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A (better sounding?) alternative to Foobar2000 -OR- A musing in the realm of bit-perfect streaming - Page 15

post #211 of 341
6/1/10 at 5:10am

ulilith does seem grainier than foobar but the graininess seems to contribute to this extra reverb detail I'm hearing. I'm not sure what it is. Foobar seems cleaner but a little more boring in the mids. Now as to which one is more bitperfect I have no idea. This graininess is the analog sounding analogy i was referring to in one of the earlier posts. Thats also what  heard before with ulilith.

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post #212 of 341
6/1/10 at 6:01am

The problem is if you don't know if its bit perfect it just doesn't really mean much.  With Ozone Izoptope VST I can make any software player sound fantastic,  but thats mastering not being a transport.  A transports function is to reproduce the CD bit for bit nothing more.

 

I did a quick setup of the stealth audio player.  It refuses to decode flac for whatever reason, so I had to use wav files.  I guess you need to know DOS.  Anyway it passes the bit-perfect test using ASIO on Win 7X64 EMU0404 PCI with my mother board, etc, etc.  I can't do any quality comparisons today as I am working on my amp.   It is an interesting little program to be so small is an advantage.


Edited by regal - 6/1/10 at 6:24am
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post #213 of 341
6/1/10 at 6:23am

You have to put the flac.dll in the same folder as the stealth audio player,  then it will play flack files anywhere with a right click open with.  Pretty cool.  Back to the putting my amp back together.

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post #214 of 341
6/1/10 at 8:59am

Thanks for all the fascinating information regal!

 

@nick_charles: any developments in your testing?

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post #215 of 341
6/1/10 at 10:41am
Originally Posted by donunus View Post

ulilith does seem grainier than foobar

 

OK, what chunk size if I may ask?

 

like pigeon grain? pigeon-feed-quality.jpg  or finer maybe? tin_fine_grain_02.jpg

 

I start wondering how to measure audio graininess, I'll get back to ya on this!

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post #216 of 341
6/1/10 at 2:54pm

I really think we are going to need help from a hardcore DIYer that is willing to install Twisted Pear Audio's Audio Controller 1 (AC-1)and have it read the sample rate directly from the DAC's DPLL register values. This will tell us exactly what the difference is between OSes, drivers, software players, etc., etc.

 

Here are the two links again about the AC-1:

 

http://www.twistedpearaudio.com/forum/default.aspx?g=topics&f=41

 

http://hifiduino.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/reading-sample-rate/

 

PS: Wish I had the knowledge to implement this myself!

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post #217 of 341
6/1/10 at 3:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by leeperry View Post

 

OK, what chunk size if I may ask?

 

like pigeon grain? pigeon-feed-quality.jpg  or finer maybe? tin_fine_grain_02.jpg

 

I start wondering how to measure audio graininess, I'll get back to ya on this!


It is sort of like a subtle version of those vinyl rips we were talking about. Like comparing a new beatles remaster vs an old vinyl rip. The old vinyls are undoubtedly grainier than the new remasters but are more pleasureable to listen to sometimes. The differences are so subtle here though with the players when using windows 7 that I won't object to anyone saying that it is placebo.

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post #218 of 341
6/1/10 at 3:15pm
Originally Posted by donunus View Post

The differences are so subtle here though with the players when using windows 7

 

Real men use XP. They keep bloating the whole OS since Vista...more background processes doing god knows what sneakily in the background and hogging your system, more bloat in the video department w/ that pesky Aero hogging the VSYNC, more bloat in the audio engine...like forcing you to set a fixed sample rate, now who came up w/ such a retarded idea?? m$ are just doing it wrong, they wanna market the MacOS ppl. Not to blame them, these are the ppl paying for software....they want a dumbed down GUI, m$ delivers.

 

Many ppl prefer KS in XP over WASAPI in W7, duh.

 

W8 should be out soon enough, maybe they won't screw up again...many ppl prefer Vista over W7 too hah. I'm the local admin of my box, I want to control each and every background process running on my system.


Edited by leeperry - 6/1/10 at 3:30pm
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post #219 of 341
6/1/10 at 3:34pm

dunno about the whole bloat thing on the OS front. All I'm saying is that I did notice a difference in sound when changing from OS to OS. xp to vista then to w7. Again, people can call it placebo since I did not do any scientific tests. With XP I thought my players had bigger differences in sound against each other.

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post #220 of 341
6/1/10 at 3:42pm

the differences between players on XP are hard to miss, except for the deaf/nocebo ppl that is[:trofub]

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post #221 of 341
6/1/10 at 4:12pm

and I still rest my case that it's not a matter of the other players sounding "better" than foobar, it's just foobar that's....foobar'ed: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/multimedia/display/asus-xonar_9.html

 Foobar works inaccurately which can be easily demonstrated with measurements.

 

 bit-perfect ASIO in foobar? [:ethnik:3]

 

 The choice of the software player is important for sound cards

 

 you don't say

 

as Michel Audiard made Jean Gabin say in "Les Grandes Familles": "I'm not against apologies, I'm even willing to accept some"

 

http://www.michelaudiard.com/dialogues/dialoguesLesgrandes.htm


Edited by leeperry - 6/1/10 at 4:57pm
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post #222 of 341
6/1/10 at 4:47pm

lol you hack! That test was done with asio 0.9. and the version is at 1.2.7 now.... retest or go find somewhere else to troll

 

this is wrong!

 

Quote:
 Foobar works inaccurately which can be easily demonstrated with measurements.

 

 

 

this is what it actually says!

 

Quote:
the version 0.9 ASIO playback plugin for Foobar works inaccurately which can be easily demonstrated with measurements.

Edited by muad - 6/1/10 at 4:52pm
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post #223 of 341
6/1/10 at 4:49pm

My comparisons by the way were made using wasapi on foobar under w7

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post #224 of 341
6/1/10 at 4:53pm

Im using the same as you, and I don't think I could pass an abx test between ulilith and foobar if the volumes were matched....

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post #225 of 341
6/1/10 at 5:02pm
Originally Posted by muad View Post

That test was done with asio 0.9. and the version is at 1.2.7 now.... retest

 

sorry, I don't use foobar...It makes my ears bleed for some reason [:_jbm]

 

they have to prove that they are finally bit-perfect now(about time?), why should I prove that they aren't? you got it backward my little friend.

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