I’ve thought about bitwig, but I don’t like their monetization method. Only reason I slowly upgraded my fl studio over the years is because I know it’s a lifetime key and that I’ll be getting every update. $400 for one year of updates (starting, I know renewal is cheaper) is atrocious to me.
VLC will play whatever you throw at it… can’t believe you didn’t use it. Also homebrew isn’t a requirement, it’s a nice to have, sure. But macOS works just fine without it.