Computer Audio Players

Lots of weirdness going on here:

• None of the audio players have the same track gain as one another OR the original.
• JMRC and Foobar have the same peak but different track gain (maybe this is a ReplayGain problem?)
• Audirvana has almost the same gain as the original but totally different peak
• HQPlayer is the most fucked.

I'd be curious to see what an inversion and subtraction (difference) between each player output and the original would look like. Not sure if that is any more valid or useful than the ReplayGain output, but it would at least be another perspective on what is happening.

Another interesting data point would be to compare the old Foobar WASAPI plugin with the built-in WASAPI that was introduced a few versions ago. I feel like the sound changed between implementations.

 

Someone also needs to thrown Music Bee into this test.

 

Well, I was feeling a bit adventurous today and decided to give MusicBee a try... oh my, how foolish I have been all these years stubbornly using foobar2K! What an incredible difference it has made! The overall clarity and improved resolution (especially in the lower frequencies) is remarkable.

@Psalmanazar @Jerry - Should have listened to you gents earlier!

 

Has anyone compared music bee to jriver?

 

Strawberry or Deadbeef. On Linux Mint, using JACK.

 

Not an exact comparison, but MusicBee was my Music Player (2007 to 2021) until I switched to Audirvana Studio. While using MusicBee I did experiment with other Windows players including Pono, which was a relabeled JRiver. MusicBee was better. Reasons: clearer sound, JRiver is a resource hog, better GUI. For a free Windows music player, I think MusicBee is top notch. I used MusicBee with Fidelizer Pro and Process Lasso.

 

Seconding the Musicbee rec's:

 

Happy to hear that. Thanks to @dietwater . I only use Foobar for utility now. It is still the best for that. But all my listening has been through MusicBee. Never looked back.

Yeah I did that comparison in 2020. MusicBee is better.

 

Musicbee is the best non-roon player around. I used it for years and years before roon. And still use it on systems not connected to the internet.

 

Is it possible to control MusicBee by remote, e.g. from an Android phone or tablet? I had a good look at their webpage, and they suggested it was possible. But when I went to Google Play to look for the app, it wasn't there.

 

I think you were trying to look for "Musicbee Remote": https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kelsos.mbrc

 

When I click on that link, I get "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server".

Maybe it's not available for Australians

 

Doesn't come up for me either, and I'm in the US. I never knew it existed and got really excited for a minute...

 

https://getmusicbee.com/addons/plugins/75/musicbee-remote-plugin/

haven't tried it yet

 

I really like the UI better on music bee, but it liked to crash on me, so I switched to jriver and find the core more stable.
The dsp section of jriver is very stable and I love using my vsts to alter the sound.

 

what would be killer is if musicbee had qobuz integration... but that's probably too much to ask for a free app

 

I found MusicBee to be buggy, so eventually dumped it. Foobar2000 is now my go to - stable and has so many custom UI / skins to choose from.

 

Foobar was the thing that I missed most when I chucked out Windows.

 

Interesting, I find FB2K to be less stable than Musicbee, certainly more performant than FB2K with large collections. FB2K slows to a crawl with 150K music files last I checked.

Built my FB2K setup from scratch with a few plugins a few years ago:

 

I'll give MB a trial. No hurry though as my Jriver setup uses about 5-9% cpu max last time I checked and the ReapEQ VST performs flawlessly. I actually do not use the library and could care less about art, etc. I simply drop albums I want to hear in a playlist.