Computer Audio Players

Discussion in 'Computer Audiophile: Software, Configs, Tools' started by JoshMorr, Oct 4, 2015.

  1. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Trying to think here...you might be inadvertently be applying DSP on a device through 'Device Setup' with "volume limits", and perhaps MQA settings (I always set "no MQA support" and under advanced set "enable MQA core decoder" to no). Also if using USB verify your JRiver or fill_in_the_blank is not is not using a WASAPI and Roon ASIO, etc.
     
  2. toddrhodes

    toddrhodes Friend

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    Yea, it seems like you are not using WASAPI Exclusive mode in roon:

    This is what my path looks like with Exclusive Mode set to No:
    [​IMG]

    And the setting:
    [​IMG]

    And the result:
    [​IMG]

    And certainly, adding DSP can influence the sound but IMO with Roon - it's going to convert whatever you have to 64 bit prior to any DSP or Volume modifications (headroom, leveling, etc...) so there is plenty of "space" to work with without compromising the quality of the file you're playing.

    And yes, absolutely yes, you can hear a difference in SQ when going through the OS mixer versus bypassing it. Sounds like utter shite going through all that commotion.
     
  3. dasman66

    dasman66 Self proclaimed lazy ass - friend

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    ^ this

    The teal circle means that something is fudging up the signal going to the DAC. If you are feeding bitperfect, then it should all be Purple.

    ------edit-------
    if you hover over the teal circle, then it should popup with something. The purple will popup as "Lossless"
     
  4. dubharmonic

    dubharmonic Friend

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    I've also been using the Pi2AES as a Roon transport for Bandcamp ALAC files, it's still softer than AirPlay.
    [​IMG]
     
  5. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    So is that better or worse? Does softer mean distorted, as if the high frequencies are reduced
     
  6. dubharmonic

    dubharmonic Friend

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    Not better or worse necessarily, just different.
     
  7. dietwater

    dietwater Acquaintance

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    I finally got around to trying XXhighend (version 2.1.0) yesterday, and I feel I should have done this months ago - it sounds absolutely phenomenal. It was a messy set up/configuration process, which i'll get to in the later paragraphs, where I'll share all the downsides.

    Let me start with the pros.

    1. The sound is fantastic, by far the best I've heard so far. There's two aspects to the great sound. First is the reduction of CPU activity and hence the lower noise.

    This player runs on RAM, and has options to reduce background tasks, and also optimized to do minimal data transactions so as to have least noise (I'm simplifying the description of a complex process, which in its entirety is far more content than I could understand in full).

    Most players I have tried that didn't do RAM based playback had a layer of digital haze to them, except one case of hysolid, which, without being RAM playback based, was clean but then it also had an artifically dense sound. And when other players were used in customized RAM playback, while the overall noise in most areas of the spectrum decreases, some residuals pick back up at certain frequencies, especially at 8khz, and some kind of artificial softness at times. So the fix isn't a trivial <just push it to RAM and forget>. I described the RAM player experiments in full (for musicbee, albumplayer, playpcmwin) in a previous comment.

    Of the music player softwares I have testsed, this is just the second one that I have come across that had neither an immediately obvious digital haze or a coloration (other one is wtfplay), and just the third I have experienced that didn't have a harsh digital haze (wftplay and hysolid are the other two).

    This is not to say that xxhighend and wtfplay sound identical, they certainly have differences in sound, but they both don't seem to have any obvious deviations (or probably equally deviated from realism in either ends). XXHE sounds like a direct upgrade for album player, retaining a lot of the general texture/presentation of album player but with less haze and more detail, while WTFPLAY is a different sound one that I have not found an equivalent for.
    Of course this would mean little if your dac had some extremely high end isolation, but I believe for a lot of cases, it would make similar differences as discussed above.

    2. The above are comparisons with "arc prediction" turned off. Arc Prediction is a built in feature of XXhighend, and it is a custom interpolation algorithm! It is not a sinc filter, and its not even a general linear filter. And turned on, XXHE sounds way better than anything else I have heard reproduced on a digital system, and this alone makes the software worth the price IMO. The best references of an instrument I could relate the real world sound to would be flutes which I am quite familiar with. This is the first time I am hearing the micro textures and tonal gradations, (and the tonguing patterns if any) of the flute being rendered with such realism from a system.

    And the same realism extends to anything that has subtle gradients and shifts, the sound of winds, claps, foleys etc sounding far more realistic than I have heard before. The next big improvement is with spatial tracking. Whenever the mix has a panning/rotating object, I feel at much better ease visualizing its entire trajectory without abrupt cuts with this. For anything that is dynamic, and preferrably natural (well mastered synthetic music works great as well), the arc prediction does a wonderful job of filling the points in a way that imo makes best fidelity from a listeners perspective (may not be from the perspective of an APX555).

    Yes I have tried Hqplayer, with it's oversampler on my pc. Regarding the digital noise, it sounds as hazy as musicbee or winyl (not surprising as they are based on same library), though I guess you could use a network streamer to mitigate a lot of these noise, so for most people it would be a non issue. However, coming to the oversampling, I even tried some high tap custom oversampled data I got from others using different filters and while it did changes, it never brought anything that would make me use it over the built in OS and Noise shapers in my ESS based dac (Apogee groove, supports upto 192khz 24bit), but arc prediction has done that for me. With any music that has a compressed structure though, I felt I preferred the arc prediction off than ON, as the bass density (or thickness) felt a bit reduced and it sounded bland for lack of a better word. Of course, you don't judge a race car by its ability to run on a bad terrain, but it's quite an easy fix here to just turn off the arc prediction in those scenarios and set oversampling ratio to 1. There is optional choices for custom filter tuning, but I restricted myself to let my dac do its own OS job for that scenario feeding 1:1 data. This is not a knock against hqplayer. I am well aware that it works fantastic on many other systems and for sure would be a better alternative to an oversampling ic on the dac chip for many cases, but there's something quite exciting and realistic about arc prediction that I haven't found elsewhere. Maybe I should try some NOS too someday.

    I am generally averse to playback software costing money, more so considering WTFPLAY actually sounded better than almost all the paid ones I have tried, but this is one time where I would say its price is worth it. The interpolation algorithm makes a very meaningful difference, and can actually be considered a significant part of the DAC. This definitely makes its way to the top of my wishlist. Now to the problems.

    1. It is likely to screw up with your system. Always try on a spare system first. It has an issue with windows 10 on my system where the player removes the background wallpaper and replaces it with black screen.

    2. I actually tried to make it run a few months ago and failed, and its the main reason for the delay in trying this tool. The instructions are mostly unclear and the UI is very unintuitive without a proper guide (even with a guide, I would call it barely passable). In the UI menu, To the left top is the settings for Arc prediction ON/OFF, Custom Filtering ON/OFF, Volume control and Volume Normalization ON/OFF. (The red indicator corresponds to ON)

    To the middle of the top you have options tagged P, L, S and H. Selecting each toggles the middle window between them. P refers to the playlist, I haven't figured out what L means, and S refers to the settings.

    You need to go to settings and configure for your dac in the output for its device buffer size (you can get this from your dac's driver control panel), and DAC settings to choose what sample rate and what word length it supports (mine is 24 bits 192.0 Khz).

    At the very bottom of the settings you have options to disable certain additional services if you intend to cut down the noise even more.

    Once done with settings go back to playlist to see options at the bottom for play, stop , prev etc. Explore is the command to open file manager to input a music file. Load doesn't open file manager, I don't know it's utility. Clear option clears the current playlist.

    3. It is easy to mess up with the settings and get artefacted sound. One area I found it very evident is volume control. XXhighend has a volume control that acts in parallel to your Windows DAC volume control. Simultaneously playing around with both XXHE volume and DAC volume at once (with neither at 100%) is guaranteed to introduce a wierd softness/lack of definition in the sound, as if someone applied a wierd lowpass filter. Voices sound fine but unfocused, while drums and cymbals lack all sorts of shimmer if done this way.
    My suggestion would be to set up your dac volume at 100% and use XXHE volume control as it would do volume control + interpolation in one go, which sounds very good without any of the above artefacts.

    4. A high bandwidth (high slew rate dac) is recommended as per the Dev, and preferably R2R. Otherwise it is likely to mess up the output of the algorithm. My Apogee groove is actually most likely at the corner of passability (has a little over 100khz bandwidth as per stereophile measurements) but being a delta Sigma it would in the end doing quite a bit of modulations and I guess I'll not be able to see the full potential until I change my dac.

    5. No crossfeed. I would have loved to see a well implemented crossfeed plugin for us headphone users.

    Tldr and 6. It costs! I think the price is justified but WTFPLAY and Playpcmwin (or maybe daphile too which I couldnt get to work on my system) would still be what I could comfortably recommend because it is free and sounds great for something that is free.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2021
  8. soumya

    soumya Acquaintance

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    SoX to aplay (ALSA exclusive) on Fedora
     
  9. dietwater

    dietwater Acquaintance

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    Been tweaking the SFS settings in xxhighend. Buffer at 4096, xq1 at 8 so it feeds 32768 samples to the 32768 sample buffer on my dac. X1 is at 20, increased from the stock configuration of 14. It sounds fantastic and I've got a new found appreciation for my geek out 450 being fed interpolated 352.8/384khz data from xxhighend (geek out is in TCM mode, sounds good with xxhe in FRM mode too, but I prefer TCM).

    I also came across this tool called junilabs audio player. It has a low noise audio player and also a file optimizer. I am using the file optimizer and running the optimized files through xxhighend. It sounds much better than the stock file. Less of the digital haze (xxhighend by itself is much cleaner than all the other players I've tried, and this goes one step further). I have to make sure only optimized files are loaded in xxhe during playback. If I load a combination of optimized + unoptimized the overall fidelity isn't as good as loading only the optimized file.

    I also found that in my system I prefer to have everything at 2x or more optimization cycles even if it takes more time. 1x while mostly better than the source file, feels a little "light" sounding in comparison. 2x is better on all fronts. And it gets better with multiple optimization (currently doing 3-5x depending upon the song).

    The Junilabs player is also very good and has an optimization mode (sounds about on par with wtfplay) but I prefer xxhighend for its arc prediction interpolation and even lower noise playback, especially in unattended mode which minimises all windows.

    NOTE: I have checked the files from the optimizer and the data is intact (ie bit perfect). This tool is about reducing the intrinsic noise associated with the physical (electromagnetic) structure of the stored data.
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2021
  10. HenryBosley

    HenryBosley New

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    I only use 2 players VLC and Windows Media Player. What about you guys?
     
  11. iFi audio

    iFi audio MOT iFi Audio

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    That's the only one I use, but I don't have any special needs :)
     
  12. dubharmonic

    dubharmonic Friend

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  13. Ksaurav402

    Ksaurav402 Friend

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    Will it do auto switching of sample rates ? I guess it can’t on Mac right now.
    Also mine is 2013 late MacBook Pro, the one with optical digital Out and HDMI, and it doesn’t support the latest Max OS so may be I won’t get the update.
     
  14. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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    I have a 2012 mac mini and i still get updates for various components even though I don't have the latest OS. I wouldn't be too surprised if the music app works for older systems
     
  15. joeexp

    joeexp Don't ship this man FD-X1 ever

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  16. iFi audio

    iFi audio MOT iFi Audio

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  17. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    PlayPcmWin +/- Equalizer APO.

    Call me weird, but because I rather like the interface on Windows Media Player 12 I'd been looking for something that'd get me around the Windows Audio Engine (WMP doesn't do WASAPI exclusive mode) without having to commit to having to learn some big new program. These two, together or separately, do the trick to my satisfaction.

    PlayPcmWin is a small, light, Windows audio player that'll do WASAPI exclusive or shared. @dietwater has already compared its sonic characteristics to a few other players in a number of posts in this thread, so here I'll mostly go over its functionality.

    [​IMG]

    File selection is from folders (which suits me as I have all my music organized that way anyway) via the standard Windows selection dialogue. This has some quirks. When you hit Play, it reads the entire file list into memory before playing, which if the file list is long and/or consists of high sample-rate tracks, can slow your computer down if you don't have a lot of RAM. It also means you can't add to or change the list while it's playing, or change any settings until you hit stop.

    Another downside: it doesn't have the longest list of compatible file types (no M4a, for example).

    There are a few DSP settings available, which will work in both exclusive and shared modes:

    [​IMG]

    And various other settings for the two modes. Note it supports cue sheets, also M3U8 playlists:

    [​IMG]

    While it's mainly a file-list browser, a companion very basic album browser, PlayPcmWinAlbum (PPWA), is placed in the same folder at installation. This will read your system for album tags and play the selected album on an abbreviated PlayPcmWin interface at whatever settings you've already selected.

    [​IMG]

    Because PlayPcmWin will work in shared as well as exclusive mode it can be used with Equalizer APO, which is a Windows Audio Engine Audio Processing Object that can perform the useful trick of killing other, potentially 'hidden' APOs and the Windows CAudioLimiter if configurated to do so with the particular endpoint you're using. As shown here (warning: ASR alert - but this author seems both reasonable and knowledgeable), this seems to result in bitperfect playback.

    Equalizer APO now has a pretty good GUI of its own, so there's no need to download eg Peace to work with it:

    [​IMG]

    To use this (with or without PlayPcmWin), your endpoint has to be in WASAPI shared mode. Go into the Sound Control Panel and on the Advanced tab of the Properties dialogue for your endpoint, tick the 'Enable audio enhancements' box:

    [​IMG]

    If you don't want any resampling to take place, you should use the dropdown box above to select the sample rate and bit depth that corresponds to the file being played. If your player is PlayPcmWin, any resampling will use the Microsoft Resampler MFT, which you might or might not be ok with. PlayPcmWin has a configurable offline resampler, WWOfflineResampler (installation folder again), should you want to go that route.

    For me the initial appeal of Equalizer APO was as a way to make sure no Windows tomfoolery was going on while playing from Windows Media Player (which only works in shared mode); rather than using EAPO's equalizer function I just had it configured to kill all other APOs and drop the level a little so the limiter and its funky distortion wouldn't kick in. On comparing WMP+EAPO to PlayPcmWin +/- EAPO (shared/exclusive, respectively), though, I found that WMP is an inferior player: everything seemed to be blunted and more fuzzy, the leading edges of bass notes particularly so.

    So, despite the somewhat clunky functionality, my desktop player is now PlayPcmWin - usually in exclusive mode but in shared mode with Equalizer APO when the mood or the 'phones take me.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2022
  18. GoodEnoughGear

    GoodEnoughGear Evil Dr. Shultz‎

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    So, I've been playing around with the new Foobar2000 2.0 beta, and I noticed that it sounded softer than HQPlayer, which set me down a rabbit hole of evaluating players. I have always considered if two reputable 'bit-perfect' players send unmolested audio via WASAPI you should get the same output, but I was hearing something different.

    Anyway, to cut a long story short I took a pink noise file and ran it through Foobar2000, JRMC, Audirvana and HQPlayer into a virtual audio cable and captured the output. There is no DSP or resampling of any kind going on. I then analyzed the captured tracks, as well as the original track, using ReplayGain per-file analysis in Foobar2000.

    This is what I got, and it confirms my preference order for the players using a track I am familiar with as well..

    Players.jpg

    So, WTF? I confess I wasn't expecting this sort of difference.

    I'll run some more tests using a music track and maybe a silence track as well just to see what I get. I'm also not sure if ReplayGain analysis is the best tool for this, so suggestions welcomed.
     
  19. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    Excellent/informative post! Just 2 things:

    1 - What does track gain signify in terms of sonics of the player?

    2 - And I, too, have noticed that Foobar2000 subtly alters the sound of familiar music files...either softening a little, smearing a little, or maybe both. Purely subjective, but enough so I only use it on a backup laptop I use only for burn-ins.​
     
  20. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    Has anyone noticed a difference in sq between Tidal Connect and Tidal streamed over AirPlay 2?
     

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