It's best to try and compare, the major players give you that opportunity. Also, of course, there are personal preferences. Important thing to consider is that different players can give completely different results in terms of sound in different hardware sets. Lately I've gone back to Amarra, after years of using HQP as a main player. HQP is a great piece of software, but it's designed for those who choose to fiddle around with settings options. I believe I've tried and used just about every possible Mac OS player over the years. You can try HQP OS out for free and you don't have to change anything about your computer.

It has to be rebooted every 30 minutes if you don't buy a license. There's a free trial that doesn't expire. It's Linux based and already optimized, but I don't have to deal with Linux or any OS commands at all. You configure HQP with any web browser and I send music to it using Roon. Then HQP OS is available on your network.

All you have to do is write a file to a USB stick and boot from it. That's the version that I use and the version I would recommend for both sound quality and ease of use. So you are saying HQP also provides a dedicated operating system on a computer bypassing all other OS's such as Apple, Windows, and Linux? If so wasn't aware of this. I would have thought this would prevent the issues you describe above. With A 3.5 one does have the option to shut just about everything down within the computer while running the player via their System Optimizer. Its not likely I would ever adopt a Linux system, just way more computing than I want to get into but interesting comment still.

Good mini music player osx