It's your life. I accept 1.
@BaaM is not lying 2. the screenshot is genuine. If Damien Plisson wishes to disavow this claim, he's welcome to. My own tests validate his claim. To be safe, I didn't test against one other bit perfect player, I tested against five other bit perfect players. Audirvana implements some special sauce/sweetening which none of the other bit perfect players do. The result is euphonic, with slightly exaggerated stereo separation and a slightly higher presence. Stereo enhancement technology has existed for decades, as has subtle equalisation. The issue with stereo enhancement technology is that usually it's excessive, compromising the fundamental integrity of the music. That's not the case here.
Moving on to tests of bit perfect playback, Archimago ran some relatively serious
attempts at testing on Mac OS X (and later Windows) players. In 2013, Archimago felt his tests showed Audirvana was no better or worse than Decibel:
Decibel has barely changed since 2013 (I've owned Decibel that long) while Audirvana has gone from 1.4.6 to 3.5.x. Even at that time, Audirvana was using its own drivers:
Archimago's did attempt to a diff comparison with 44.1 kHz 24 bit output into 96 kHz 24 bit input. His chart shows very small differences via DiffMaker for bit perfect playback:
There are differences in 2013. Archimago said he did not find those small differences to make an audible difference in his own use. I hope someone does run a similar test in 2021 starting from a 96 kHz 24-bit master into a 96 kHz copy.
I'm curious if anyone else perceives a difference between Audirvana playback and other bit perfect players. If there is no audible difference, I do wonder why those listeners choose Audirvana over cheaper solutions with better playlist/track management and native interfaces (native players exist for both platforms). I seriously considered Audirvana myself, as I did hear improved playback. After considerable reflection, I decided I'd rather not have any sweetening baked into my player and would rather have just bit perfect and make any changes to sound myself via AU plugins.
Equally amusing and on the other end of the spectrum is that Jplay claims playback improvement which
JRiver emphatically denies. In 2012, Mitchco tested Jplay vs JRiver and found
playback to be identical, justifying JRiver's hoax claims! In 2013, Mitchco
redid his tests with new drivers and found them identical again.
There's some good information there for anyone who would attempt a diff test. They are not easy to get right, as Mitchco's first attempts failed, showing a difference where there was none.
In the absence of a diff test, has anyone else here carefully AB Audirvana on hires music against other bit perfect players, either on OS X or Windows?