[DAPpower]

I wish Audirvana had a way to add album tags. This is one of my favorite Roon features. It allows me to easily sort my hundreds of classical albums. If Audirvana had this feature, I think it'd be no contest which one I would choose.

You mean for sorting or just to tag your favorite albums?

You can tag each and every album so you can access them in your "Favorite Albums" tab for quick access.

 

[DAPpower]

@Audiophiliac

Btw, there is a legacy version of Audirvana called Audirvana 3.5 and it is basically a lifetime install (not subscription) which has streaming services linked but it is no longer updated and lacks the many interface bells and whistles of the current Audirvana player versions.

Back when I used 3.5, it was the best sounding player I could find, but the UI was lacking.

I now use Audirvana Origin (which is a lifetime model) because I don't do streaming.

 

[GlenAppleton]

MS needs to learn to ASIO output all audio by default, if they want us to think it should be them.

I'm guessing that would be a support nightmare, given that ASIO drivers are written and shipped by the hardware manufacturers of the DACs. Not defending MS, just being real about long term support. Besides, between ASIO and Kernel mode on my (Windows 11 Pro) computer, Kernel sounds cleaner to my ears. My guess is there's really no difference and it's my own bias, given both address the hardware directly in some manner.

 

[Audiophiliac]

@Audiophiliac

Btw, there is a legacy version of Audirvana called Audirvana 3.5 and it is basically a lifetime install (not subscription) which has streaming services linked but it is no longer updated and lacks the many interface bells and whistles of the current Audirvana player versions.

Back when I used 3.5, it was the best sounding player I could find, but the UI was lacking.

I now use Audirvana Origin (which is a lifetime model) because I don't do streaming.

Yeah, it's good that they have the player-only version available for purchase. However, I spend the greater amount of time listening to newer stuff I don't have on my huge streamer's library. I won't be buying most of it, but how can I complain when it's almost as good as having the files, with the studio version? What I would really love, is for a player to download and uncompress the file ahead of time to a temporary file on a hard drive, and then play that.
Switching back to kernel streaming, yeah, it's obviously fake, although less than WASAPI. Back to ASIO, Tool is obviously trying to make a big racket with their instruments. Oh boy, someone won't like that.

 

[Audiophiliac]

I'm guessing that would be a support nightmare, given that ASIO drivers are written and shipped by the hardware manufacturers of the DACs. Not defending MS, just being real about long term support. Besides, between ASIO and Kernel mode on my (Windows 11 Pro) computer, Kernel sounds cleaner to my ears. My guess is there's really no difference and it's my own bias, given both address the hardware directly in some manner.

But my DAC only needs a driver for MS. It just gets one from Mac and Linux automatically, and works.
Don't say ks sounds cleaner, and then say you doubt there's a difference. You should be right about which is better, and want to have to use that one for accuracy.
ASIO sounds unaltered, but like there's somehow less there. I guess I can see why that would be the correct presentation. There's nothing to complain about there being little of. Actually, now I could turn it up more without it sounding too loud. No, that's not a racket, there's hardly anything going on in the sound.

 

[marekm]

Audirvana and Roon are expensive (for me), so my question to the users: should I consider them (Roon / Audirvana) if I only use Tidal over USB from MacBook (no local files, no multi-room, etc.) ?

One additional point: at my age any "lifetime" licence is by definition of questionable value.

 

[GlenAppleton]

Audirvana and Roon are expensive (for me), so my question to the users: should I consider them (Roon / Audirvana) if I only use Tidal over USB from MacBook (no local files, no multi-room, etc.) ?

I believe there's still a free trial period to try it out, and if so, use your own ears to determine it's worth. I have the yearly subscription to save a few $$$, and I find it to be very worth the price of admission for Qobuz streaming content.

 

[Audiophiliac]

Audirvana and Roon are expensive (for me), so my question to the users: should I consider them (Roon / Audirvana) if I only use Tidal over USB from MacBook (no local files, no multi-room, etc.) ?

I'm a Tidal customer also, and their default player is the least bad of all streamer's players, except for Qobuz, which is actually not too bad. If I just pay the $10 per month, I get huge bonus by having the best player play my Tidal also, while it can be exclusive. I'm totally spoiled with Audirvana streaming also. I'm just getting bothered about the cost of $10/month for the rest of my life.

 

[marekm]

Yeah, with all these subscriptions, dying early becomes a compelling alternative

 

[Audiophiliac]

No way, now that I hear what all my expensive gear setup does compared to what I started with, it's ridiculous how cheap it is to get a much better reference than I ever hear anywhere else. I do need to hang around more guys who have a lot more money than me, though, to be realistic. But even if you don't spend as much as the supercar, that $300k setup still couldn't be too bad. I'm going to be stupid if I ever get the $6k headphones. If you don't mind using Sonarworks EQ or an equivalent measured exactly correction, the original HD800 show why they must have had such a hard time beating them at everything besides EQ for a long way up in money. If you're dedicated listening, the Sonarworks plugin footprint is unnoticeable compared to the systemwide correction.

 

[Audiophiliac]

Except for Qobuz, all players would sound like the companies just hired a guy to color the output for them. Qobuz only had like 3 pages of stuff to browse, then I had to have heard of it before. My weekly single playlist never had anything that had anything to do with what I liked. Tidal gives me 8 different custom playlists, more than once a week. Tidal's higher res plan is a scam, they MQA files so that they can charge double but still only send 44.1khz. They say they fold the up to 192 into the 44.1, and you need a cheap chip to decode it to the stated higher bitrate that even shows on the meter that it measures like fake upsampled crap. Qobuz plays the higher res tracks unadulterated, and immediately sound like clean higher res. Someone said Tidal is switching back to normal higher res, because thankfully MQA declared bankruptcy, so I cancelled Qobuz, and went back to Tidal higher rez, but it's still all MQA, and it sucks. I really want the 8 playlists, though. Thank Audirvana for this thread. My Tidal currently at 44.1 can sound really good. Actually, it's getting really difficult to complain about my source for new unknown tracks not sounding as good as my best playback device playing my favorite tracks I bought on the hard drive. I don't know how they expect that to work out for all the musicians. I'll just keep buying the ones I like the best, I guess. It won't be matched for exact playback until the player software downloads ahead of time, decompresses to a hard drive, and then plays that. Which they could be doing...
It would be too good to be true, broadcasts that play the actual best copy on your best gear.

 

[KaiFi]

You mean for sorting or just to tag your favorite albums?

You can tag each and every album so you can access them in your "Favorite Albums" tab for quick access.

I meant for sorting, yeah. With Roon you can add any number of custom-made tags to an album. So I can tag an album with "string quartets", "Debussy", "Ravel", and then click "Tags" to view all albums with each tag. It's a pretty amazing feature. I didn't realize how useful I found it. So without that it's hard for me to want to use Audirvana, because then each time I'm just scrolling through a long list of hundreds of albums. This allows me to create smaller lists in certain categories.

 

[AudioPowerHead]

For those who are on Audirvāna Studio or Origin, which upsampling algorithm do you prefer ? I know r8 brain is supposed to be the newer and possibly better option vs SOX but it somehow has reduced staging effect and mids are relatively less forward. For sure it’s a matter of personal preference and audio chain set up and I prefer SOX surprisingly. And music seems more alive (no pre-ringing) with min phase vs linear.

 

[DAPpower]

For those who are on Audirvāna Studio or Origin, which upsampling algorithm do you prefer ? I know r8 brain is supposed to be the newer and possibly better option vs SOX but it somehow has reduced staging effect and mids are relatively less forward. For sure it’s a matter of personal preference and audio chain set up and I prefer SOX surprisingly. And music seems more alive (no pre-ringing) with min phase vs linear.

*Audirvarna Origin user

It depends on the synergy with my audio gear, if the end result tonality is a bit too in my face or too forward overall I use (2x) r8brain with default values and it should be in Linear mode.


With my gear I noticed that the highest PCM rate upsample tends to roll off the highs the most and the music may sound very DSD-like and more "analog".
I use 2X PCM so it retains some dynamics.


Ultimately this will come down to your preference of tonality and how it sounds with your audio chain since every component you have will affect the tonality in some way.

I used to use min-phase but ultimately went back to linear mode which I feel is how it was intended to be listened to.
You can manipulate the staging by adjusting the Nyquist % with the slider, by default it is set to 99% (previously 95%), why don't you adjust it to 95% and see if that increases headroom for you?

 

[AudioPowerHead]

*Audirvarna Origin user

It depends on the synergy with my audio gear, if the end result tonality is a bit too in my face or too forward overall I use (2x) r8brain with default values and it should be in Linear mode.


With my gear I noticed that the highest PCM rate upsample tends to roll off the highs the most and the music may sound very DSD-like and more "analog".
I use 2X PCM so it retains some dynamics.


Ultimately this will come down to your preference of tonality and how it sounds with your audio chain since every component you have will affect the tonality in some way.

I used to use min-phase but ultimately went back to linear mode which I feel is how it was intended to be listened to.
You can manipulate the staging by adjusting the Nyquist % with the slider, by default it is set to 99% (previously 95%), why don't you adjust it to 95% and see if that increases headroom for you?

Thanks for sharing your experience. Mine is already set at 95% on Nyquist
Maybe I’ll try 88-90%.

Am currently using “Max Device Frequency”. Is (2x) the better way to go ? I previously used (2x) with Audirvana and then max it to 24/192 using my LP RS05, but notice little difference so I switched to Max Device Freq instead.