TomAmp is a great app that fits the high-quality audio player gap nicel. If I may make two simple suggestions that will dramatically improve usability:

Cache playlist metadata

I tend to try to use TomAmp the same way I use foobar2000. Lacking a media library (which in and of itself is not a big deal, as most "libraries" amount to a folder playlist), I keep all of my music in a single playlist with 2300 entries. An unfortunate consequence is that TomAmp takes approximately a minute and a half to open while it reads metadata for all 2300 songs.

Instead why not normalize metadata to your own set of fields (so you can treat Vorbis/ID3 uniformly) and cache it somewhere like ~/.tomamp-cache? You would then update metadata for individual songs when they are played.

As an aside, please don't forget to accomodate disc number metadata. I have at least eight multi-disc albums whose track numbers should correctly display in the form 2.03.

Search functionality

I know that currently there is at least some search functionality, but I suspect that it is built into QT as its behavior is bizarre to say the least.

I would suggest having any typing initiate a search, continuing to collect keywords until you exit search mode. Make enter play the top match, make shift-enter enqueue the top match, and make shift-backspace exit search mode.

Thanks for all your hard work!