Im Not Impressed
Ive tried multiple alternative music players for iOS and OS X/macOS. Vox is nothing special from my perspective. Its not a horrible app, but it is lacking in areas. Theres only so much that software can do with audio on iOS, and sometimes you get lucky (more often with audio creation apps and the like), and sometime you dont. I feel that Coppertino could have done more for audio playback on iOS than what they did with Vox.
Pros: Nice UI (except for EQ) and the gestures for navigating through the app arent hard to figure out.
Cons:
1.) The custom EQ options are too limited and clumbsy. I tried this with both my Audeze EL-8 Titanium (Lighning + 24-bit DAC) headphones, and with my more portable Sennheiser Momentum headphones (using the analog to lightning dongle), and I would have appreciated more flexibility than what this app offers. Sometimes I need to shape the audio from certain sources, but I generally like playing my music using a "flat" or plain "off" setting, and even those did not sound too good with Vox. Using the standard Music app with EQ off or flat for 48k/24-bit ALAC sounds good enough with a great amount of detail when factoring in the hardware capabilities of iOS devices.
2.) Vox offers minimal integration with third-party music and cloud storage serices. Vox offering its Loop service might be nice if I wanted to pay as much to use it as I already do for my Dropbox and iCloud storage combined. Offering integration with Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and so on would be nice and is standard with many other apps that make use of accesing files from a cloud service. Additionally, I have a lot of purchased music as FLAC available via Bandcamp, and that would be a cool integration if they wanted to bring that to this app. I do not need to pay for yet another cloud storage option. And, I do not use Spotify and I do not stream from SoundCloud too often. I doubt I am alone with all of this, but I knew what I was getting into when I gave Vox a try on my iOS devices and Mac. I still consider its lack of useful cloud integration and streaming options a con as it appears Coppertino offers only what it can make money on - go capitalism.
3.) The time it takes for Vox to update its library of local files is inconsistent if not slow. If I put one or more multi-gigabyte FLACs and 48k/24-bit ALACs on my iPhone, and launch Vox, some may show right away, while others may take a decent amount of time to show up in Vox if not after quitting and launching Vox again. I was not necessarily prevented from playing the tracks on my device using Vox, but the Music app again did just fine when it came to the ALAC and I didnt have to wait before music playback began.
So, Vox is not a bad app, its just not as useful as I had hoped. I can convert FLAC to ALAC or just export to ALAC using any number of free tools and paid apps I work with for music editing and production, and the Music app does a good job playing back 48k/24-bit ALAC if you have the cans to handle it. If youre a diehard fan of FLAC that wants nothing more than a music app with a simple EQ wrapped up in a nice UI looking to pay a good amount of money for proprietary cloud storage, then Vox makes for a good choice. Otherwise, save your money.
jj.b.jj about VOX: Music Player for FLAC & MP3, YouTube,Streamer, v2.1.10
