Best Computer Audio Player Software?

[Music Alchemist]

  Seems like both of you can benefit from Fidelizer. I use that on my music only PC and liked it so much I paid for it and use the purist version. For a PC that will be used for different purposes, there are several levels of enhancements that you could choose from to keep needed functionality. The free version resets to no changes on reboot. The paid version can be reset among the different levels, or have all changes removed upon uninstallation.
 
 Another alternative is a raspberry pi with either a digi+pro hat or wait for wait for a similiar but possibly better hat from PI 2 Design. These would stream from a network, wifi or ethernet. At around 100 bucks, a little more if you upgrade power supplies, you may be impressed..I am waiting for the new hat from PI 2 Design and I will compare against my Bughead, Win10 and the chain in my sig.

 
I have a lot of experience with the free version of Fidelizer. It did not make an audible improvement on my computer. (Nor did Bug Head Emperor / Infinity Blade, JPLAY, etc.)
 
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2015/08/measurements-audiophile-sound-and.html
 
Also, Fidelizer does not improve stuttering on my computer. If anything, it makes it worse. (It can even make music stutter when the files are loaded into RAM!)
 
I would like to experiment with network players and music servers, but only after I have headphones that cost $4,000 and up. The ones I have my eye on are:
 
http://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english/shop/sms-200/
https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/collections/audio-server/products/sonictransporter-i5
 
(The first one is because it beat the Sonore microRendu and even stuff that costs five figures in various comparisons.)

 

[jcn3]

i use fidelizer pro on my dedicated intel nuc -- it's a great piece of software and a no-brainer especially given its price.  backgrounds are blacker and textures are much richer.  i've never had any problems with stutter.  highly recommended!

 

[TopQuark]

SOtM sMS-200 + Roon 1.3 is a match made in heaven.  This is where my vote go.

 

[jcn3]

  SOtM sMS-200 + Roon 1.3 is a match made in heaven.  This is where my vote go.

 
do you have roon 1.3 working?  it was only released several hours ago.

 

[Redcarmoose]

When you said lag, did you mean stuttering? Like the music frequently stops and starts again instead of playing continuously?

This is something many have experienced under certain conditions. I posted before about having stuttering with various players. In my case, programming foobar2000 to load tracks into memory before starting playback fixed it, for the most part. When that doesn't work, I can load tracks into virtual RAM drives. This is necessary on my computer with DSD256 files. Even with the DSD files stored in virtual RAM drives, it still stutters if I do other things on the computer. I have to sit there and only listen to music with those, whereas with PCM files, I can do anything else I want nearly all the time.

Seems like both of you can benefit from Fidelizer. I use that on my music only PC and liked it so much I paid for it and use the purist version. For a PC that will be used for different purposes, there are several levels of enhancements that you could choose from to keep needed functionality. The free version resets to no changes on reboot. The paid version can be reset among the different levels, or have all changes removed upon uninstallation.

 Another alternative is a raspberry pi with either a digi+pro hat or wait for wait for a similiar but possibly better hat from PI 2 Design. These would stream from a network, wifi or ethernet. At around 100 bucks, a little more if you upgrade power supplies, you may be impressed..I am waiting for the new hat from PI 2 Design and I will compare against my Bughead, Win10 and the chain in my sig.

Short‑term timing variations between one clock period and the next can result in a distorted waveform.

My issues I used to call lag were in hindsight maybe a form of jitter like shown above?






Wasapi really did fix it. I like my set-ups now.

Hard to describe what I mean by jitter/lag. No I'm not talking about skips, like buffer under-runs. The lag sound was like the music was not exactly in time. Like the parts of the song were not in time with the rest of the notes. Like almost lagging behind. It's a sound I have never heard before or since with any of my equipment. It was totally there and noticeable, not like a placebo thing from going from a CD player to computer. It was when I used Apple or PC?

Nowadays too, we are light years from all the issues around in 2010. Funny too as IT WAS 7 years ago.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/493152/low-jitter-usb-dan-lavry-michael-goodman-adaptive-asynchronous
http://www.head-fi.org/t/622112/problems-with-asynchronous-usb-dac
http://www.head-fi.org/t/542410/the-difference-of-synchronous-and-asynchronous-dacs-slightly-technical

Literally people didn't know if asynchronous or synchronous DACs were better in 2012. Head-Fi was developing. Even now I'm sure there are people using synchronous USB DAC but like how stuff is implemented. It's just now most everything is asynchronous and easy to use.

Also people had issues with their hardware. In 2012 if people had trouble getting stuff to sound correct, many times it affected the popularity of a brand. Reading back there was issues with USB 1 only allowing so many bit rates and so on.

A perfect example was the early users who didn't get their setting correct for the Cambridge Audio DACMagic. While everyone thought they had everything set up correct, whole reviews were written and equipment judged by setting less than optimal.

It seems today things are just so much better and less confusing all across the board?

 

[TopQuark]

   
do you have roon 1.3 working?  it was only released several hours ago.

Yes, I got it installed and working flawlessly.  It is one of the best investment I made in my system.

 

[TheAttorney]

  SOtM sMS-200 + Roon 1.3 is a match made in heaven.  This is where my vote go.

Did you notice an differences in SQ between Roon 1.2 and 1.3 when used with your SotM? This before switching on any of the new DSP features in 1.3.
I won't be able to try myself (with my microRendu) until the weekend.  

 

[Buellerich]

I know the blog about measurements regarding player software. The question is if every sound difference we perceive must be measurable.
As far as I am concerned I perceive differences among not all, but some players. I could not hear differences between AIMP and Foobar, but JPLAY 6.2 definitely sounds different on my setup.
Will try the Russion Album player and Resonic next.

 

[TopQuark]

 
Did you notice an differences in SQ between Roon 1.2 and 1.3 when used with your SotM? This before switching on any of the new DSP features in 1.3.
I won't be able to try myself (with my microRendu) until the weekend.  

I didn't hear any difference between 1.2 and 1.3 using the same set-up. Slight difference in 1.3 having speedier delivery. Big change is in the DSP of 1.3.

 

[a1uc]

Anyone know why DSP don't show up on iPhone app
but it does on iPad ?

 

[conflict0102]

Anyone else use foobar2000 as their main player for windows?

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Anyone else use foobar2000 as their main player for windows?

 
I think most members here do.
 
It's nice that there are custom skins available, but I just use the default one. haha

 

[Redcarmoose]

I think most members here do.

It's nice that there are custom skins available, but I just use the default one. haha

Haha, I know the plain Jayne original default is easy to read. After all these years it's nice. Most of us don't use 99% of what Foobar2000 can do.

But for me it does everything with ease. Feed it 8Gb of mp3s and it puts them up and plays them.

The Foobar2000 Resolute sounds great in my Android and iOS players, though has some small hicups. Seems to look good in black on small screens.

 

[N0sferatu]

Currently I use AIMP3.
 
Used to be a WinAMP die hard since the late 90s.  Then I moved to foobar2k for a bit.  I missed the music app being a small portion of the desktop (whereas most applications today take up the entire screen).  AIMP3 has WASAPI output, sounds great to me, and looks as close to what WinAMP looked like.  

 

[Music Alchemist]

I missed the music app being a small portion of the desktop (whereas most applications today take up the entire screen).

 
You can resize them to anything you want.