I finally got mpd and ncmpcpp running on my mac mini again. The programs are very simple and I like that when all I'm trying to do is play some music while I'm working.

I had only set this up on Linux before though, and it took me a little while to figure out the differences for macOS. At first, I was hoping to have mpd running on my Linux server and then just interact with and control the stream locally on ncmpcpp running on the mac. I may return to this, but I wasn't able to get this setup how I wanted. I could only get ncmpcpp to control an http stream which I could listen to using iina. Maybe it's a simple thing I didn't think of before I ran out of time?

Eventually I just install mpd on the mac and these are the configuraiton files I'm using to get it all running.

mpd Configuration File

music_directory                 "/Volumes/home/data/media/music"
playlist_directory              "~/.config/mpd/playlists"
db_file                         "~/.config/mpd/database"
log_file                        "~/.config/mpd/log"
pid_file                        "~/.config/mpd/mpd.pid"
state_file                      "~/.config/mpd/state"
sticker_file                    "~/.config/mpd/sticker.sql"
auto_update "yes"
auto_update_depth "2"
follow_outside_symlinks "yes"
follow_inside_symlinks "yes"

audio_output {
    type "osx"
    name "CoreAudio"
    mixer_type "software"
}

decoder {
    plugin "mp4ff"
    enabled "no"
}

bind_to_address         "127.0.0.1"
port                    "6600"

# Visualizer
audio_output {
    type "fifo"
    name "my_fifo"
    path "/tmp/mpd.fifo"
    format "44100:16:2"
    auto_resample "no"
    use_map "yes"
}

ncmpcpp Configuration File

mpd_host = "localhost"
mpd_port = "6600"
mpd_connection_timeout = "5"
mpd_crossfade_time = "5"