[LucyWu]

XXhighend is probably "best" with some form of GUI.

Of the mainstream GUI interfaces I'd say Logitech Media Server, Audirvana & JRiver are best compromise of audio quality and useability. Foobar maybe worth investigating as well but LMS is what I would gravitate towards. It's a bit old fashioned but works well, manages libraries of all sizes and allows streaming connectivity.

 

[lost&confused]

For the oldies like me who love winamp
I found this interesting version called WACUP https://getwacup.com/
working radio station stream now also lots of updates

I use the winamp modern skin and "good old winamp" colour

 

[xeizo]

Actually, Foobar 2000 looks to be the one for a normal Windows (10)/11 install without exotic setup. It's in a new 2.0 Beta-version now, compiled using the latest compiler from Microsoft. Add the ASIO plugin, which is now in a 64-bit version, and you're set if you have ASIO drivers (bypasses all Windows audio wizardry). Killer feature is the built in 18-band equalizer which works very well and is audibly transparent, except the altering of the curve, to my ears.

Now running Foobar 2000 -> FLAC -> MOTU M.2 -> SMSL SH-6 -> Sennheiser HD600 and it sounds pristine. Notice my tweaked EQ curve to remove the "Sennheiser veil" which works very well. The HD600 sounds crisper than a HD600 should.

This is all the components I use, the VST plugin is really useful as I can run any VST, like if I want tube sound or whatever. And albumlist is essential, to get hdd catalog tree navigation:

 

[castleofargh]

Actually, Foobar 2000 looks to be the one for a normal Windows (10)/11 install without exotic setup. It's in a new 2.0 Beta-version now, compiled using the latest compiler from Microsoft. Add the ASIO plugin, which is now in a 64-bit version, and you're set if you have ASIO drivers (bypasses all Windows audio wizardry). Killer feature is the built in 18-band equalizer which works very well and is audibly transparent, except the altering of the curve, to my ears.

Now running Foobar 2000 -> FLAC -> MOTU M.2 -> SMSL SH-6 -> Sennheiser HD600 and it sounds pristine. Notice my tweaked EQ curve to remove the "Sennheiser veil" which works very well. The HD600 sounds crisper than a HD600 should.



This is all the components I use, the VST plugin is really useful as I can run any VST, like if I want tube sound or whatever. And albumlist is essential, to get hdd catalog tree navigation:

Thanks to your screenshot I noticed the existence of the vst3 component. I really hoped something like that would finally come to life at some point after the 2.0 beta, but I never dreamed it would come so soon.
Today's a good day.
/castleofargh goes setting his EQ with stupidly high impulse length and padding just because he now can do it without crashing.

 

[eLatte]

I'm a fan of HQ Player for windows.
I use it for DSD files and it integrates well with ROON. It is a very technical player, but to me it sounds the best.

 

[xeizo]

I'm a fan of HQ Player for windows.
I use it for DSD files and it integrates well with ROON. It is a very technical player, but to me it sounds the best.

Nah, I'm doubtful upsampling sounds like snake oil to me, but to each his own

 

[gimmeheadroom]

When i started this thread i did not realise that all? of the best players had no GUI.

What is the best sounding player with a GUI?

foobar, musicbee, audirvana, etc. etc. they all have a gui. not sure what you mean about all the best players not having a gui.

But any bitperfect player will sound the same as all the others.

Actually, Foobar 2000 looks to be the one for a normal Windows (10)/11 install without exotic setup. It's in a new 2.0 Beta-version now, compiled using the latest compiler from Microsoft. Add the ASIO plugin, which is now in a 64-bit version, and you're set if you have ASIO drivers (bypasses all Windows audio wizardry). Killer feature is the built in 18-band equalizer which works very well and is audibly transparent, except the altering of the curve, to my ears.

But, EQ breaks bitperfect. So not much point using ASIO and EQ.

Nah, I'm doubtful upsampling sounds like snake oil to me, but to each his own

It does change the sound. Whether you prefer that or not is a personal thing. Anyway, HQPlayer needs a serious UI makeover and some user-centric doc as opposed to the developer-centric UI and doc it has now.

 

[xeizo]

foobar, musicbee, audirvana, etc. etc. they all have a gui. not sure what you mean about all the best players not having a gui.

But any bitperfect player will sound the same as all the others.



But, EQ breaks bitperfect. So not much point using ASIO and EQ.

Oh, yes it is, as EQ is a very powerful tool and using ASIO means you loose the Windows mixer which is one less source of distorsion. And you can be sure there is no resampling. WASAPI has very little control.

When you use a DAW you use a lot of plugins and do not worry about bitperfect, bitperfect is no special sauce in itself. It's the end result that matters.

 

[eLatte]

Nah, I'm doubtful upsampling sounds like snake oil to me, but to each his own

I use it when streaming and it is not as edgy. I agree partially with your statement. I have a streamer and DAC that has no over sampling mode and I usually prefer it. The sound is as pure as it gets. If the file is on my hard drive I will not oversample it.

 

[castleofargh]

I use it when streaming and it is not as edgy. I agree partially with your statement. I have a streamer and DAC that has no over sampling mode and I usually prefer it. The sound is as pure as it gets. If the file is on my hard drive I will not oversample it.

The file being less manipulated sadly does not mean the output analog signal will be closer to the original. The limitations for the signal go well beyond touching it or not touching it as it's digital and it will have to be transformed anyway. What counts is that the reconstruction of the signal is done most accurately and that often involves many more steps we would intuitively think of as unnecessary or maybe even bad.
For example, it's usually the NOS options that have the lowest overall fidelity. Some because the reconstruction filter lets too much signal get in above the sampled frequency(aliasing), some because ladder designs aren't as linear as we'd like. Often both.


There is a different discussion to be had about oversampling stuff in the computer when it's probably more useful to let the DAC do it at different levels where it's most useful for it. The right answer might be more of a case by case thing. If you have a fully NOS DAC, then you're basically lacking part of what makes digital audio work properly, so just about any oversampling is probably going to help a little. But for a DAC with its own up/oversampling capabilities(nowaday they all have anti jitter, full reclocking and what not), it would be well worth it to measure what comes out with and without "premature oversampling"^_^, instead of relying on common sense for something that's way too complicated to be worked out on intuition.

 

[Cheesebuggah]

Big fan of Foobar2000. While Foobar already claims that the player doesn't improve the sound quality, there are a lot of visualizers, skins, DSP options, and components. One old component that I found was "Noise Sharpening" which basically just increases treble in which increases "perceived detail". I like testing crossfeed programs like: DolbyHeadphone, Stereo Convolver, Bauer Stereo to Binaural, and Meier. It has its own band equalizer that people vouch for (although I don't use EQ and if I did: Peace APO would be my option). There is also a resampler/upsampler that you guys are talking about. ASIO/WASAPI support (I just use whatever Windows uses), DSD support, buffer length, ReplayGain, clipping preventions, ram disk. Just throwing out some random features.

 

[eLatte]

The file being less manipulated sadly does not mean the output analog signal will be closer to the original. The limitations for the signal go well beyond touching it or not touching it as it's digital and it will have to be transformed anyway. What counts is that the reconstruction of the signal is done most accurately and that often involves many more steps we would intuitively think of as unnecessary or maybe even bad.
For example, it's usually the NOS options that have the lowest overall fidelity. Some because the reconstruction filter lets too much signal get in above the sampled frequency(aliasing), some because ladder designs aren't as linear as we'd like. Often both.


There is a different discussion to be had about oversampling stuff in the computer when it's probably more useful to let the DAC do it at different levels where it's most useful for it. The right answer might be more of a case by case thing. If you have a fully NOS DAC, then you're basically lacking part of what makes digital audio work properly, so just about any oversampling is probably going to help a little. But for a DAC with its own up/oversampling capabilities(nowaday they all have anti jitter, full reclocking and what not), it would be well worth it to measure what comes out with and without "premature oversampling"^_^, instead of relying on common sense for something that's way too complicated to be worked out on intuition.

I appreciate the response and I am still learning. This is useful information to know. I know my streamer/player and dac work together. I am certian when streaming it is taking the signal and internally upsampling to 768PCM. The manufacture of the streamer I have is also the manufactures the DAC. I can easily hear a difference in sound using the multiplayer/streamer vs feeding a signal directly from my computer. I prefer the sound of the multiplayer/streamer vs the computer. I purchased a computer to compare to my streamer. I wanted to experiment with HQ Player and upsampling to see how it performs against the multiplayer.
I have come to the conclusion that there is much more going on internally in streamer/multiplayer to achieve the sound. Please forgive my ignorance and I am wanting to always learn more.

 

[castleofargh]

I appreciate the response and I am still learning. This is useful information to know. I know my streamer/player and dac work together. I am certian when streaming it is taking the signal and internally upsampling to 768PCM. The manufacture of the streamer I have is also the manufactures the DAC. I can easily hear a difference in sound using the multiplayer/streamer vs feeding a signal directly from my computer. I prefer the sound of the multiplayer/streamer vs the computer. I purchased a computer to compare to my streamer. I wanted to experiment with HQ Player and upsampling to see how it performs against the multiplayer.
I have come to the conclusion that there is much more going on internally in streamer/multiplayer to achieve the sound. Please forgive my ignorance and I am wanting to always learn more.

Nothing to forgive friend, but I do appreciate that you can read a remark without making it a personal fight to the death. A rare quality on the web nowadays.
My own reply as you saw was far from categorical. For all I know, what you do on your setup could be the best choice.

I only mention the danger of a simple common sense rational applied to complex systems because it plagues in our hobby. You being able to consider that you're not always right is the best learning tool. You'll always be fine with that so long as you don't fall too often for the easy absolutism being fed to us on a daily basis.

 

[ThEvil0nE]

I'm still stuck with VLC

 

[xeizo]

I'm still stuck with VLC

VLC is pretty great as far as I have experienced, most glaring thing missing compared to Foobar 2000 is the lack of plugins which is the killer feature of Foobar. And yes, Foobar can be heavily skinned too, but that doesn't affect the sound