

Show HN: An OS X music library I've been working on for the past year. - overcyn
http://www.enqueueapp.com/

======
ComputerGuru
Fist impressions can never be reproduced, so I'm typing this as I go along:

1) Welcome dialog is... out of place. The design is not consistent with Apple
UI guidelines, I can't tell the three options are buttons.

2) The cancel button on the welcome dialog looks like an odd man out. It's
just floating there in the center, and I think the caption (cancel) is also
something you can improve.

3) I think the now-playing thing in the sidebar needs to be pushed down by ~60
pixels, basically starting under the main bar across the rest of the screen.
It's not very symmetric the way it is now. You should also have a divider
between the close buttons and the now playing section - see Chrome.app for a
good example of doing it smoothly.

4) Playlists: now change when I hover over the entries, I was expecting them
to go blue. Clicking on them has no effect, I must double-click. non-
intuitive.

5) I love the statistics and charts in History, but I wonder if the name is
accurate? I'm seeing a breakdown of my music collection, but the only "true"
history tab is "Recently Played" which is also given the least prominence.

6) When starting the app, the whitespace stretching from under the now playing
section to the bottom of the screen in the sidebar is jarring. It doesn't look
nice empty, I'm assuming something will show up there at some point in my
playing around with it.

7) Playlists uses an entirely different UI from Library. I like Library's
detail view drilldown. I think something like that should be used for the
playlists too. See point #4.

That's all for now. May update later with more feedback.

Good work. It looks very promising. I love that it's fast and not-bloated.

EDIT:

No way to turn off Growl messages? Oops.

EDIT:

Add Playlist -> then press esc. The playlist gets added anyway with the
default name.

Playlist list needs right-click functionality, even if it's the same menu that
shows up when clicking the cog. Don't disappoint your users expectations as to
how an interface will act.

EDIT:

Playlist tab's "Add Playlist" pretends to be a tab but it's actually a button.
Very confusing. Don't do that - buttons are buttons, tabs are tabs. Even if
they're right-aligned.

EDIT:

I think you have a bug when you turn on repeat and shuffle in the middle of a
song. When the song ends, it will be repeated immediately, then everything
works out.

~~~
anon1385
>No way to turn off Growl messages? Oops.

You should be able to turn them off from the Growl preference pane. I was
always under the impression that this was the recommended way to do things,
the idea being to have a central place to control them. Now that full Growl
costs money and people start using Mist (which as far as I know has no central
pref pane to turn off notifications) I guess devs will have to start adding
individual Growl options to every app.

~~~
tuananh
Can you provide a link to Mist? I can't seem to find it.

~~~
angli
[http://growl.info/documentation/developer/implementing-
growl...](http://growl.info/documentation/developer/implementing-
growl.php#mist)

------
shinratdr
It imported my little "other" iTunes Library of about 1,500 songs, albeit with
some stalls. However, for my main 20,000 song library it just crashes out.

I hate to say it considering the other feedback, but I'm not a fan of the UI.
The giant words instead of icons, off colour and sort of grafted on now
playing box, and no ability to hide the "browser" all put me off pretty
strongly. Integrated preferences was a bad choice, too IMO. That's a good lazy
solution for an app like Chrome to support all platforms, but for a proper OS
X app I see no reason to avoid a standard prefs window. Prefs shouldn't be
given equal prominence to actual application functions. In fact, because you
are using words instead of icons and "Preferences" is such a long word, you
are actually giving it greater prominence.

I'm lost as to the purpose of the sidebar. I get that it jumps to the
currently playing album, but why can I scroll around to other unrelated
albums? It's like there are two completely independent browsing frames in this
window. Plus I can delete things in the other frame with the "x" button, but
they just go away temporarily until I start playing a song again... I just
don't get it.

Honestly, besides startup time, iTunes does everything this does better and it
does it with a more refined UI. I know the standard response is "great job!
can't wait to see the progress!" but I feel like I need to be honest. There
are a million iTunes replacements and companions out there. They all suffer
from requiring more effort to manage two music playing apps and offer dubious
benefit. They all have small dedicated user bases but they never take the
platform by storm like they seem to be hoping to. I'll keep it around as I
would like to see if it can handle a 20,000 song library with future updates,
but I don't see myself using it over iTunes. Sorry.

EDIT - Before you reply about the draw of features like extended filetype
support, last.fm and queuing, consider that almost every iTunes
replacement/companion (and there literally are dozens of them) has these
features already. That's also a reason to take comments like "Can't stand
iTunes bloat, definitely interested!" with a grain of salt. If these people
were actually receptive to change, they most likely would have switched to an
alternative long ago.

~~~
overcyn
The sidebar is a "now playing" playlist and I think the most interesting part
of the app. When you double click a song it copies the current library into
the sidebar. It lets you edit the order things get played, or what gets
shuffled. You can drag and drop songs in and out of it.

You can hide the browser by right clicking the header and selecting 'hidden'.

~~~
shinratdr
> The sidebar is a "now playing" playlist and I think the most interesting
> part of the app.

Why is mine filled with things that aren't playing and I haven't played? If
that is its intended purpose, then it needs to convey that a little better by
not filling it with other unrelated content for no reason. As someone who
rarely uses sub-lists and typically just flips around the main library,
copying the entire existing library to the sidebar isn't a great idea. I get
it for playlists and other subsections, not so much for the entire unfiltered
library.

> You can hide the browser by right clicking the header and selecting
> 'hidden'.

Good call, although this is a UI issue in and of itself. No function like that
should be hidden behind a right click, something many Mac OS X users don't
even know how to do.

~~~
overcyn
I'm having trouble putting it in words. Maybe thats a bad sign. Its kind of
like the iTunes DJ but not really. I can tell you that nothing in there is
unrelated. Imagine the main library is a completely separate entity from the
'player'. The music player plays from the sidebar. You fill the sidebar with
songs from the library.

And yeah I probably should add a menu item for hiding the browser.

~~~
shinratdr
I got that in a second reading, and I edited my comment accordingly, here is
the relevant bit:

> As someone who rarely uses sub-lists and typically just flips around the
> main library, copying the entire existing library to the sidebar isn't a
> great idea. I get it for playlists and other subsections, not so much for
> the entire unfiltered library.

I guess it's not so simple if the app is built around that concept. I always
use my main library and rarely have an urge to structure a queue, so maybe
it's just not the app for me.

------
conesus
Overcyn,

This is phenomenal. Were you a Windows Media Plyaer v8-v11 user? The playlist
on the side reminds me of my favorite feature from the WMP8 days, where I
could queue up music even while another album played. It was wonderful, and
when I went Mac full-time nearly a decade ago, I lost the easy queueing in
iTunes (where I had to create a playlist every single time).

Bravo, this is a great app and I would love to support it. I'd be willing to
pay $39, but that may just be me. I'm going to switch to it full-time and see
what happens.

And I don't need the same piece of software to handle my iPhone and my music
library. Don't bother supporting iPhone sync, it's just not part of the value
of a good music player. I can open iTunes when I sync (and now with iOS 5, I
don't think I'll ever need to manually sync again).

If you want a gratis NewsBlur premium account, let me know:
samuel@ofbrooklyn.com. It's the only way I know to actually pay you for such
great software.

~~~
calloc
You can add new songs to play to iTunes DJ, if you queue up songs there you
can add and remove songs as you please.

The other thing, so far Enqueue does not support syncing back to iTunes, so I
won't have my star ratings and all that stuff...

------
lukifer
I love the design! I especially like that the Now Playing functionality is so
prominent. While I like iTunes as a media database and sync tool, it's bloat-
tastic as a music player, and I've wanted something faster and cleaner for
years now.

I have a question, though: Does this perpetually read or write from the iTunes
library XML, or is the import a one-time affair? I use the hell out of ratings
and smart playlists, and I want Enqueue to run side-by-side with iTunes rather
than replacing it. (i.e., iTunes to manage music, Enqueue to play it back.)

Regardless, this is fantastic work, and I look forward to the finished
version. This app is something I would definitely be happy to pay for.

~~~
overcyn
Its a one way import.

~~~
lukifer
Have you looked into the possibility of two-way sync, or is that a non-
starter? For now, iTunes is still necessary for syncing iDevices, and keeping
two libraries updated sounds like no fun.

~~~
overcyn
Its possible. Songbird does it. I think it would be really difficult to get
right though.

------
chetan51
You don't need iPhone / iPod sync functionality. All you need is for Enqueue
to sync back to the iTunes library. So when you change a rating or playlist in
Enqueue, it should automatically update the iTunes library and the change
should be reflected in iTunes.

Then I can just use iTunes to sync my iPhone / iPod.

~~~
chetan51
Seriously, this is the only functionality missing that's keeping me from
completely switching from iTunes to Enqueue.

------
gcv
It's great to see a new entry into the OS X music player ecosystem.

As a fan of "classical" music, may I make a couple of feature requests — which
would actually make me switch from iTunes?

1\. Multiple artist tag support. I want to tag tracks by orchestra, conductor,
soloist(s), and to search by each independently. This would be a killer
feature.

2\. Grouping tracks by composition. The movements of a symphony are not
"songs", they belong together by default, but it should be possible to select
one separately from the others. This can be forced into iTunes by careful
naming conventions, but first-class support for the distinction between
"composition" and "parts of a composition" would be welcome.

------
pflats
Without AirPlay support, this is pretty much a non-starter for me. But I
rarely play music from my computer, so I'm probably not your target audience.

Also, I think this is really missing from your FAQ:

Q: Why should I use Enqueue instead of iTunes?

~~~
SeoxyS
You should check out Airfoil. Fantastic third-party app, will let you send any
audio to AirPlay.

~~~
pedrolll
Yes, Airfoil works with this app fantastically. I use it for Spotify and VLC
also.

<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/>

------
kenneth_reitz
This is absolutely incredible. THANK YOU for FLAC support. You have no idea
how long I've been needing this.

------
alexobenauer
This application is very interesting. I like what you've done with the UI. The
top-left album view / controls panel is neat.

As a recent Spotify convert, I may not find as much use out of it as I would
have a few months ago, but thank you for sharing a free beta. I will certainly
be watching this project in the future.

Also, I think the icon looks great, for what it's worth.

------
scott_s
I think the top question in your FAQ should be "Why should I use this over
iTunes?" Then clearly state what you do better (such as file support,
interface, etc).

~~~
the_cat_kittles
also, no need to update constantly and repeatedly agree to their terms and
conditions

------
dbalatero
Hmm, it crashed 7% into importing my iTunes library. Can I help debug at all
(forward you my .xml file, etc)? Email me at my HN username <at> gmail.com.

~~~
fdb
Same here. Something with the filename perhaps? Can I email you a crash dump?

I tried it twice and it always fails on the same file ("Love Is a Many
Splendored Thing (feat. Al Alberts)")

~~~
overcyn
Yeah, please do.

~~~
dbalatero
Best contact?

~~~
overcyn
overcyn@gmail.com

------
wfleming
Do you have any plans for better iTunes library 'sync' support (i.e. delta
updates from a changed iTunes library after initial import, and maybe even
writing your changes back to iTunes)? I understand the long-term technical
challenges involved, especially since Apple can (and will) change the file
format just to mess with you. But for me, at least (although I suspect this
would be true for many), this would be a critical feature to really switch.
Mostly because iTunes is always going to be the bottleneck for syncing to my
iPhone, which I use extensively for music.

That said, I think this is a really awesome effort. iTunes has definitely
become way too bloated, so it's great to see a serious alternative being
attempted.

------
theunraveler
Wow, this is wonderful! There are so few iTunes alternatives for Mac. Are you
planning on open sourcing this? I would love to help develop it.

------
mdiep
Very cool! A few things for you to consider:

1\. Consider putting preferences in their own window. This is the standard Mac
behavior, and it's a little confusing to have your app do something different.
You could also use the standard preferences toolbar look.

2\. The artwork for your playback controls looks off. Specifically, I think
the anti-aliasing of the circles looks uneven.

3\. For the gear menu at the bottom left corner of the window, consider adding
a little arrow like in Mail.app. That helps me know that this is a dropdown
menu.

4\. I had no idea what the X would do in the bottom left corner of the window
the first time I pressed it.

5\. Tooltips would help. You don't seem to have tooltips anywhere.

6\. I was very surprised that spacebar didn't control play/pause and was even
more surprised that there is no keyboard shortcut for play/pause. EDIT: It
appears that spacebar does control playback. Maybe I had a focus issue before.
But it would still be nice to see it in the menu. :)

7\. Having "Library", "Playlists", etc. at the top of the window is
interesting, but ultimately I think you'd do better with a standard look/feel.
Consider using the standard selected toolbar item look. (See the preferences
of almost any Mac app to see what I mean.)

8\. This is very minor, but you have an extra menu item divider at the bottom
of the View menu.

9\. The album artwork of the currently playing song (top left corner) looks
very slightly off-center. I think there's one more pixel on the right side
than the left.

Overall, it's very impressive! Good work. :)

~~~
dekz

        6. I was very surprised that spacebar didn't control play/pause and was even more surprised that there is no keyboard shortcut for play/pause.

Seems to work for me.

------
jcurbo
Looks interesting. I use foobar on Windows and have been wanting something
lightweight and simple on the Mac. Importing my >100 GB collection right now,
no chokes yet.

Will this be on the Mac App Store? Price?

------
alex_c
Typo on Features page - "A music player should fast and lightweight." is
missing a "be".

Looks great on first impression, will keep playing with it.

Also, sent you an email :)

------
jgh
HEY COULD SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE A MUSIC PLAYER THAT DOESN'T TAKE UP MY ENTIRE
GODDAMN SCREEN?

~~~
overcyn
Ecoute is decent. <http://www.pixiapps.com/ecoute/>

~~~
jgh
Thanks, checking it out. I've been using Vox up until this point but it
doesn't support playlists :(

------
buro9
This is a very good player for Mac.

I've so far tried Cog, iTunes, Winamp for Mac, Fidelia and a couple of other
ones (Songbird).

All fail on either two things: 1) FLAC support 2) Ability to handle a very
large collection effortlessly, and easily (scan & import, search & play)

On Linux and Windows I've been spoilt for choice with players, but iTunes
dominance on Mac has meant that few players have matured enough to offer a
compelling alternative.

With Enqueue it's as if you've been doing this maturing in private and now
have arrived with all of the basic requirements taken care of and done well.
You've nailed all of the core expectations without being distracted by bells
and whistles (just take a look at Fidelia's UI and then remember it fails to
import more than a couple of thousand tracks per import cycle - they missed
what's important, getting your music in there in the first place).

So well done, seriously well done. If I hadn't just put myself on a literal
ramen-budget diet I would right now be trying to badger you for your paypal to
send you some money.

More than anything, you've just made my experience of being on a Mac
considerably better.

~~~
pedrolll
I imported 19 000 songs and started playing a song while still importing and
playback only paused once for maybe a second and then everything was smooth.
Impressive really.

------
callahad
At first blush, this seems absolutely delightful. I'd second most of
ComputerGuru's critiques and add that:

1\. I find it odd that Preferences is a tab versus its own dialog. I shouldn't
need to access it that often, so I don't think it merits the same visual
prominence as my library or playlists.

2\. If you stick with the all-in-one window approach, it seems like you should
fold the "About" and "Check for Updates" dialogs into the main window,
possibly as siblings to the Preferences items.

3\. I wish the currently playing song was visually highlighted in the main
library view.

4\. I can't seem to enqueue an entire playlist from the top level Playlists
screen.

5\. There's no intuitive way to go "back" after drilling into a Playlist's
detailed view.

6\. There's no easy way to look at the contents of several playlists one after
another.

I feel like 5 and 6 could be solved by redesigning the top level playlists
view to include both the lists of playlists and their contents, a la the
Library view. I get the impression that ComputerGuru wants something similar
in his note #7.

Bravo! This is great!

------
trebor
I like the fact that the tabs have no icons, but rather large and readable
labels. I do tire of everything being an icon these days and appreciate the
effort you took to make them aesthetically pleasing.

I'd like it that when I add a song no more than the song is added to my now
playing list. When I double-clicked a song it filled the whole thing with my
library. Sometimes I want to play just specific songs and not their albums
either. At least it's easy to collapse and remove all other albums.

I didn't find the welcome dialog out of place, though there needed to be a
little more indication that they're buttons. (I'm fine but my mom would be
totally confused over what to do.)

I'm not a big user of AirPlay or Podcasts, though I would probably use the
latter feature more.

Keep up the good work. I already like Enqueue better than iTunes. You've
definitely caught my attention! If you keep to a similar UI and don't bloat
the application I'd probably even pay for it (which is really saying something
because I'm a bit of a cheapskate).

------
notyourwork
Awesome work! Very promising.

A question: When you import from a location do you consider playlists and
audio files?

It seems if you have a folder /music/album/ and inside are the audio files for
the album and a playlist for this album that your app would create an entry in
library for all items on playlist and the files thus duplicating. iTunes used
to do this but I believe now consolidates.

A few things from my first impression.

1\. Importing music did not seem to show a progress dialog of any sort. For a
user with a large library this may not be desirable.

2\. The equalizer is a nice feature. Adding some more presets to the equalizer
may be nice. Most come with a slew . (nit picking)

3\. Playlist/History/Preferences areas should be the full width like the
library window is. Those 3 areas feel out of place in consideration with the
rest of the app.

4\. Nice work, you just found a new user! Let me know you would like a guinea
pig. Happy to help if I can! (Development or feedback.)

------
trhaynes
1\. Love the icon.

2\. Will "import" copy all my music into a new directory? That should be
explicitly mentioned (whether it does or not).

3\. Love the fade in and fade out on pause. Is that time configurable? Also, a
feature I've wanted forever is the ability to crossfade into a new song.
Abrupt stops and starts are so bad at parties, etc.

4\. Need tooltips on the "×" and gear icons in the bottom left. Also I wasn't
expecting for the "×" to remove things from my playlist. And those need to
look more like buttons.

5\. The play/pause/next/prev buttons need work.

6\. "Add to playlist" should have a "New..." option in it.

7\. Love the concept of "History." Lots of cool directions to go here.

8\. The info pane is cool but what's with the striped background?

9\. I tried to drag songs from the Queue to a playlist. Gone, oops! And
there's no undo!

10\. How do I play a playlist? Double clicking doesn't seem to work.

11\. "1 songs" in this playlist?

Overall, this is great. Keep making improvements!

------
tommyd
Really like the simplicity of the app. I look forward to seeing how it copes
with my massive external library which caused iTunes to choke (>1 minute to
add a song to the library after a certain point).

Smart playlists are a must have feature, so glad to hear they are coming.

One thing that would be nice is if when you dragged a song from the library
out of the window, the dragged items became references to the files (in the
same way dragging an item out of Finder does). This would allow you to select
a playlist, drag all the files out of it and drop them onto your iPod's
library in the source list on iTunes, uploading those songs straight to it
without having to worry about integrating that functionality into Enqueue
itself. I'm not sure if it's possible to do so in Mac OS as iTunes itself
doesn't do that, but I've definitely seen it done in Windows and it's
extremely useful (e.g. finding a song in iTunes, dragging it out and dropping
it on to an audio editor to open it).

------
vilya
Good work, like it a lot! I've really missed having an easy-to-use queue in
iTunes, it's great to see it put front and center.

A bit of (hopefully) constructive criticism:

I don't think you should add a whole album to the queue when I double-click on
a single song; I expect just that song to go in the queue. I like that double-
clicking an album cover adds the whole album to the queue though.

Support for podcasts is really important! I guess this is something you just
haven't got to yet?

The things that would be a barrier to me leaving iTunes for this are podcasts,
AirPlay & the iTunes store. If you had support for the first two and a bi-
directional sync with the iTunes library, that'd be enough to convert me
because I really like the experience of using this program & I think you've
got a lot of things very right.

------
ek
I really like this. As a primary user of Linux, however, mpd has been my
default audio player of choice for some time now. Ario has been my client, and
could stand to be improved. Any chance you might open-source this in the
future so that the GUI might be shanghaied into an mpd client?

------
jongraehl
Nice. I was using VLC because there's no decent free player (until now) with
FLAC etc. support. Global hotkeys worked after I set them in preferences (very
nice, since I don't know how to set app hotkeys that work globally using
Services keyboard shortcuts).

It seems quite usable as-is.

Request: use replaygain metadata (also, less important, create it)

Request: detect duplicate files (ideally, by actual audio stream, or file
content exclusive of metadata, but with file content duplicates is fine too).

Request: sync ratings/playlists (handling different
directory/filenames/metadata by hash of content?)

(less important): play order: random-avoid-repeating-last-N (not pure
shuffle), repeat-one

------
zzygan
Its very nifty. Much appreciate someone taking on the behemoth that is iTunes.

I cant help but think of Audion when I see a paid music player on OSX.
<http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/>

------
lukeholder
DANG, I just been looking for a lean music player (non-itunes) for ages.
release date goal?

~~~
overcyn
January

~~~
lukeholder
awesome. looking for a foobar2000 equiv for mac, but cannot find one. looking
to opesource it? would love to help.

~~~
overcyn
no, not looking to

~~~
phren0logy
Thanks very much for sharing the compiled version. That's too bad that you are
not interested in open sourcing it, but of course it's your software and your
decision. Keep up the great work, I'm excited so see how it turns out.

------
rgbrgb
Nice. I think you should be VERY up front about why this beats iTunes though
as this is essentially supposed to be a replacement for a 1st party app that
literally everyone uses. Can I sync my iPhone? I REALLY like that there's FLAC
support.

~~~
anon1385
iPhone sync is always going to be difficult: you are forever chasing a moving
target, although the libimobiledevice and libgpod guys have done a great job.
The encryption used to sign the music database on devices released after
iOS4(+original iPad) hasn't been cracked yet (they changed it from the
previous versions), although you can edit a file to tell the device to use the
old db encryption if you have jailbroken your phone (I've not tested this with
iPhone4S; things may have changed again). Building a product around the
feature is probably unwise — Apple is a capricious master.

(Disclaimer: I develop a competing os x music player which can add music to
(some) iOS devices)

------
tedmiston
Looks very cool. I can't wait to try it out. My biggest gripe against iTunes
has always been speed.

Small tidbit of advice: Developer Terin Stock seems to have overcome the media
key dilemma with his GSDesktopHelper app which allows Grooveshark to hijack
the media keys when it is running (If it is not running, the add-on does
nothing).

You may find something useful with it. Code:
<https://github.com/grooveshark/GSDesktopHelperMac> More info:
<http://threestrangedays.net/gsdesktophelper/>

------
phil
This is very good work.

I've been doing some iOS music work lately and have a pretty good idea of some
of the complexity you've dealt with to get to this stage.

Drop me a line if you're interested in chatting (email is in my profile).

------
artursapek
A lot of my covers don't show up. I think it's the ones I downloaded through
iTunes automatically.

You could consider adding a feature I think iTunes has been missing for years,
a "cue up" button that will set a song to play after the current one is over.

When there's nothing playing, I feel like the blank album cover is pointless.

EDIT*

When the albums for an artist show up in the sidebar, clicking on once should
expand it, not just highlight it. I'd rather not click on the arrow if it's
already taking up all that screen space, because highlighting it doesn't
really do anything.

~~~
overcyn
Right click a song (or selection of songs) in the sidebar. Click 'Add to
queue'

edit: I couldn't find a way to import the album covers downloaded through
iTunes.

~~~
artursapek
Oh my god, that's exactly what I meant. Thanks.

------
pluies
The app is very nice looking, and already packs quite a good amount of
features. Special mention to the import from iTunes (although not playlists?),
global hotkeys, visualisation of most played stuff, Growl integration... The
monitored folders look really cool too.

That said, iTunes+GimmeSomeTune already gives me those features and a killer
one: iPod sync. In my case, Enqueue doesn't have quite different features
enough to make me switch completely from iTunes (yet?).

It's already very good work though, and the development seems to be going
strong. Keep up the good work!

------
droithomme
This is a good program. I'm glad to see the return of the genre->artist->album
browser that was trashed from iTunes some years ago. For several years now I
have not been using iTunes as I find it too frustrating to find my music. I
now realize that a big part of that was the loss of the 3 column search.
Looking at a dozen out of a thousand 512x512 icons most of which are empty at
a time to try to find things and hovering above them and jiggling the mouse to
see secret sub views a la iMovie 6 just never did it for me. (Current iTunes
is horrible UX IMO.)

~~~
vilya
> I'm glad to see the return of the genre->artist->album browser that was
> trashed from iTunes some years ago.

Huh? It never went away. Cmd+B brings it up, or go to View -> Column Browser
-> Show Column Browser in the menu.

~~~
droithomme
Oh wow. Thanks.

------
andre3k1
You should get in contact with the Spotify guys. Seriously.

I am more than impressed by this UI. It reminds me of Rdio's UI, which I find
to be better than iTunes. Spotify needs a good designer like you.

------
slig
Loving it so far! I'm sold.

Please also consider adding Internet Radio.

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piranha
There is a problem with sorting - iTunes has option to mark an album as
'compilation', so that it'll combine it anyway even if it has a lot of
artists. Can't find anything like this in Enqueue.

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chetan51
Wow, excellent experience importing my library from iTunes. One click and 30
seconds, and it was done. Loved it.

Has all the features that I need, without the extra bloat of iTunes. Perfect.

All it needs is a more beautiful, polished UI. Currently even iTunes looks
better, but if you improve the aesthetics, you've beaten iTunes in every way.
(Hint: Maybe take a leaf from the book of Sparrow, the Mac Gmail client.)
Also, a mini-mode that simply shows the Now Playing list with a search bar to
add new tracks.

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adrinavarro
Just a question: how can I switch to a side panel, like the first screenshot
on the site? I find it mildy annoying having the screen split in two.

Other than that, I love this app. I'm using it to (re)build my music library,
something I had pending to do for a long time. Hope you keep working on it,
there still a lot to do (dupes, auto-tagging using external databases, syncing
back with iTunes, cover download, folder managing…) but I love it and will use
it daily. Thanks a lot for your work!

~~~
adrinavarro
Oh I just found it. Right click on the top header bar of the three columns,
'on left'. Nice. :D

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jerrell
I was immediately won over by "FLAC", "Scrobbling" and "Speedy"! I've been
struggling with iTunes and Songbird for a while now on OS X, and a replacement
would be very welcome.

I've been enjoying using Enqueue for a day or so now. My only gripe so far is
that I expected to see Play/Pause controls in the option-click/right-click
menu of the dock icon. My keyboard's media keys just launch iTunes and I'd
like an easy way to pause the music when on a different desktop to the Enqueue
UI.

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crag
The browser is restricted to 3 panels?

And I agree [with the other comments] about the words (menu items along the
top), use icons or use the os menu bar.

Preferences should only be where Preferences is in every other mac app. It's
the first place I'd look to change the preferences. Why even take the space
atop the app?

No font sizes? And resizing the browser panels?

Importing a large library is a problem. Took me a few tries.

Overall I like it, though.

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mikemoka
He managed to do what apps like Songbird haven't been able to accomplish in
years, finally I see a quick non bloated but feature rich music player on OSX.

The only missing thing if you ask, a quick way to set the song I am currently
listening on auto-repeat, usually you just click the repeat button once more
and it shows a "1" on it, it's better to avoid to have the user create a one
song playlist for that.

Great work,

Mike

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sidwyn
I like this. It's very fast.

One suggestion, when I hit enter when I select a song, I expect the song to
start playing, instead of renaming the track number.

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jokull
Do you have a business model? There might be a serious market for this. Maybe
keep the app free, even open source, and charge for an iOS Remote style app?

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switz
FLAC support is #1! Been looking for a great iTunes clone that supports FLACs.
Hopefully this will be it! I'll report back with my impressions.

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theplatypus
I have 10.5 on this machine so I haven't been able to give this a try. Does
the app import your date added to iTunes information? For me this is a crucial
feature, because I like to listen to my music by date added, and I don't want
to lose this information. One feature I really, really want is the ability to
sort by album date added. iTunes imports tracks in a weird order.

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thepumpkin1979
Hey @overcyn this is pretty cool, seems like you are the new Justin Frankel
for MacOSX and Enqueue is the Winamp-Pre-AOL :)

I would suggest you these: 1\. Equalizer (16 bands min would be awesome). 2\.
Make it hackable as soon as possible, Audio Plugins is a good start. (please
not ruby, Objective-C is fine).

Nice work!

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kittxkat
LOVE the interface! Simple library overview with a drag-and-drop playlist on
the left side. Man, in times like this I wish I had a Mac!

Are there similar apps for Windows? Apart from foobar2k, which I kinda like
but only use for simple playback (eg. search for specific album, then play it)
than managing my library.

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BigCanOfTuna
The most important feature (for me) that any music library is missing is
podcast support. Just a thought.

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Cyph0n
Excellent music player. I noticed one little bug: during import of library
from iTunes, the percentage on the top-right is incorrect. For me, it set it
at 209%.

Otherwise, the app is fairly solid. The design could use a bit of tweaking,
but that's pretty much it.

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jasongullickson
Nice, now that you don't really need iTunes to sync iOS devices I've been
shopping for an alternative player. My only request would be a "fob" mode that
minimizes the player to a small controller view.

Good work, looking forward to the official release!

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eekfuh
I think your "extensive file support" + the nice UI is going to be the winning
combo.

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spun
Typo: "A music player should fast and lightweight."

I think you're missing a "be" there, on the
<http://www.enqueueapp.com/features.html> page

------
gricha2380
I love the clean, simple interface and the small memory footprint. I suspect
there is large enough number of tech savvy users unsatisfied with iTunes to
create a really nice market for this.

------
asmosoinio
Is there a way to stop the screen shots from changing on the website? I found
that annoying as I was studying some details listed by ComputerGuru, and the
image changed to another one.

------
JulianMiller520
I'm really enjoying the simple and clean interface! A GREAT start.

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jmoses
I use this app everyday. It's not perfect, and I still use iTunes when I _add_
new music, but other than that, iTunes is dead to me.

I love it, and it's improving regularly.

------
martingordon
I probably won't use this to replace iTunes, but I will probably switch to it
from Cog as my FLAC player. I know SHN is no longer developed, but does
Enqueue support it?

------
smcdow
I'd love to get rid of iTunes, but AirPlay is a complete necessity for me.

iTunes + AirPortExpress == poor-man's-sonos.

Also, podcasts would be good.

~~~
vdm
\+ Airfoil. e.g. play Internet Radio (radioparadise.com) on your Mac to
Airfoil on your iPod Touch in a speaker dock. Very nice when you're decorating
a room at the weekend. But iOS should include an Airplay server.

------
ins0mniac
Looks like I can finally move out from clementine. Can you please add a
"dynamic playlist" like clementine ? This would really make it worth the
switch.

~~~
overcyn
I've been working on it. Smart playlist will probably be the next big feature
that comes out.

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ajack
You have no idea how long I've been waiting for something like this to come
along! Really great feature set and looks great, you've done a terrific job.

------
kcbanner
Finally something that resembles foobar2000! Awesome.

------
otisfunkmeyer
this is so awesome! my god i've wanted this for so long.

i just want to make sure you know that you at least have SOME users (me) who
really LIKE how you have handled preferences. I much prefer your
implementation to other OS X apps.

If you can improve on a formula, no need to stick with that formula. It's a
philosophy that worked for Steve Jobs...

Good f'ing work man!

~~~
overcyn
> SOME users (me) who really LIKE how you have handled preferences.

me too, me too. it just makes sense that way.

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scotth
Love it. I'm going to give a go for a week and see if it fits.

The playlist bar is its killer feature -- iTunes DJ is crap in comparison.

------
iusable
Love this! Need iTunes sync back & AirPlay to become permanently fixed on my
dock. But using it now anyway, great work!

------
airlocksoftware
This is very impressive. I really like the app icon. But it's refusing to
import my iTunes library (10.6.8).

------
jmah
Looks very slick. Please move "Cached Album Art" to Library/Caches though, for
better backup behavior.

~~~
overcyn
woah, never knew about that folder.

------
mmgg
Any plans for native Airplay support?

------
tyrewebdesign
I love and would use it all the time...except it crashes when I try and import
my itunes library :(

------
kuviaq
Most of my album art is not displaying. Any info I can send you to help debug?

------
twodayslate
It looks great but a question: Why should I use this over iTunes?

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noilly
Thanks for the FLAC support, with 24/192 and 24/96 working!

------
lowglow
Can it delete my dupes? That's a huge feature for me.

------
evanlong
Good stuff.

iTunes: Now with 100% less beachball.

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davidmathers
I'd buy this if I could use it as an MPD client.

~~~
danbee
There's always Theremin (<http://theremin.sigterm.eu/>) although it hasn't
been updated in a few years.

~~~
davidmathers
Yeah, that's what I'm using now.

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billpatrianakos
This looks so promising! Kudos to you for working on it for a year and
following through! Ill try it and if it really is speedier than iTunes it
looks like a good candidate to be my default player. iTunes, I love but it can
use a speed boost. Thanks man.

