A (better sounding?) alternative to Foobar2000 -OR- A musing in the realm of bit-perfect streaming - Page 6

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

 

Good! now compare Reclock and foobar in WASAPI exclusive, and tell me that they sound perfectly identical to you

But I already did that.

Ive got to agree with leeperry on different player sounding different. I think it's because some players try to make music sound better and fail at it miserably. I was trying out ulilith awhile back and noticed that it sounded incredibly clean compared to foobar. I was sold until I got to my test song "banana pancakes - jack johnson. The beginning of that song has some rain playing very quietly in the back ground and sounds different based on the equipment Im listening to it on. Foobar shows that detail as good as I've ever heard it. Whereas ulilith it sounded very subdued, pushed back smothered. I think the ulilith designers were intentionally drowning out the low level details to make the track sound overall clean and clear, like noise reduction. Maybe they're even doing some eq'ing. Foobar2000 doesn't polish anything, infact it sounds very honest and loyal to the original track. I think thats why some people say that foobar sounds muddier compared to other players. Some of my badly recorded stuff sounds great out of ulilith but the good recordings are losing something....   Pick your poison?

uLilith is bit-perfect, just like Reclock...and their coders don't do any "trick" to change the sound. They're not even really willing to believe that all the bit-perfect players sound different.

What you're hearing prolly has to do w/ the way the player interacts w/ your OS and audio drivers. The XXHighEnd's coder is very mysterious as he doesn't want to kill the golden goose, but he seems to have discovered a lot more than he's willing to share...and he said that the buffer size sent to the windows kernel audio drivers did affect the SQ.

After hearing about reclok, yesterday i download the version 1.867 and the KMPlayer version 1.435, configure reclock for wasapi exclusive bitexact, it's a a little tricky to make it wok, but what i'm hearing now is the best sounding music ever getting out of my computer, better than foobar and stealthplayer , not night and day but better, better dinamics and resolution, i'm going to stay with reclock for a while and eliminate every placebo results, but for now and i'm trying to be as objective as i can i like what i hear from reclock, sounds better than foobar for me.

That's an interesting observation, it sort of piqued my interest...

If im using wasapi out to optical on my sound card, how much of a bearing can the os have?

BTW i was using wasapi on both foobar and ulilith

Forgive my ignorance, but to use Reclock, what do you need aside from the 1.867 release? Does it do kernel streaming and support ALAC files?

I finally made the move from iTunes to Foobar with kernel streaming just a few days ago using the HiFace.

I will restate.  It's going to sound better, the more effort you have to put into it.  That's placebo.

If you want to do a truly blind test, grab someone that isn't familiar with the debate, and subject them to multiple players in a DBT.  I've done it with my roommate, and he found no difference between Reclock/Foobar/uLilith.  I can do a more detailed and ACTUALLY documented one, if you'd like, but it's going to turn up the same.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hybrys 

I will restate.  It's going to sound better, the more effort you have to put into it.  That's placebo.

 

If you want to do a truly blind test, grab someone that isn't familiar with the debate, and subject them to multiple players in a DBT.  I've done it with my roommate, and he found no difference between Reclock/Foobar/uLilith.  I can do a more detailed and ACTUALLY documented one, if you'd like, but it's going to turn up the same.

Sorry but no, not at these level, we need a person with trained ears, a people how nows what to hear, for ordinary people almost everything sound "The Same".
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by JulioCat2 

Sorry but no, not at these level, we need a person with trained ears, a people how nows what to hear, for ordinary people almost everything sound "The Same".
 

'Trained' ears are even more susceptible to the placebo effect because of what they know and what they think they know.  If it truly makes a solid difference,  any one would be able to hear it with a halfway resolving system.

Also, I bet you $1000 I could find a hobo with better hearing than you.  <.<  That's not to say that your hearing is bad, it's to say that you don't have to be 'trained' to have good hearing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hybrys 

'Trained' ears are even more susceptible to the placebo effect because of what they know and what they think they know.  If it truly makes a solid difference,  any one would be able to hear it with a halfway resolving system.

 

Also, I bet you $1000 I could find a hobo with better hearing than you.  <.<  That's not to say that your hearing is bad, it's to say that you don't have to be 'trained' to have good hearing.

I'm not shure about these, people who don't now about good TV's buy the most brilliant and color saturated TV's they can or simple buy by mark, even if they have 20/20 vison.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by JulioCat2 

I'm not shure about these, people who don't now about good TV's buy the most brilliant and color saturated TV's they can or simple buy by mark, even if they have 20/20 vison.
 

Just like people still buy 1080p TVs at sizes smaller than 52", when it doesn't make a difference until that point.

Comparing this to TV shopping has a few flaws.  One, no-one has anything to gain no matter which player we use.  Two, eyes can be deceived easier than your ears, unless you start talking speakers and 'show rooms'.  Three, some people like the look of brilliance or faded blacks.  I KNOW, insane.  Price also factors in heavily.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JulioCat2 

I'm not shure about these, people who don't now about good TV's buy the most brilliant and color saturated TV's they can or simple buy by mark, even if they have 20/20 vison.

Over-saturated TVs look hideous. It doesn't take a TV-watching master to recognize that, just someone without crappy taste. Like Bose vs. some audiophile brand. Even the untrained ear can tell the Bose sounds like crap at comparable prices, but some people with crappy taste will still prefer it.

Or, better analogy: Saturated TVs are like songs heavily processed with DSPs. Sounds impressive if unrealistic, and it's not that there's no noticeable difference.

Originally Posted by Head Injury 

Saturated TVs are like songs heavily processed with DSPs. Sounds impressive if unrealistic, and it's not that there's no noticeable difference.

Up to very recently, the JVC videoprojectors had grossly oversaturated gamuts....they said that they decided to do so because when they ran real world tests, most ppl prefered an oversaturated picture. On their first RS1 model, there wasn't any colorimetry/gamma option either! They would be kind enough to sell you a scaler to fix this issue, but it was very pricey.

I personally like a perfectly calibrated display, and map the gamut to SMPTE-C in order to get the original colors the mastering engineer decided to use...here's a thread about it: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1157652

but you cannot accurately calibrate a display without a $300 Eye One colorimeter, what's the percentage of ppl running a flat screen that use one? Most ppl will choose the most saturated TV when they're in the shop..."oh lookee, the colors are so amazing".

even on AVS, some ppl love those oversaturated colors...they do have a colorimeter, they are well aware that the colors are WAY off but they find the SMPTE-C colors boring: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1038602

you'll never get deep red in SMPTE-C, and the Cars hero will always been dark orangey and never as red as on the movie poster.

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

you'll never get deep red in SMPTE-C

Why is that?

Edit: I think you were referring solely to the context of the movie Cars in retrospect - but to confirm, yes you can indeed get a deep red in SMPTE-C if that's what was intended.