Fidelia App Reviews

Won’t install at all.

Update makes the app useable again which is nice. Only took about 6 months or so. Still wouldn’t be my first choice for an audio player on my computer. Those upgrades need to be better explained. Why pay more money for something you already should be getting? Audirvanna does everything this app does and a lot more for less than the full upgrade cost. Best thing about it is that it will convert files.

I have tried several audio players and I think this is the best one overall. The gap/truncated beginning of tracks seems to have been fixed. The sound is really nice: smooth, natural and clear. Wanted to like Audirvana because the interface is much better (uses iTunes) but the sound is weird (honk? something too much around 500hz in both my systems) in the midbass/lower midrange and I can’t equalize it out. So, Fidelia it is.

It’s less buggy than Amarra — and sounds great — but I’ve experienced issues with it deleting some of my songs. They start out playable but then randomly go grey and I have to reload them into the player, which is annoying. The rest is good, works well and sounds great — keep improving the app please.

My initial reaction to Fidelia was negative. But after listening to the same song in iTunes and then immediately in Fidelia I became a believer. The sound is quite a bit richer, IMO. One star off for priciness. I would buy both the Advanced version and FHX, but I don’t know how I can justify $100 for the two. :-(

After reading all the reviews the majority led me to make the purchase, many here said it sounded good and I was prepared to enjoy it, but soon after installing it and making my first critical listen I was extremely disappointed with the results. Fidelia sounded like how it looks (Like an old radio) literally!. Fidelia made my all my music collection sound veiled, there was also a screeching noise at times during playback that scared the heck out of me when I was doing my first critical listen. A reviewer here mentioned of unrecognized album and artist which I experienced myself after making audio convertions. I have not experienced any crashing like others during my short test of this new player but I assume I might have had I gone longer. I have had Amarra, Bitperfect and now Fidelia disappointment me and will now stick to what I think the best sounding player is and that’s VOX. Update: For some reason I felt Fidelia had something more to offer than my first initial listen, A month or two later I went back to Fidelia thinking I must have missed something and that I really did not understood how to work the player, so I redownloaded the app and thought to myself let me figure this thing out again and see what I’m missing, after a while of messing around I by accident opened up the preset window where I could make adjustments to the high, mid and low frequencies, went back to preferences and made adjustments there too, and to my very surprise I found that Fidelia actually sounds extremely good! I said before that VOX sound awesome but I was dead wrong!!! Fidelia sounds miles better and I’m definitely making this my player from now on!!!

Lately, I’ve been reading and learning about High Resolution Audio. I don’t know what took me so long to get into high res music, Fidelia is not only beautiful, but its very versatile for FLAC files. I didn’t know that it was possible to buy the Master files in 24/96 resolution, combined with a nice DAC and you’ve got a nice setup to enjoy music as it was originally intented, in its full audioable glory. 24/96

I often like to analyze commercial mastering and mixes, and didn’t want to deal with Audacity (stabilty issues, etc) even though it was free. Fidelia allows me to load various Audio Unit plug-ins for different purposes, which is just what I needed! And no offense to Apple, but sometimes it’s just easier to not use iTunes, mainly because I have 10000 files or more...

I maintain two music libraries. One iTunes library for iOS devices (AAC files). One home music library for home audio system (FLAC files). Both are on home server. Fidelia recognizes both libraries. However it can only sort iTunes library, but not non-iTunes FLAC library on server. This completely defeats its usefulness managing library. UPDATE: uninstalling and reinstalling Fidelia solved the problem. Updated to 5 stars.

This is not a long review. I have tried several different iTunes alternatives. Unless I’m missing something, Fidelia— while a great player, no question— doesn’t let you edit tags. I selected an album’s worth of songs, for example, and wanted to change the album title. No luck. I should be able to select the tracks, select “Get Info” or something similar, but I can’t. Enqueue is great, rivals Fidelia as a player, and it lets you edit tags very easily. If Fidelia would allow tag-editing, it would rise to the top of my list. Again, I could be missing something, but if so, the feature must be hidden pretty well.

Don’t waste your money if basic playlist management is important to you. And I‘m talking simply about a way to reorder your library playlists in the left column. Not possible to alphabetize or to just shift the location of one or more playlists. New playlists are just tacked onto the bottom of the list and there they stay. Want to move that playlist to the top? Want to move it to where it makes sense? Forget about it. Omission of this rudimentary and basic function demonstrates gross incompetence and renders the program useless to me, despite the superior sound.

The other reviews have accurately described this product. I wanted a player for a library of FLAC music on an external hard drive, which cannot be played or managed by iTunes. As an audio player Fidelia is first rate, and the company’s dedication to the audio experience is apparent. This is not a fly-by-night company or product. As such, you need to clearly understand the product before you pay money and give it a 1-star review—there are a number of features of free products that are missing here. An incomplete list of missing features includes integration with the F7/F8/F9 keyboard shortcuts, smart playlists, metadata editing, displaying release date/year, and playback of protected files. The latter is not important (I still use iTunes) but inclusion of the other features would surely earn this product more 5 star reviews (and fewer 1 or 2 star reviews). If you just want to play FLAC files, go download VLC for free; you can decide decide later whether the (limited) library management and superior audio capabilities of Fidelia are worth the cost.

Bought this app as a less bloated, yet better player than iTunes which it is. Really can’t get all of my music from iTunes to show up in Fidelia and tech support is a every fourth day reply to basic questions (actually entertaining) to make it seem like they are trying to resolve your issue. Great player, a bit tough to manage, a solid D- on tech support!

been using it since it came up in app store i needed a flac file player with iTunes intergration. soud quality top rate plays hi-res 196k waves nice..

Definite improvement! cleverly adopted reviews! I also own the CanOpener for iOS, so adding up in the preference is connecting the missing link to an almost perfect app. Thank you very much team Fidelia. A great purchase….. I definietly will highly recommend to all music lovers.

In a word - junk. Get Auridvana - this software is nothing but problem after problem after bug after bug.

I don’t know what the other reviewer finds ‘junky.’ I find Fidelia easy to use, with better ergonomics than Vox, and better behavior, too. The app he or she mentions is not available here on the App Store. The inarticulate ‘recommendation didn’t inspire me to go looking for an app of unknown origin. It *sounds* far better than ITunes or Vox - the improvement was startling, especially with orchestral and close-mic’d acoustic music. There may be some fragility to it. I’ve had to re-install it once after it warned me it had been damaged. But if it’s fragile, it’s also well designed to be user-friendly and not leave me flapping in the storm about what’s wrong with the music playback.

I have audio engine a5+ speakers with the d1 dac. This app has the best quality sound than all other ones I’ve tried. There are a lot of things wrong with this application, though. 1) I cannot seem to get stable playback from mp3 files. I’m not sure if it’s variable bitrate or just mp3 overall, but *every* mp3 song skips at least once during play. FLAC doesn’t seem to be an issue. 2) The library window isn’t intuitive and somewhat clunky. The entire thing is on pause while importing a large library. Had to wait eons before being able to play a single song. Removing a song is also clunky. Ever hear of context menus? Once you select a song to delete from the edit menu, it says this action cannot be undone. I was initially afraid it was going to delete my file off the disk! I’ve opened up a support request (which I don’t even know if it got to them because I received no confirmation) about the mp3 issue. At th end of the day, the sound quality is worth the minor annoyances mentioned in this review, but not everyone is like me. :)

The player sounds great, especially compared to iTunes but is very basic in functionality. Its missing a bunch of features essentially making it a bit of a chore to use. Its suitable if you are the type to make curated playlists and just let it run, but those who demand a little more functionality should look elsewhere. Think of it as a physical player on a shelf, only basic controls are available. Its also ridiculous the remote app costs $10 itself. I havent been able to control it with any other app yet. Detailed review follows: Although the sound is a huge improvement, I’ve still had clipping issues. Usability is the main crux here. Its a sign the product is poorly executed/thought out when you start noticing features you’ve always taken for granted before. No right click in the playlist/library, or anywhere for that matter. No context menus anywhere, no ability to edit tags or go to artist/album/genre. The library window essentially just show the songs available. “Open in Finder” is the only option available when a song is selected in the library. When shuffling, the playlist itself shuffles rather than the play order. That would be ok if "Go to the current song" was an option. Although you can make a playlist from selection there’s not a “Play Next" or “Add to Queue” option. When it shuffles to a song you like, theres no ability to go to artist or album. Instead you have to unshuffle, sort by artist, and scroll to the artist to find the little “Now Playing” icon next to the song. There is no filetype sort either. In general, the library has been the most frustrating part of the app. There has been instances where songs are greyed out without any explanation why. Other times it hangs indefinitely when importing large folders and even outright refuses to add certain files. The issue seems resolved now though Im not sure exactly why as it hasnt updated. I suspect that files need to be added into Fidelias Library first before being able to insert specific songs into other playlists. Always on top is also not a feature. It wouldn’t be a major issue if universal commands worked or if the Mac hotkeys didn’t lose focus after time. The player itself should also respond to two finger gestures but it only works on the volume knob. The ability to scan with two-finger drag would be nice too or a skip fwd/rev feature. Overall, its a very mediocre app that needs much more refinement. Theres a closely priced which Ive read favorable reviews about or a free one in the fruit family which you should at least try first. Kudos to the developers though, its a nice looking and great sounding app but they should be polishing the app more. Even the support forums are sparse. Update: Years later, still no updates. UI feels more frustating every day, inability to create playlists/add files, the list goes on. I’m reduced to playing my entire library on shuffle or just normally. There are no smart sort options, playback features, nothing. I regret paying money as it looks like there are free players out there that actually make enjoying my music enjoyable. Terrible app.

This app has only 2 positives, that is that playback of FLACs is crystal clear and you can apply a VST to playback, for instance Ozone 7 Dynamic EQ. That being said, everything else about this software is garbage. It crashes and glitches during playback. if you have a number of plugins on your PC like I do it may or may not start without an error message or any ability to filter out plugins. You cannot edit metadata at all. You can create a playlist, which adds songs to your “library”, but it is incapable of updating itself. You cannot delete a song from a playlist, nor the library, even if you rename it and it can no longer find the file. Support takes longer than a week to respond with no actual help. The UI is clunky at best. If you really want to separate windows for no reason, it would be nice if the player could be minimized compared to the waveform. For $29.99 I would expect a lot more out of this software. The cost is really ridiculous when you add $9.99 for the remote, and another $100 for advanced features.