What digital music formats will Songbird play?

So am I right that it won't play directly from a CD and won't play AIFF files. In other words, if I want to load my system with my CDs using Songbird then play them with it, it won't. I need to load them using something else to put them in another format then Songbird will find locate them and store pointers to them for reading only. Is that all this does or do I have it wrong.

what about monkey audio's .ape support ?

Great, I just uninstalled RealPlayer and cleaned out all my files so I could load my CD's into Songbird only to find out you cant do that yet! I'm sorry but the first thing in any Media Player should be the ability to load your actual media library'@%$%$#! No equalizer just yet is lame enough, but no way to load a CD into your NEW "MEDIA PLAYER" is a joke! It looks great and I have high hopes but what the @%$%@#!

@iggy
Our media player's first big feature is to play the web, CD support will be here for 1.0 version I hope !
Be sure to look at http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Roadmap for next features !!!

.shn, .ape, .mp2 support would be great. This looks like a promising media player, but not exactly ready for prime time. I'll definitely be tracking this project though. I'll use it once there is more support for other formats. I'm looking for a MediaMonkey alternative.

i would like some better linux support in the future, but, woudn't everyone!

Is it possible to download a book on tape?

Yes, Songbird does support most of the popular formats. But it DOESN'T support FLAC image + cue sheet playback, like Amarok and Foobar 2000. For live concert albums, mixes, much classical music and opera, true gapless playback is a MUST. The only reliable way to accomplish this is to rip (with a tool like Exact Audio Copy) to a CD image instead of to separate tracks. The image can be uncompressed - like a .wav file - or compressed, as in .flac. EAC generates an accompanying "cue sheet" (a text file with the extension .cue) which tells the compatible player where the track divisions are within the image file. Gapless playback is assured because there are no gaps; just playback of a single large file with directions from the cue sheet where the divisions are.

What's more, the image+cue sheet model is perfect for archiving CDs. An image, in conjunction with its accompanying cue sheet, can be used to re-create the original CD virtually byte for byte, complete with tracks.

Serious music lovers - regardless of their tastes - eventually become frustrated without this capability! I have been eagerly watching and waiting for Songbird to mature, but I will tell you right now; if the final release does not include cue sheet support, that will be a deal breaker for me!

Also, I strongly suggest including support for playback of Audible electronic book files! Adding Fairplay support is great, but without Audible book support, I will still not be able to get iTunes off my hard drive! Help me out here!

It says above that the program supports the protected itunes files, but I am having a difficult time getting them to play. Are there any other measures I need to take to allow my protected songs to play? Can you set it up for songs from multiple itunes accounts will play? I searched thoroughly and couldn't find a solution other than trying to remove the protection from the files.

hey there. does anyone know for sure about .wav support.

songbird won't play them for me but vlc will (of course)? (on win xp by the way)

will this be available when gstreamer is integrated etc?

So i have had something happen where the player will play a song once, and then it will refuse to play it later on. The file is in the same format and in the same place, but simply will not play. Does anyone know why this might be?

minikahuna, that sounds like a bug? maybe one of the employees can help you. what kind of file is it?

It's just an mp3 file

do you have any other music programs running? i'm no expert but i've had the experience of having had mp3's on my laptop for like a year, then suddenly itunes reads them as being "encoded," and nothing else will play them or burn them. luckily i had most of my music on cd's, but this drm weirdness is part of the reason i'm trying songbird now....

I have some .m4p files from the itunes store and songbird won't even import them...do I need to install anything else for them to work?

in the best response at the top of the page, it says to use the quicktime and windows media playback add ons, but when i look for them i am unable to find them? do they exist or am i just looking in the wrong place?

why doesnt songbird support ape yet?

/bump for .ape support. 75% of my music is in this format. Once it's supported, I'll be happy to switch to songbird! :-)

@ Daniel
I'm on Windows Vista 64.

np. well im on vista x64 too, but ape isnt played on songbird while im on linux either

Got it, but if I get it right, it still doesn't play WAV, AIFF, or straight from a CD. In other words, and I don't mean this in a nasty way, it is not meant for quality playback, just compressed junk.

@ jsonny
yeah man
honestly
ape?
thats like an obvious support feature

XP User
Songbird looks as though it will be good one day. All my files are .wav and i want to keep them that way til compression improves. Songbird can't see them. Tragedy. I've just had a terrible time with I-tunes - I have a 500 gig usb drive which I store my music on together with photos and a backup file. My backup program found the I-tunes Init data file corrupted and turned itself off. I thought I'd delete the backup file and start again but no I wasn't allowed to delete it because I wasn't allowed access to the corrupt file. So there was a 46gig backup file sitting on my hard drive of no use to anyone. Taking the warning I moved my photos, videos to the c: drive and attempted to move my music. I found I was only allowed to move 1 album before I would get a message which would tell me 1 - the files were corrupted, or 2 - the files could not be found, or 3 most worryingly - the device could not be found. If I safely disconnected the USB drive and reconnected it the device could be found, the files could be found and what's more I could copy another album. I uninstalled I-tunes (the latest version by the way). When I rebooted there was a warning from Nero saying my cd drivers were incorrect and Nero had replaced them but I should reboot again. I did so and had no problem copying my entire music library from my USB drive to drive C: in one hit. I-tunes has gone security mad - anyone who can offer a decent music management program which covers all the formats, and there are still a lot of minidisc users out there, could make it the industry standard.

What about mp3 PRO as offered by Live365 radio stations?
Their player for Mac is very old and unstable (on my Mac).
Would be fine to have an alternative.

It is very badly that the Songbird does not play APE format!!!
It is very important for classical music!!!

I just tried to bring some flac files recorded in 24/96 into Songbird, but they were dimmed out in the import dialog box. I tried changing the file extension from .flac to .fla, but that did not work. Are 24/96 FLAC files supported? I am running Mac OS X 10.5.4.

Is it me, or is there just no option to play apple lossless formats? I want to migrate from iTunes to Songbirg since I love the features and im using mozialla products all the way and never have been disappointed. Couldnt get songbirg to play my audio tho. Apple lossless and .aiff support would be much appreciated and would make it easier for ppl to switch from itunes to songbird.

Another one surprised and saddened that I can't play a CD with Songbird. Yes, lots of players will but we are trying to find one big happy player so this is a big too bad!

I want a complete format list to be on the site somewhere, updated as the application evolves. It seems ridiculous to me to have a media player application and not specifically list which formats the player can use. I assume that .MP3, .OGG, and .MP4 work, but what about more obscure formats like FLAC, Monkey'sAudio, or MusePack?

So... if I download Songbird, would I be able to put songs on my 3rd Generation iPod Nano?

ud think that if enough people complained and some time passed by thered be ape support by now

Adding .ape would be very nice yes... Just wanted to play some .ape of Frederic Chopin but wasn't able to play it with Songbird.
Even looked for a add-on but without results.
Kinda strange that Songbird haven't included .ape support yet.
Keep up the good work for the rest ;)

The install button for the WMA addon is grayed out and will not let me install it. Anybody know why?