If you own a Mac or an iOS device, then iTunes is typically your go-to music player. There is nothing wrong with that in most cases: iTunes is a comprehensive media manager and iOS device manager. However, many would rather opt for a music player that requires a little less RAM and looks a little more minimal. Coppertino Inc has come up with a solution for people like that. The app is called VOX and it’s available right now for Mac. Let’s take a closer look at it!
VOX Functionality
The app is very easy to figure out and work. This is especially true if you’re migrating from iTunes. The first thing you’ll be able to do when you download VOX is migrate your iTunes library into VOX and play it. For those who may be wondering, that does include playlists. Unfortunately, VOX is a little overzealous when it comes to importing your music because it will also import songs from your iCloud. This wouldn’t be so bad, except it can’t actually play those files. It can be a little annoying, but most don’t think it’s too big of a deal.
Not only does it add music from your iTunes library, but also from pretty much everything else. This includes, but is not limited to, external hard drives, network drives, and VPN-connected storage. So wherever your music is, you can make VOX work with it. If it’s missing some album artwork, it’ll download it automatically from MusicBrainz or Last.fm. There is even a radio add-on that costs $4.99 that will allow you to listen to 3,000 radio stations.
The last bit we’ll talk about for functionality are the controls. There are a lot of ways to control VOX. It can be used with the hardware buttons on your Mac, headphone controls, the Dock context menu, the main menu, the Apple Remote, or the main interface itself. This means you can access those vital play, pause, and skip buttons from virtually anywhere. This is an amazing variety of options to help you enjoy your music however you want.
Design
VOX has a very simple and minimal design. As you can see from the screen shots, VOX lives in a window that is much smaller than iTunes, so desktop-savvy people will enjoy all that extra space. Even with such a small interface, there are a startling number of things you can do. The drag and drop functionality allows you to create playlists on the fly. You can view multiple playlists along with your entire media library. As you have probably assumed, you can also control add-ons, like the radio feature.
There isn’t much else to say about the design. It’s simple, elegant, and minimal, without compromising functionality.
The Good and the Bad
Let’s break down the good and bad things about VOX. Here are the good:
- The wonderful design is a pleasant reprieve from iTunes.
- It will import music from practically anywhere.
- It will turn any stereo audio into 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound.
- There are a lot of ways to control VOX to fit your style.
- It takes up less space than iTunes and is far less cluttered.
- Radio and its 3,000 stations are more than worth the one-time payment of $4.99.
- It’s free.
Here are the bad things about VOX that we could find:
- It will import media from everywhere and that includes iCloud. Music from there cannot be played on VOX so you’ll have tracks you can’t listen to.
Wrap-up
Generally, I would try to add more critiquing. For VOX, adding critiques was very hard to do. It’s such a wildly different experience from iTunes in so many ways that even potential flaws come off as fresh ideas. If you’re a little tired of iTunes or just want something a little less cluttered, then it’s well worth giving VOX a shot.
