[Balisarda]

J. River Media Center appears to be a more-efficient player than fubar2000. On my laptop, Media Center requires only a third the buffer offset of foobar2000 for clean playback.

Both Media Center 12.0.451 and fubar2000 0.9.5.1 are configured on my laptop. Both players are set to ASIO playback using ASIO4ALL v2.8 with minimum buffering (100 ms). ASIO4ALL is set to its minimum ASIO buffer (64 samples) and minimum latency compensation (0 samples).

The Echo Indigo DJ cardbus sound card supports ASIO hardware buffering. Media Center produces clean playback with a 2ms buffer offset. foobar2000 requires a 6ms buffer offset. That's three times the buffer offset!

If you run foobar2000 you needn't rush to purchase Media Center, however, because the greater buffer offset does not seem to affect sound quality. I listened to numerous cuts of familiar music in an A-B-A-B-A-B fashion and heard no difference whatsoever.

Media Center does not seem to achieve its superior efficiency by using greater system resources than foobar2000. Running only Media Center, foobar2000, and Windows Task Manager (‘Performance’ tab), I observed CPU and memory usage while playing the same music from each player in an alternating fashion. I found no repeatable differences.

Happy listening,
Eric.

 

[jiiteepee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balisarda /img/forum/go_quote.gif J. River Media Center appears to be a more-efficient player than fubar2000. On my laptop, Media Center requires only a third the buffer offset of foobar2000 for clean playback. Both Media Center 12.0.451 and fubar2000 0.9.5.1 are configured on my laptop. Both players are set to ASIO playback using ASIO4ALL v2 with minimum buffering (100 ms). ASIO4ALL is set to its minimum ASIO buffer (64 samples) and minimum latency compensation (0 samples). The Echo Indigo DJ cardbus sound card supports ASIO hardware buffering. Media Center produces clean playback with a 2ms buffer offset. foobar2000 requires a 6ms buffer offset. That's three times the buffer offset! If you run foobar2000 you needn't rush to purchase Media Center, however, because the greater buffer offset does not seem to affect sound quality. I listened to numerous cuts of familiar music in an A-B-A-B-A-B fashion and heard no difference whatsoever. Media Center does not seem to achieve its superior efficiency by using greater system resources than foobar2000. Running only Media Center, foobar2000, and Windows Task Manager (‘Performance’ tab), I observed CPU and memory usage while playing the same music from each player in an alternating fashion. I found no repeatable differences. Happy listening, Eric.

1st, if you're using asio4All .. you aren't in native ASIO mode then but stream through WDM or WDM/KS functions.

2nd, if you're using Asio4all up to 2.7 then reported latency is wrong (you can add couple of ms's into your results ... (loopback) 5ms is actually 8.2ms ) ~.. the v. 2.8 shows up the "right" latency value.

3rd, why foobar is worse in this ... maybe it's because of, it uses a plug-in to support ASIO ... what that means is just that there's another looped buffer I/O routine (w/ all needed checks) ... this 'stage' needs to be very well implemented to get avoided those common issues it may bring with when weak design and implementation is used (it may become CPU intensive process - other simultaneous activities are harmful for audio streams then (open application windows, file copy, network activity, etc.)). As asio4all is another loop routine, you maybe get better results from foobar when using Indigo's native ASIO drivers.

jiitee

 

[Balisarda]

Thanks for your comments!

I am using ASIO4ALL v2.8. I've corrected my original post.

Your suggestion that foobar2000's greater buffer requirement is because it uses an ASIO plug-in sounds eminently reasonable.

I was disheartened to learn that I'm not using native ASIO. Can you tell me how I can?

Best,
Eric.

 

[jiiteepee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balisarda /img/forum/go_quote.gif ... I was disheartened to learn that I'm not using native ASIO. Can you tell me how I can? Best, Eric.

Just select the ECHO Indigo ASIO driver on ASIO capable software (in your case, on Media Center). Foobar isn't natively ASIO capable software.

jiitee