Audible difference in players? (Audirvana, JRiver, Roon, MusicBee, etc.)

[laurelkurt]

Well I would rather have a hardwired connection than WiFi. Maybe you are having latency issues? If the computer you are playing from is in your basement connected by WiFi try importing an album from Qobuz and playing it from your hard disc rather than streaming over WiFi see if you get the same errors.

A feature I've never used, but it sounds logical. I'll try to figure out how to do that. I wonder if I can import from Qobuz via Audirvana? I guess I have at least one thing start - TOMORROW. I'm taking it easy tonight after cooking and eating Christmas dinner. Thanks.

 

[Ratatoskr]

A feature I've never used, but it sounds logical. I'll try to figure out how to do that. I wonder if I can import from Qobuz via Audirvana? I guess I have at least one thing start - TOMORROW. I'm taking it easy tonight after cooking and eating Christmas dinner. Thanks.

You are welcome. That import feature is missing from Audirvana, something about licensing. You would have to do it and listen from within the Qobuz app at present. Audirvana has a few quirks, like you have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to read the album books.

 

[Puska]

I can confirm that qobuz in Roon is trancated. Many options are missing. Roon on my system sounds terrible.
I tryed Audirvana and it sounds a bit better, Now I use Bubbleupnp with SoTM sms200 ultra neo/sbooster.
this setup works best for me. Qobuz have all of the options in bubbleupnp and the sq is superb.

 

[laurelkurt]

You are welcome. That import feature is missing from Audirvana, something about licensing. You would have to do it and listen from within the Qobuz app at present. Audirvana has a few quirks, like you have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to read the album books.

I'm certainly not loving many things about both Qobuz and Audirvana. I'm not loving only a few things about Tidal, the main one being the price. I do like that in Audirvana it's easy to access either one, and it seems to have fixed the bitstream issue I have with Qobuz. I did manage to find one song that streams fine in Tidal & Qobuz but clicks and pops from both apps through Audirvana. Thanks for that info.

 

[laurelkurt]

You are welcome. That import feature is missing from Audirvana, something about licensing. You would have to do it and listen from within the Qobuz app at present. Audirvana has a few quirks, like you have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to read the album books.

Thanks. I learned to download and play offline today!( at least on Qobuz & not Tidal) Still has shifting 16 to 24 bit depth on the downloaded file with wifi off (so I'm sure it's not streaming). It only happens on Qobuz. Same songs played fom CDs, Tidal, or through Audirvana are stable. So I know it's not my equipment> Thanks again!

 

[Ratatoskr]

Thanks. I learned to download and play offline today!( at least on Qobuz & not Tidal) Still has shifting 16 to 24 bit depth on the downloaded file with wifi off (so I'm sure it's not streaming). It only happens on Qobuz. Same songs played fom CDs, Tidal, or through Audirvana are stable. So I know it's not my equipment> Thanks again!

This is a new bug in the Qobuz app to me. I have never had that problem but Qobuz would probably like to know of it and investigate. You could contact customer service through your account, or join the Audiophile Style forum and post about it in the Official Qobuz Issues thread where David Craff (Qobuz Project Manager) responds to inquiries.

FWIW I don't appreciate any difference in sound quality between the Qobuz app and Audirvana. Qobuz has been around longer than Tidal. Tidal used to have unreliable playback but they improved to the point Tidal is more stable than Qobuz now. At least in the US Qobuz is the better deal if you like their catalog. They should pay Audirvana to debug the Qobuz app, but that might hurt sales of Audirvana so probably not going to happen

 

[tades]

I have been using Audirvana for a month : during the test period. And tested most functionalities. Have been disappointed that they didn't do a better usage of the oversampling. It appears they do a linear extrapolation (bringing more agressivity) where-as they could us predictive algorithms (music signal being already available).
I'll go back to FB2K.
I'm testing the Math-Audio Plug-in: Very promising provided you are very carefull in correcting just the pro-eminent stationary nodes.

 

[Spider]

Hi Excuse me for interfering, but does AIMP4 has a bit-perfect audio?

 

[Bernard23]

I have been using Audirvana for a month : during the test period. And tested most functionalities. Have been disappointed that they didn't do a better usage of the oversampling. It appears they do a linear extrapolation (bringing more agressivity) where-as they could us predictive algorithms (music signal being already available).
I'll go back to FB2K.
I'm testing the Math-Audio Plug-in: Very promising provided you are very carefull in correcting just the pro-eminent stationary nodes.

I'm in the trial period now, and have also tried most of the settings, I don't think I can hear a difference, if there is it's probably expectation bias etc as they are minute. Wish I had more time to do some quantitative testing, but I won't be continuing with it once the free trial ends.

 

[Julf]

Anybody tried Dopamine here?

http://www.digimezzo.com/software/dopamine/

A music manager UI on top of of FFmpeg?

 

[Veri]

I can tell you it sounds better than Foobar at stock settings

You realise this is 'audio science review', right? Just double checking here.

 

[Julf]

I can tell you it sounds better than Foobar at stock settings

You can tell me that, but why should any of us believe you?

 

[Rockfella]

Amended

 

[Julf]

Amended

Deleted?

 

[Alec Kinnear]

Seems pretty clear to me: that's BS.

Or... what they're claiming would be some kind of worrying. Do we have to understand the signal won't be transparent? That can't be a good thing in any way.

@BaaM's claims (in fact, Damien Plisson's own claim) about Audirvana sweetening the sound is absolutely accurate. It's not that Plisson cannot provide bitperfect output – he can. Audirvana has been on the market for years. To be able to differentiate from other players, Audirvana has to either add features which others don't have or Audirvana has to be cheaper or Audirvana has to offer "better" sound. Damien has chosen to offer "better" sound. In my opinion, he's been quite successful.

Swinsian, Calibri, Decibel, Fidelia all sound identical on music which they can play back at native resolution (Decibel doesn't handle all bitrates of DSD). I haven't tested Bitperfect only because I never use iTunes but from reports it falls into the same group. They are all bit perfect in standard configuration and hence identical. Audirvana sounds different, arguably "better".

What's special about the Audirvana sound is slightly greater stereo separation, creating a "wider" soundstage and more air/atmosphere. There's also a tiny boost in a key treble range (my guess is around 8kHz or 10kHz), giving "more detail" or resolution to the Audirvana sound. But whatever the Audirvana is (and @amirm likes the special sauce in this case, albeit he usually wants bit perfect), it's not bit perfect.

BTW, I'm not an Audirvana owner or a fan, just own most of the competitors and have trialed intensively several versions of Audirvana. Personally, I decided that I didn't like the price and the constant paid updates (competitors do not do this; Swinsian was a single €21 purchase, Calibra a single €8 purchase, Decibel a single $33 purchase, Fidelia a single $39 purchase. Audirvana is €98 now with €68 for a .5 version update! Audirvana is on v3.5 which makes about €310 laid out for buyers who started with v1. Audirvana is also only two activations (hate this, I have three Macs I use often and another two I use occasionally).

Outside of cost, I didn't like the playlist functionality (auto-updates to my folders didn't work, filtering a library is an way to interact with music). In contrast, Swinsian offers splendid, Mac-native playlist functionality. Create as many playlists as you like. Playlist interfaces are lightning fast, technically detailed as you'd like with a native Mac look. It's easy to view and easy to update files whether you add new metadata or artwork externally or internally. Swinsian will semi-automatically fetch you album art itself from Last.fm, MusicBrainz, coverartarchive.org and a couple of other servers automatically.

On the plus side for Audirvana, the DAC support and exclusive stream is rock solid and provides the most detailed information about the connection of any of the OS X players.

 

[Veri]

What's special about the Audirvana sound is slightly greater stereo separation, creating a "wider" soundstage and more air/atmosphere. There's also a tiny boost in a key treble range (my guess is around 8kHz or 10kHz), giving "more detail" or resolution to the Audirvana sound. But whatever the Audirvana is (and @amirm likes the special sauce in this case, albeit he usually wants bit perfect), it's not bit perfect.

Again, ANY PROOF, whatsoever? I can claim things out of thing air too, you know. It would just waste everyone's time.....

 

[Rottmannash]

@BaaM's claims (in fact, Damien Plisson's own claim) about Audirvana sweetening the sound is absolutely accurate. It's not that Plisson cannot provide bitperfect output – he can. Audirvana has been on the market for years. To be able to differentiate from other players, Audirvana has to either add features which others don't have or Audirvana has to be cheaper or Audirvana has to offer "better" sound. Damien has chosen to offer "better" sound. In my opinion, he's been quite successful.

Swinsian, Calibri, Decibel, Fidelia all sound identical on music which they can play back at native resolution (Decibel doesn't handle all bitrates of DSD). I haven't tested Bitperfect only because I never use iTunes but from repots it falls into the same group. They are all bitperfect in standard configuration and hence identical. Audirvana sounds different, arguably "better".

What's special about the Audirvana sound is slightly greater stereo separation, creating a "wider" soundstage and more air/atmosphere. There's also a tiny boost in a key treble range (my guess is around 8kHz or 10kHz), giving "more detail" or resolution to the Audirvana sound. But whatever the Audirvana is (and @amirm likes the special sauce in this case, albeit he usually wants bit perfect), it's not bit perfect.

BTW, I'm not an Audirvana owner or a fan, just own most of the competitors and have trialed intensively several versions of Audirvana. Personally, I decided that I didn't like the price and the constant paid updates (competitors do not do this; Swinsian was a single €21 purchase, Calibra a single €8 purchase, Decibel a single $33 purchase, Fidelia a single $39 purchase. Audirvana is €98 now with €68 for a .5 version update! Audirvana is on v3.5 which makes about €310 laid out for buyers who started with v1. Audirvana is also only two activations (hate this, I have three Macs I use often and another two I use occasionally).

Outside of cost, I didn't like the playlist functionality (auto-updates to my folders didn't work, filtering a library is an way to interact with music). In contrast, Swinsian offers splendid, Mac-native playlist functionality. Create as many playlists as you like. Playlist interfaces are lightning fast, technically detailed as you'd like with a native Mac look. It's easy to view and easy to update files whether you add new metadata or artwork externally or internally. Swinsian will semi-automatically fetch you album art itself from Last.fm, MusicBrainz, coverartarchive.org and a couple of other servers automatically.

On the plus side for Audirvana, the DAC support and exclusive stream is rock solid and provides the most detailed information about the connection of any of the OS X players.

Where does Damien claim he's "sweetening" the signal? Source? AFAIK he claims Audirvana is bit-perfect.

 

[Alec Kinnear]

Again, ANY PROOF, whatsoever? I can claim things out of thing air too, you know. It would just waste everyone's time.....

Where does Damien claim he's "sweetening" the signal? Source? AFAIK he claims Audirvana is bit-perfect.

Guys read the thread more attentively please before barking. Damien specifically answers a customer (in French, in which I'm fluent):

Yes, there are other "things" in the signal processing besides oversampling algorithms in Audirvana's software which improve sound quality. Feel free to try yourself with the trial period.

How much more clear does it have to be? The publisher himself is claiming that he's sweetening the signal.

As I mentioned, of course Audirvana is improving/sweetening the sound. Otherwise Audirvana would sound just like all the other (about half a dozen) bit-perfect players for OS X. I actually went to the trouble to compare them all before reaching this conclusion.

Why do you think Audirvana sounds better? Because it's more bit-perfect? Surely you realise that bit-perfect is an absolute. No bit-perfect player can sound better than another through the identical DAC unless that player is sweetening/treating the sound.

I can't find it out now, but @amirm has a test graph of stereo separation for one of the DACs he tested which shows a blurry line in the middle instead of a clean one. It surprised him in an otherwise perfect measurement performance. He mentions that he did the test with Audirvana playback. I'd suggest @amirm do some bit perfect playback tests between Audirvana and the applications I mentioned but Amir is a Windows lifer, considering his past. He could test Audirvana against foobar (which I also successfully tested on OS X for identical bit-perfect playback though the OS X foobar is a limited feature beta version).

Oh, and my opinion, Audirvana sweetening is successful for most music. Damien knows what his business as a coder and he's got a good ear. Just don't claim it's bit-perfect. Still, I'm astonished to find so many Audirvana users among men of science though. While a subjectivist* like me prefers bit-perfect! What a strange world.

My one serious criticism of the built-in sweetening in Audirvana: Plisson should allow users to turn off the Audirvana filters with a checkbox to allow real bit-perfect playback.

****

* really I'm not, I'm an agnostic here – both measurements and listening tests have their place the evaluation of audio equipment

 

[Veri]

Why do you think Audirvana sounds better? Because it's more bit-perfect? Surely you realise that bit-perfect is an absolute. No bit-perfect player can sound better than another through the identical DAC unless that player is sweetening/treating the sound.
[...]
Oh, and my opinion, Audirvana sweetening is successful for most music. Damien knows what he's doing and he's got a good ear himself. Just don't claim it's bit-perfect.

You are either one hundred percent hopeless, or a troll, or both. In any case I won't bother any further. Get a clue, get proof or go home. If you think(guess) 8-10kHz range is boosted that is trivial to prove, right? Otherwise just don't waste anyone else's time....

Thanks.

 

[Alec Kinnear]

You are either one hundred percent hopeless, or a troll, or both. In any case I won't bother any further. Get a clue, get proof or go home. If you think(guess) 8-10kHz range is boosted that is trivial to prove, right? Otherwise just waste anyone else's time.

The publisher himself admitted to sweetening the sound. Listening tests show that Audirvana sounds "better" than other bit-perfect players. This isn't proof enough for you?

I'm sorry if these facts shake the foundations of your orthodoxy. I'm happy that heresy is no longer punished by immolation.