Chord Dave: Revisited in 2022 vs Wavedream Signature

Regardless of how good it may be PGGB looks janky as all f**k. It's a thin shell over some MATLAB hacking (you need the 1.7Gb MATLAB runtime to run it) and downloads from Dropbox? Email the dev to get a license? User interface is also clunky as all get out. If your vibe is string and sealing wax, fine, but don't have the temerity to charge $500 for it.

 

Thanks for illuminating that, I was having trouble parsing why it was being platformed over there vs. HQPlayer, other than the authors seeming to frequent/being involved with that forum. Audiophoolery it is, then.

Not super surprising, unfortunately - it’s gotten better, but products and especially software targeting the “computer audiophile” market have historically preyed on folks’ ignorance for quite a while and are usually, yes, super janky as a user experience. See: AudiophileOptimizer, XxHighEnd etc.

Anyway, sorry for what is at this point a thread de-railing.

 

Lol, I tried it out and it actually sounds really good. This is only using x4 oversampling into a Wavedream but seems to remove some harshness from transient edges and generally a more relaxed sound while not losing low level information. Comparing here against my home brew upsampling with Sox (not very sophisticated). Didn't listen very long but it's not just smoke and mirrors.

My original point stands, no way I'd pay $500 for this. The good news if you are on windows however is that there's a non-janky foobar plugin version:

https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_pggb_rt

which is realtime and fully functional at no cost when taps <= 2 million. Can also be used to render the files (using fb2k "Convert"). Upgrade to unlocked version with even more taps is $150 which seems more reasonable and sane.