Quetzal — High-End Music Player

Give Your Music Collection
the Player It Deserves.

A beautifully crafted music player for people who believe great music deserves great sound, thoughtful design, and complete control. Quetzal plays your own files exactly as they were recorded, straight to your DAC.

For macOS · iPad in development

Formats

Everything your library is likely to contain.

Native DSD

DSF & DFF

Native and over DoP. Not converted to PCM behind your back.

Free tier

MP3 · 48 kHz · 16-bit

That is the honest ceiling without Pro — which is exactly why the 14-day trial exists. You cannot judge this thing on MP3.

Platforms

Two platforms. Different specs, same principle.

We build for macOS, and soon for iPad. TThe specs genuinely differ, so we list them separately rather than pretending otherwise.

Available now

macOS

The full player. Exclusive device access, integer mode, DSD, and a signal path that shows you what is happening.

Requires

macOS 13+

Silicon

Apple & Intel

Up to

352.8 kHz / 32-bit

DSD

DSD64 via DoP

Exclusive access

Yes

In development

iPad

Built for the hardware it actually runs on, not a phone app stretched sideways. We will publish the real specs when we know they hold.

Requires

To be confirmed

Status

In development

Release

No date yet

Specs

Differ from macOS

Price

Not decided

Dark Light

How it works

Shown, not asserted.

Quetzal displays the codec, the rate the hardware is actually locked to, whether the device is held exclusively, and whether any gain is being applied while the music is playing.

Bit-perfect output

Samples reach the DAC unaltered. No resampling, no system mixer, no volume scaling unless you ask for it.

Locked to the file, not the guess

The hardware switches to each file’s own rate and confirms it before playback starts.

Exclusive device access

Quetzal takes the audio device for itself, so nothing else on the machine can mix into your music.

And it shows you

Every claim above is displayed in the signal path while it plays. When something breaks bit-perfect it says so instead of staying quiet.

Privacy

Your library never leaves your machine.

No account. No telemetry. No “anonymous usage data” that turns out not to be anonymous. Quetzal reads files on your computer, and that is where it ends.

What stays local

What we collect

Your email address — only if you type it into the newsletter box yourself. That is the complete list. Unsubscribe link in every email, and we will not use it to nag you.

One honest caveat. If you turn on artwork lookup, Quetzal asks MusicBrainz and Wikidata for artist images, which means a request leaves your machine carrying an artist name. It is off until you switch it on, and it never sends anything about you.

Free music & Hi-Fi Picks

We also point you at things worth hearing.

A player is only as good as what you put through it. So we keep two running collections, both free to browse, no account, no algorithm deciding what you are in the mood for.

Free music

Albums you can download and keep, legally and free or name-your-price direct from the artist. Tagged by genre and updated as we find things.

Hi-Fi Picks

Recordings that actually reward good equipment. Real records that happen to be engineered well enough to hear the difference.

Latest in free music

See all ›

Why we bother

Keep artists and
music collections alive.

Streaming pays fractions of a cent, and an album you love can vanish overnight when a licensing deal lapses. A file you own cannot be taken away from you, and buying it direct puts real money in the hands of whoever made it.

Quetzal is built for people who kept the files. We would like there to be more of those people and more artists still around to make the next one.

Buy direct where you can

Bandcamp, a label shop, a merch table at a gig. The artist keeps most of it, and you get a file that is yours.

Local scenes count

The bands playing forty minutes from your house need listeners more than the ones topping global charts. We feature them when we find them.

Collections outlive services

Every streaming service you have ever used will eventually shut down or lose the rights. Your folder of files will not.

How we work

A small independent studio. That is the whole org chart.

No investors to answer to, no growth targets, and no roadmap written by someone who does not listen to music. Quetzal gets better because people tell us what is wrong with it and we go and fix it.

Independent

We are funded by people buying the app. It means nobody can tell us to add an account system or start selling your listening habits.

We listen

Feature requests, bug reports and “this annoys me” notes all go to the same place, and we read every one. A surprising amount of the app exists because somebody asked.

Tell us something

We keep shipping

Fixes, refinements and the occasional new feature, written up as we go. If you want to know whether this thing is still being worked on, the honest answer is in the journal.

Read the journal

Pricing

One purchase. No subscription.

Free to use as a player. Pro unlocks the part that makes it a bit-perfect player. Bought once, and that is the end of the transaction.

Free

No track limit

always

Pro

One-time purchase

$19.90

macOS · Mac App Store

Give Your Music Collection the Player It Deserves.