HD Music 1.8.1 HD Music is a music player for DSD and hi-res audio. It plays DSF, DFF (including DST-compressed), SACD ISO images, Blu-ray audio, audio CDs and every common PCM format, and shows you exactly what reaches your DAC. It keeps a library of your music wherever it is (Mac, external drives, a NAS), and can tidy a whole collection into a new home. WHAT'S IN THIS FOLDER • HD Music.app: the app • Install HD Music.command: installs it (run this) • Read Me.txt: this file BEFORE YOU START • Any Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel) running macOS 14 or later. INSTALL 1. Double-click "Install HD Music.command". If macOS says it can't be opened ("Apple could not verify…"): click Done, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click "Open Anyway", then double-click the installer again. Or open Terminal, type bash followed by a space, drag "Install HD Music.command" into the Terminal window, and press Return. 2. The installer copies HD Music into Applications and opens it. Prefer to do it by hand? Drag HD Music into Applications and open it. The first time, macOS blocks it: go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click "Open Anyway". USING HD Music • Library: Albums, Artists, Songs and Genres at the top of the sidebar (⌘1 to ⌘4). Add the folders, drives or network shares that hold your music (File ▸ Add Music Folder…, or Settings ▸ Library). HD Music reads them once, then only what changes. Albums on a drive that's unplugged stay listed, greyed out, until you connect it again. "Connect to Server…" finds a NAS or another Mac on your network; macOS asks for the password and keeps it in your Keychain. • Radio (⌘5): thousands of stations on a world map. Click a place to hear what's on there, or search by name, country or genre. Star the ones you like. Radio plays through HD Music's own output, so your DAC, EQ and Signal Path all apply, and the song title shows when the station sends it. Stations come from the free Radio Browser directory. • Internet Archive (⌘6): search the Archive's free music, from the Live Music Archive's concerts to 78 rpm records and netlabels. Play any item straight away: it downloads as it plays, through your DAC, EQ and Signal Path. Star items as favourites; Recently Played keeps the rest. "Save to Library" keeps a tagged, lossless copy with its notes in Music ▸ HD Music Archive (or a folder you choose in Settings ▸ Library). If your connection is slow, Settings ▸ Library ▸ Internet Archive playback can play the Archive's smaller MP3s instead; Automatic picks whichever your downloads keep up with. • Remove from Library: right-click an album, artist, song or genre ▸ Remove from Library… It disappears from the library but its files stay exactly where they are. Settings ▸ Library ▸ Removed Items brings any of it back. • Clean Up (sidebar ▸ Tools): tidies folders where they are. Like Organize, it identifies albums (MusicBrainz) and you review them; then it fixes the tags, renames the files and sorts them into tidy folders inside the folder you chose, and removes folders left empty. Every change is recorded first, so "Undo Clean Up" puts everything back. You can also have it copy the cleaned-up music to a NAS or another drive afterwards. • Play Next and Add to Queue: right-click any album or song. The list button at the top right shows what's coming up. • Get Info (right-click ▸ Get Info…): edit the tags of one track or many at once, including the cover (drop an image on it). Changes are saved into the files themselves (MP3, FLAC, DSF, DFF, AIFF, WAV, M4A, WavPack, APE); only the tags change, never the audio. • Organize (sidebar ▸ Tools): tidies a whole collection into a new place, such as a NAS or a new drive, leaving the originals untouched. 1. Sources: the folders and drives your music is on now, and where it should go, and how files should be named. 2. Review: HD Music groups files into albums, fills gaps from file and folder names, and identifies albums on MusicBrainz (about two seconds an album; it carries on after a quit). Check the ones marked "Needs a look"; duplicates in lower quality are left out. 3. Copy: every file is copied, checked against its original, renamed, and given its fixed tags. Covers, booklets and rip logs come along, and a report lists everything. Your original files are never changed. • Mini Player (Window ▸ Mini Player, ⌥⌘M): a small window that stays on top. Controls in the menu bar: Window ▸ Controls in Menu Bar. • Playlists: drag music files or folders onto a playlist (left sidebar). + at the bottom of the sidebar makes a new playlist, or a folder playlist that follows a folder on your disk and updates by itself. Double-click a track to play it. Right-click for Play Next, Get Info, Show in Finder, Convert and Remove. CUE sheets split single-file albums into tracks. File ▸ Add Files… (⌘O) works too. • Discs: an audio CD in a USB drive appears under Discs with its track names and cover (looked up on MusicBrainz; you can turn that off in Settings ▸ General). SACD ISO images and Blu-ray folders or ISOs open like files. Copy-protected Blu-ray discs can't be played: HD Music never breaks copy protection. • Output: choose your DAC from the menu at the top right. Settings ▸ Output (⌘,) has the options for each device. DSD playback: DoP sends DSD to the DAC untouched; Convert to PCM is for speakers, headphones and AirPods. You can also set exclusive access, the sample rate, volume, and how 5.1/7.1 is played (stereo downmix, headphones binaural, or one channel per speaker). Exclusive access is off, so your Mac's own sound stays on the DAC. Turn it on to keep other apps' sound out; macOS then moves its own sound to another output while HD Music plays. • DSD and volume: DSD reaches the DAC untouched only while the Mac's volume for the DAC is at full. Turn it all the way up and use the DAC's own knob for pure DSD. If you turn the Mac's volume down, HD Music switches to a high-quality PCM conversion so the volume keys still work, and goes back to pure DSD at full volume. • Adding music: click Music Library at the top of the sidebar, then drop folders or music files on it (or on Albums, Artists, Songs or Genres), or use Add Folder… and Add Files…. Folders stay where they are and are watched for changes. Loose files are copied into your Music folder, in "HD Music". • Check your DAC: Settings ▸ Output ▸ "Check This DAC…" plays a quiet tone at every sample rate, then a DSD tone over DoP at each DSD rate and asks what you heard. HD Music then knows exactly what your DAC takes. Turn the volume down first. • Speakers: Settings ▸ Output has a test tone for each speaker. For a 5.1/7.1 receiver you can also choose which output each speaker is on. • Signal Path (sidebar ▸ Tools, or ⌥⌘1): shows every step from the file to your DAC and tells you whether it's Bit-perfect, DSD untouched (DoP), or Converted, and why. With a level meter and spectrum. • EQ & DSP (⌥⌘3): a parametric EQ with presets (import AutoEQ files for your headphones), loudness levelling (ReplayGain), headphone crossfeed, balance. Turn it off for bit-perfect playback. To level files that have no ReplayGain tags, use a playlist's ⋯ menu ▸ Measure Loudness. • Converter (⌥⌘2): DSD to FLAC, ALAC or WAV; SACD ISO or DST to plain DSF; PCM to another rate or format. Drop files on it, or right-click tracks ▸ Convert. CD tracks are read twice and compared, and a "Rip log.txt" says whether every track verified. • Watchdog: if another app changes your DAC's sample rate while you listen, HD Music tells you and puts it back. • Keys: Space plays and pauses, ⌘← and ⌘→ skip, ⌥⌘← and ⌥⌘→ jump 10 seconds. Media keys and Now Playing work too. • Online: HD Music goes online only to look up audio CDs, to identify albums and fetch covers in Organize (MusicBrainz and the Cover Art Archive), for Radio (the Radio Browser directory and the stations themselves), and for the Internet Archive section (archive.org). The first time you connect to a server, macOS asks whether HD Music may look for devices on your local network. GOOD TO KNOW • For a Sony PHA-3 or another USB DAC: set DSD playback to DoP. DSD64 and DSD128 then reach the DAC untouched. Higher rates are converted to the best PCM rate the DAC takes. • Dolby Atmos and DTS:X play their full lossless 7.1 bed. Rendering the height objects needs Dolby's and DTS's own software, which isn't available to open-source players. • To update: unzip a newer copy and run its installer. It replaces the old one and keeps your settings and playlists. • To uninstall: quit HD Music and drag it from Applications to the Trash. Your playlists and library catalogue are in ~/Library/Application Support/HD Music. • HD Music is free and open source (MIT). It includes FFmpeg, libbluray and dsd-nexus under the LGPL; their licences and source are inside the app (Contents/Resources/Licenses). It is an open-source alternative to Sony's Hi-Res Audio Player and is not affiliated with Sony. It isn't from the App Store and isn't notarized by Apple, which is why macOS asks you to confirm it the first time.