Press kit
Quetzal Player
Everything a writer needs in one place: the assets, the facts, the language we use, and an explicit list of the things Quetzal cannot do, so nothing gets reported that we would then have to correct.
Assets
Logo and screenshots
Free to use in coverage of Quetzal. Click any image for the full-size file. Please do not recolour or stretch the logo.
Need something specific — the app icon at a particular size, a shot of a feature not pictured here, or a higher-resolution export? Ask through the contact form and we will send it the same day.
Fact sheet
The short version
- Name — Quetzal Player
- Category — Bit-perfect music player for macOS
- Platform — macOS 13 (Ventura) or later, Apple silicon and Intel
- Price — Free to use; Pro is a one-time $29.99 purchase
- Distribution — Mac App Store
- Trial — 14 days, unlocks everything
- Developer — an independent studio; no investors, no telemetry
- Web — quetzalplayer.com
Description
Copy-ready descriptions
Use these as they are. They are accurate as written.
One line
Bit-perfect audio for macOS. Your music, untouched.
Short — 40 words
Quetzal is a bit-perfect music player for macOS. It plays your own files exactly as they were recorded, straight to your DAC, with no resampling and no system mixer — and it shows you the signal path while it plays rather than just claiming it.
Long — 110 words
Most players hand your music to the operating system, which resamples it, mixes it with everything else on the machine, and applies a volume curve on the way out. Quetzal doesn’t. It takes the audio device exclusively, locks it to the file’s own sample rate, confirms that rate before playback starts, and gets out of the way.
What separates it is the signal path: a live readout of the codec, the rate the hardware is actually locked to, whether the device is held exclusively, and whether anything is touching the samples. When something breaks bit-perfect — engaging the EQ, for instance — Quetzal says so instead of staying quiet.
Capabilities
What it does
- Bit-perfect output — samples reach the DAC unaltered
- Exclusive device access, and integer mode where the hardware supports it
- Automatic sample-rate switching, confirmed before playback rather than assumed
- A live signal path showing codec, device rate, exclusivity and gain
- Gapless playback, verified sample-exact
- Memory playback, keeping the disk out of the audio path
- Upsampling — integer-ratio polyphase — and parametric EQ
- Library tested at 100,000 tracks: opens in under two seconds, search in about 50 ms
- Internet radio — around 50,000 stations, free on every tier, every codec
- Nine visualizers, four of them GPU feedback-loop renderers
- Six languages — English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese
- No account, no telemetry, no listening data collected
Formats
Formats and resolution
Plays
FLAC · ALAC · WAV · AIFF · WavPack · DSF · DFF · MP3 · AAC / M4A · Ogg Vorbis · Opus · CAF
Sample rates
44.1 · 48 · 88.2 · 96 · 176.4 · 192 · 352.8 kHz
Bit depths
16, 24 and 32-bit integer, and 32-bit float
One honest exception. Quetzal decodes 32-bit integer files, but its internal pipeline is 32-bit float, which cannot represent every distinct 32-bit integer value. So we do not claim bit-perfect for 32-bit integer sources. Every other format is genuinely bit-perfect.
Please do not report
What Quetzal does not do
Listed explicitly so nothing gets written that is not true. Several of these exist as scaffolding in the code, which is not the same as working.
- DSD is converted to PCM. DSF and DFF files play, and they play well, but no DSD bitstream reaches the DAC. Please do not write "native DSD", "DoP" or "bit-perfect DSD".
- Qobuz and Tidal streaming — not built.
- Spotify — not built.
- UPnP / network renderer — not built.
- Watch folders and smart playlists — not built.
- APE (Monkey's Audio) — not supported; the licence is not one of the permissive ones.
- Auto-update — not built. Updates come through the Mac App Store.
Contact
Interviews and review copies
Review copies of Pro are given to working press without conditions attached — we do not ask to see the piece first.
Write via the contact form and choose Press. A person reads every one; two working days is the usual turnaround, often sooner.