[leeperry]

kk, well I tried the demo and it sounded reverb'ed as hell..and I was looking again for that post from Peter on computeraudiophile.com(the most smokey HTPC site on the web) where he was clearly saying that his player was doing major PP.

I could only find one of his posts where he says that ASIO has a very distinctive sound....the reason why he explored WASAPI for his player. the man cannot stand the ASIO "sound"

nitpicking about op-amps has reached a whole new level: nitpicking about bit-perfect audio renderers.

 

[dugq]

"computeraudiophile.com(the most smokey HTPC site on the web)"

Funny you should say that. I was reading a discussion today about how copying a file to a different drive, and then back again, degrades the sound quality, even if both files maintain the same checksums. Lot's of audiophiles had confirmed the issue

Dampening helps to relieve the problem.

Does anyone get nostalgic about the good old days of computer audio? When all you had to do was install foobar, asio and you were good to go.

 

[haloxt]

dugq, link? From what I've read on that website I haven't witnessed what you are saying about computeraudiophile.com.

 

[dugq]

CD Japan to server | Computer Audiophile

 

[haloxt]

Luckily most of the posters there disagree with that idea, it's only a few people making the claims, primarily SandyK. I'd like to see if they could ABX it before I believe them because some of them seem quite confident to be able to hear the difference. Even if they report they can't ABX it it'd be useful info, they're being too vocal about something so unconventional.

 

[leeperry]

bahahaha "i hv quite a number of SHM-CD rips. one is able to hear the diff after they've been ripped."

they use the SAME exact mastering(excellent one of course, like only the Japanese can make them these days), only the polycabornate is different. I've put my hands on several CD/SHM-CD combos, I've ripped them w/ EAC then ran a full CRC check w/ CDCheck(not just a MD5 sum), they were 100% bit-for-bit identical! this website is just a major source of utter bs.

Quote:

as well as ALSO sounding better when played back from the HDD after ripping using E.A.C. (!) This is despite both lots of ripped .wav files having identical check sums.

right!

I also remember reading there some guy saying that EAC rips are full of jitter, because the same discs ripped w/ iTunes "sound" better...this site can't be real. he went up to saying that CRC/MD5 checking cannot measure jitter!

 

[haloxt]

The views expressed in this dissertation are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force. Back on topic before this topic gets moved to the sound stupid forum. I know it's fun to diss things but please, you're making this thread worthless.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by haloxt /img/forum/go_quote.gif The views expressed in this dissertation are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force. Back on topic before this topic gets moved to the sound stupid forum. I know it's fun to diss things but please, you're making this thread worthless.

Have you compared this player to others, what do you find for sound quality?

 

[skeptic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX /img/forum/go_quote.gif Have you compared this player to others, what do you find for sound quality?

Honestly...earlier today, I took the same track and went back and forth between cplay (ASIO) and foobar (KS) about 50 times. In so doing, I compared subsections of the track, a stanza here, a refrain there, back and forth, back and forth. Through the setup in my signature, the playback was identical.

I thought (perhaps wanted to believe) that I heard subtle differences at first...that a piece of freeware might have improved my setup and listening experience. But the more I went back and forth, the more convinced I have become that there was no difference....at least to these ears. YMMV

 

[haloxt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX /img/forum/go_quote.gif Have you compared this player to others, what do you find for sound quality?

I haven't tried yet except through my monitor's built-in down-aiming ghetto speakers

. Using those speakers cplay did remind me of wavelab, which I think is the best ASIO implementation, but I'll have to use my main setup to really know. Since it's in my bedroom room it's a little bit of a hassle but sometime next week I'll do it to compare cplay vs. foobar+otachan vs. mediamonkey+otachan vs. wavelab, and also test cmp vs. non-cmp if Vista doesn't crash while I'm switching.

Also, it can be very difficult to hear a difference or maybe even impossible with certain gear. Not that they aren't detailed, but because they have a sound signature that is too musical or enjoyable for you to focus on flaws. I used to have to listen for hours to understand the difference between asio's with my HFI-2200, but it pops out quite readily with the pro 900.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Maybe I will give it a try. I use a few audio players and have yet to try this one out.

Thx for the opinions guys.

 

[haloxt]

My setup for testing was regular surge protector>stock dell desktop computer>$10 9ft. cables to go velocity series usb cable>usb-audio.com asio software with pcm2707 drivers going to my headphone setup in my profile. Almost three hours of the same song (still listening to it ^^) and found that:

foobar+otachan was pretty off from neutral due to too much emphasis on highs and confused and anemic bass, but details on many things

mediamonkey+otachan was balanced but sometimes became rather sloppy at weird times

windows media player+ ASIOWmpPlg is balanced like mediamonkey but less sloppy.

cplay alone is a bit better than mediamonkey+otachan and wmp and close to wavelab but on rare occasions it sounds strange on the bass

cplay+cmp without any tweaking except what's available inside cplay's and cmp's settings sounds about the same as wavelab, maybe even more neutral and crisp, can't be certain because every time I tried it and exited, windows had to be restarted

.

wavelab has balanced written all over it with no sounds sounding confused after many runs over the same song. It presents things so smoothly and continuously you just want to listen forever to the same song.

I really like both cmp+cplay and wavelab, haven't decided which I like best because I have to restart too much with cmp+cplay but I would not be surprised if cmp+cplay was better, right now I get a strong feeling that cmp+cplay has more crisp detail, but wavelab does have a sense of continuity to it which I really find enjoyable, and both are certainly superior to my iriver h120's optical output with glass toslink, which I think is just slightly above foobar and mediamonkey.

edit: hmm cmp+cplay just put my computer into limbo land and I can't alt+ctrl delete to restart the computer

. Well just wanted to add the reason I didn't put the computer on the power conditioner because I noticed it made all the asio's sound closer to each other, and I didn't test optical from my sound card because I just tried it and got a lot of static, fried my sound card from putting single channel opamps into dual channel sockets

. But darn, usb sounds good, I really wonder what happens if I tried optical.

 

[ROBSCIX]

I like the idea of people writing audio players for serious audio lovers.
Although, I think some would say we still don't have exactly what we need yet in terms of software.

There is this player, the High end player..etc.
What do you think HaloXT?

 

[haloxt]

It's not free so I can't try it

. But honestly I won't be able to say it is better or worse than cmp+cplay because they both have an almost infinite number of settings and hardware upgrades and windows optimizations they want you to do to get the most out of pc as transport. I don't have the attention span to figure all that out. I do know once you put the computer on a power conditioner all the software and asio's sound much closer to wavelab or cmp so I don't mind too much.

 

[ROBSCIX]

I am not saying which is better as I have not spent much time with either player...
Just mentioning, I like the idea of players designed specifically for audio nuts..