions. Bink also includes a ton of hand-optimized assembly YUV to RGB colorspace blitters, so youll be able to access Binks output in any RGB format you like (32-bit RGB, 24-bit RGB, 16-bit RGB, etc).
As far as data rate goes, Bink really doesnt have a minimum - 256x192 animations look great at 50 kps for Nintendo DS and 1280x720s look awesome at 900 kps on Xbox and Xbox 360 for HD video. Bink is so fast, that it works great for the low-end, like the DS, and for the high-end, like the Xbox 360.
For such a high-end codec, Bink requires very little hardware resources - it will run on a machine as slow as a Nintendo DS (67 Mhz!), and will be screamingly fast on a modern P3, P4 or Athlon. Any Macintosh shipped in the last 10 years will run Bink great. All of the modern consoles can handle Bink easily (even the slow-ish PS/2 for which weve done massive assembly optimization to get Bink running wonderfully).
Because Bink is pretty different from other codecs, weve put together information describing the advantages of using Bink. You can even view the entire Bink development history to see the complete evolution of Bink. Finally, you can check out what other Bink customers think.
Think Bink!
Enhancements:
- Added support for the beta Xbox 360 hardware (June XDK).
- Fixed 8-bit audio playback on Nintendo DS - we still recommend using 16-bit audio, though.