Audiophile music player for Windows/Mac and your opinion...

[ZolaIII]

AFAIK pipewire can be faster than JACK, but I'd love to hear about your experience.

It's Jack inspired only newer regarding implementation and still grean and unpolished. Never worked with it besides Jack whose just for example and kernel as a main thing.
@theREALdotnet neither do I.

 

[threni]

Why nothing about the French team's VLC?
VLC also works great as CLi on Linux with a port 8080 web interface.

VLC isn't gapless, and the dev team aren't very responsive or knowledgeable about audio matters.

 

[renaudrenaud]

I only use Linux. Since years. My audio server is in a container and my audio player is in a container. All the Dacs I bought from SMSL, Topping, Gustard, Sabaj have the driver in the kernel and are recognized immediately.

I also used Daphile for the client side and was very happy, especially with the convolution part.

Using Linux allows me to build ultra low consumption players, less than 1W.

I just have difficulties to understand why the survey is only talking about win and Mac, especially in science audio review, it's not bullshit audio review. Or maybe I should go on Computer Science Review to have computer science questions and answers.

 

[valve_integrator]

VLC isn't gapless, and the dev team aren't very responsive or knowledgeable about audio matters.

eh?
WTF? I only need a PLAYA!

I even had vlc on my ancient DEC AXP under NT5-windoze32 and Linux 64.

In fact my Lynx ONE worked on Win2000 on AXP, as well as MS office.
It made an excellent DAW type 24-48 hard disk recorder.
Win32 on Dec alpha made Intel look slow and miserable despite the performance hit running 32bit OS on a 64bit RISC CPU.

 

[threni]

eh?
WTF? I only need a PLAYA!

I even had vlc on my ancient DEC AXP under NT5-windoze32 and Linux 64.

In fact my Lynx ONE worked on Win2000 on AXP, as well as MS office.
It made an excellent DAW type 24-48 hard disk recorder.
Win32 on Dec alpha made Intel look slow and miserable despite the performance hit running 32bit OS on a 64bit RISC CPU.

Must be a full moon...

 

[PaperBoat]

Has anyone tried WinPE?

 

[tuga]

The world is full of people who think they hear things. They are subjectivists.

Nothing happens when you transfer a file from one location to another, which is what a player does.

But is it really?

 

[valve_integrator]

Must be a full moon...

yep some people become loonies.

"As of 2016 VLC is the third in the sourceforge.net overall download count, and there have been more than 3 billion downloads.

Version 3.0 was in development for Windows, Linux and macOS since June 2016 and released in February 2018.
It contains many new features including Chromecast output support (except subtitles), hardware-accelerated decoding, 4K and 8K playback, 10-bit and HDR playback, 360° video and 3D audio, audio passthrough for HD audio codecs, Blu-ray Java menu support, and local network drive browsing.

In December 2017 the European Parliament approved a budget that funds a bug bounty program for VLC to improve the EU's IT infrastructure."

I remember it well on Gassee's BeOS.
Perhaps you weren't around then?

"The default GUI is based on Be API on BeOS, Cocoa for macOS, and Qt 4 for Linux and Windows, but all give a similar standard interface.
The old default GUI was based on wxWidgets on Linux and Windows. VLC supports highly customizable skins through the skins2 interface, and also supports Winamp 2 and XMMS skins. Skins are not supported in the macOS version.[VLC has ncurses, remote control, and telnet console interfaces. There is also an HTTP interface, as well as interfaces for mouse gestures and keyboard hotkeys."

I reckon they can't be doing much wrong after all that.

 

[Jmudrick]

yep some people become loonies.

"As of 2016 VLC is the third in the sourceforge.net overall download count, and there have been more than 3 billion downloads.

Version 3.0 was in development for Windows, Linux and macOS since June 2016 and released in February 2018.
It contains many new features including Chromecast output support (except subtitles), hardware-accelerated decoding, 4K and 8K playback, 10-bit and HDR playback, 360° video and 3D audio, audio passthrough for HD audio codecs, Blu-ray Java menu support, and local network drive browsing.

In December 2017 the European Parliament approved a budget that funds a bug bounty program for VLC to improve the EU's IT infrastructure."

I remember it well on Gassee's BeOS.
Perhaps you weren't around then?

"The default GUI is based on Be API on BeOS, Cocoa for macOS, and Qt 4 for Linux and Windows, but all give a similar standard interface.
The old default GUI was based on wxWidgets on Linux and Windows. VLC supports highly customizable skins through the skins2 interface, and also supports Winamp 2 and XMMS skins. Skins are not supported in the macOS version.[VLC has ncurses, remote control, and telnet console interfaces. There is also an HTTP interface, as well as interfaces for mouse gestures and keyboard hotkeys."

I reckon they can't be doing much wrong after all that.

Gapless playback?

 

[Berwhale]

Has anyone tried WinPE?

I've created custom WinPE images for deployments of 10's of thousands of PCs in a corporate environment. Does that count?...

 

[ZolaIII]

Must be a full moon...

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
People have right to be aggravated. No one mentioned dozen of mini Linux image players or one or two media oriented full distros and probably won't but some find Roon skins as fabulous thing. That's why pool's like this don't have much sense in the first place.
Actually kinda liked the Win-doze part!
No moon whatsoever where I live tonight (shame), just checked.

 

[SteveC]

Just a quick thank you to the folks that started and contributed to this thread. I'd been using Pine for a while but tried out foobar2000 and switched! I use Mac and most of foobar's focus seems to be on Microsoft systems. Apparently all of the features aren't in both, but it's easier to use than Pine and sounds fine to me. I don't play files as much as LP and CD so it's just not worth the cost to me for something like Audirvāna (which, having a friend that uses it, I admit is impressive!)

 

[sarumbear]

But is it really?

It is, really.

 

[PaperBoat]

I've created custom WinPE images for deployments of 10's of thousands of PCs in a corporate environment. Does that count?...

Every Windows installation counts on it... I'm asking about using Windows PE as standalone installation on RAM for an audiophile setup...

 

[Berwhale]

I'm asking about using Windows PE as standalone installation on RAM for an audiophile setup...

If I wanted to deploy a stripped down OS to run a music player, i'd choose a lightweight Linux distribution, not a butchered OS design for pre-installation and troubleshooting tasks. If it really had to be a Windows install, i'd be more inclined to play around with something like Tiny11.

More about Tiny11 here: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tiny11-lean-windows-11

 

[Tangband]

I don’t know if you are doing this intentionally or you are confused with what a player is. Strange that you even post a vote on players.

iTunes is a player that was published by Apple and was integrated with their download shop. As any player it plays bit perfect. As a store they only sold lossy tracks. However, it allowed you to rip CDs to uncompressed format files to a library. You can add other compatible files that you obtained independently to that library as well. Hence, it was a player that is integrated with the iTunes service.

iTunes download shop still exists but Apple started a separate streaming service, Apple Music, which was integrated to iTunes. On the Mac iTunes is replaced with the Music app, soon that will happen on Windows too. The Music app is a player and a library manager, which is integrated with Apple’s iTunes and Apple Music services.

I hope this is clear and you understand the difference between bit-perfect player and lossy tracks.

I use a Mac laptop running on batterys , with a DDC with Xmos also on batterys. I use Apple lossless .
This solution as a digital preamp sounds better than my Yamaha wxc50/NAS (flac ) from spdif out in preamp mode.

I have the advantage to listen to very expensive gear now and then, even for comparisons. And I know that the sound in many cases can be even better in the digital domain ( i.e Linn klimax hub 2022 with TIDAL ) but at a very high cost unfortunately.

Soundwise with my SAM Genelec and a digital signal , I think the leap in soundquality between different digital sources are clearly audible and the difference between Mac/Apple lossless and Linn Klimax hub/Tidal are about the same as the difference between Mac/Apple lossless and Yamaha wxc50/NAS ( flac ) , the Yamaha is the worse sounding of them all.
Running my DDC on batterys instead of power from the Mac when using Apple lossless makes the sound slightly better and I have longer listening sessions this way.*

I have briefly tried Windows 10 mixer ( flac ) and the sound was absolutely terrible, worse than the Yamaha.

Ofcourse this is a very subjective opinion .
So no evidence in measurements.

*The sound quality differences between different digital sources show up in how long you can listen to the music without being distracted or loose attention of what the musicians are playing. With a bad digital source it takes only a minute or two to loose interest in the music. With a really good source , you often play a whole album from start to finnish and its impossible to read a book at the same time.

 

[PaperBoat]

If I wanted to deploy a stripped down OS to run a music player, i'd choose a lightweight Linux distribution, not a butchered OS design for pre-installation and troubleshooting tasks. If it really had to be a Windows install, i'd be more inclined to play around with something like Tiny11.

More about Tiny11 here: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tiny11-lean-windows-11

Or Ghost Spectre?

 

[tuga]

It is, really.

But doesn't the data need protocol-converting before it's transmitted (streamed?) on to the DAC?
Anyway for the trasmission to be 'bit-perfect' the music playing software (renderer?) needs to be set so that there's no tampering with the signal and to ensure that the operating system doesn't interfere with the data stream.
With iTunes you need to disable Crossfade, Sound Enhancer and Sound Check and it's so dumb that it requires that you set the correct output sample rate and bit depth in the Audio MIDI Setup control panel, otherwise iTunes will use MacOS' appalling CoreAudio SRC. Also read about hog mode.
So not really plug-and-play.

I don't use WinOS but I have the impression that it's even worse, that you need to install dedicated drivers, light a candle and stand on your head...

 

[tuga]

If I wanted to deploy a stripped down OS to run a music player, i'd choose a lightweight Linux distribution, not a butchered OS design for pre-installation and troubleshooting tasks. If it really had to be a Windows install, i'd be more inclined to play around with something like Tiny11.

More about Tiny11 here: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tiny11-lean-windows-11

Alternatively you can keep your everyday computer and add a network-bridge/endpoint.

 

[theREALdotnet]

otherwise iTunes will use MacOS' appalling CoreAudio SRC

Not sure what’s so appalling about it. The most recent one in the list is Mac OS X Leopard (ancient), but it seems up there with the best.