[gLer]

My M11 should be here with me any minute now

So using poweramp gives me the same audio quality as the Fiio Music app? How do I get the paid-for full version on the player without the google store?

Technically no, Poweramp resamples everything to 16/48 (if the output indicator is accurate), but the sound quality is excellent nevertheless. Lately I’ve been warming up to FiiO Music purely because I know everything it plays is native to the dacs, so high-res means high-res. The Poweramp developers and forums have gone very quiet this past week. They added X5iii high-res support with the last build and then they seem to have stopped. Hopefully the guy is just on holiday or something and M11 support will be added soon. Until it is I’m sticking to FiiO Music and my streaming apps.

 

[gLer]

On their website?

Yes.

 

[Mathieulh]

Technically no, Poweramp resamples everything to 16/48 (if the output indicator is accurate), but the sound quality is excellent nevertheless. Lately I’ve been warming up to FiiO Music purely because I know everything it plays is native to the dacs, so high-res means high-res. The Poweramp developers and forums have gone very quiet this past week. They added X5iii high-res support with the last build and then they seem to have stopped. Hopefully the guy is just on holiday or something and M11 support will be added soon. Until it is I’m sticking to FiiO Music and my streaming apps.

Poweramp's "Hi-Res" support isn't much better, they resample/upsample everything to 24bit@512kHz, which makes everything worse. Whoever designs/writes poweramp is a very good UI engineer but not much of a sound engineer or so it seems, at the very least audio quality does not appear to be their priority.

 

[gLer]

Poweramp's "Hi-Res" support isn't much better, they resample/upsample everything to 24bit@512kHz, which makes everything worse. Whoever designs/writes poweramp is a very good UI engineer but not much of a sound engineer or so it seems, at the very least audio quality does not appear to be their priority.

Rather upsample than downsample, especially if you have lots of high-res albums. If done well upsampling doesn’t degrade audio quality - in fact most of the forums for Audirvana (my desktop player of choice) are filled with SoX and Izotope upsampling settings that notably improve output. Poor upsampling/downsampling is problematic, I agree, but to just say upsampling is bad is simply not true.

 

[jmills8]

Very nice dap. Top screen, fast ui, very nice sound, great price, very very portable.

 

[Mathieulh]

Rather upsample than downsample, especially if you have lots of high-res albums. If done well upsampling doesn’t degrade audio quality - in fact most of the forums for Audirvana (my desktop player of choice) are filled with SoX and Izotope upsampling settings that notably improve output. Poor upsampling/downsampling is problematic, I agree, but to just say upsampling is bad is simply not true.

Upsampling (or really just re-sampling in general) will ALWAYS degrade audio quality, due to the properties of low pass filters, that's actual physics, nothing you or I will do can change this fact. Is this change perceptible to your ears? Not necessarily, at least if done right, but everytime you process audio, the quality degrades, upsampling is arguably even worse than downsampling because it adds artefacts to the sound and makes processing more demanding (which on portable devices uses more battery to extract the exact same information).

If I have the choice between upsampled and downsampled to redbook, I'd pick the downsampled version, then again, if I had the choice between resampled and bit perfect, I would always pick the bit perfect sound. I don't buy expensive DAPs to listen to audio using a software player that produces subpar quality audio, no matter how nice the UI looks.

And yes, upsampling is ALWAYS bad, just ask any sound or audio engineer, stating otherwise will just make them laugh.

 

[Hawaiibadboy]

Very nice dap. Top screen, fast ui, very nice sound, great price, very very portable.

That album art....is sick as fu..

 

[jmills8]

That album art....is sick as fu..

Taiwan metal

 

[Hawaiibadboy]

Taiwan metal

Looks like a screenshot from a dream I had after the first time i smoked hash till my throat was dry..(with a ice bong) and wetted my throat with Tequila. Yes....I saw that.
I should give that track a spin.

 

[jmills8]

Looks like a screenshot from a dream I had after the first time i smoked hash till my throat was dry..(with a ice bong) and wetted my throat with Tequila. Yes....I saw that.
I should give that track a spin.

Hes pro weed

 

[gLer]

Upsampling (or really just re-sampling in general) will ALWAYS degrade audio quality, due to the properties of low pass filters, that's actual physics, nothing you or I will do can change this fact. Is this change perceptible to your ears? Not necessarily, at least if done right, but everytime you process audio, the quality degrades, upsampling is arguably even worse than downsampling because it adds artefacts to the sound and makes processing more demanding (which on portable devices uses more battery to extract the exact same information).

If I have the choice between upsampled and downsampled to redbook, I'd pick the downsampled version, then again, if I had the choice between resampled and bit perfect, I would always pick the bit perfect sound. I don't buy expensive DAPs to listen to audio using a software player that produces subpar quality audio, no matter how nice the UI looks.

And yes, upsampling is ALWAYS bad, just ask any sound or audio engineer, stating otherwise will just make them laugh.

Thanks, I'm going to write Damien Plisson (creator of Audirvana) and post a warning to all the highly-experienced audiophiles and engineers on the Audirvana forum to let them know to stop upsampling immediately, regardless of how much better their music sounds that way. Seriously though, opinions are as varied as the equipment we use, but in many cases upsampling is beneficial.

Don't take it from me: "Most, if not all DACs resample internally. Sigma-delta DACs in particular upsample to very high rates. It isn't always possible to know whether the DAC's internal filters have been carefully designed for audio quality or whether they have been designed for economy in manufacturing and power use. In the latter case, upsampling in software can be beneficial because some of the DAC's internal filtering artifacts are moved to outside the audible range."

Read more at https://www.audiostream.com/content...pling-media-player-or-dac#7vYddrbcO1TJse2C.99

 

[Mathieulh]

Thanks, I'm going to write Damien Plisson (creator of Audirvana) and post a warning to all the highly-experienced audiophiles and engineers on the Audirvana forum to let them know to stop upsampling immediately, regardless of how much better their music sounds that way. Seriously though, opinions are as varied as the equipment we use, but in many cases upsampling is beneficial.

Don't take it from me: "Most, if not all DACs resample internally. Sigma-delta DACs in particular upsample to very high rates. It isn't always possible to know whether the DAC's internal filters have been carefully designed for audio quality or whether they have been designed for economy in manufacturing and power use. In the latter case, upsampling in software can be beneficial because some of the DAC's internal filtering artifacts are moved to outside the audible range."

Read more at https://www.audiostream.com/content...pling-media-player-or-dac#7vYddrbcO1TJse2C.99

Seriously, which part of "actual physics" did you not understand?

You CANNOT and WILL NOT make music "sound better" by upsampling a track, no matter how the placebo effect tells you otherwise. You are not adding information from the original Master back into the music when you upsample it. There is no such thing as "opinions are varied as the equipment we use", science itself makes it that it will ALWAYS sound worse, you cannot change the physical properties of sound, you might as well attempt to move faster than the speed of light.

While indeed some (most) DACs internally convert audio (which cannot be technically qualified as upsampling per se, but I digress), this is NOT to improve sound quality, it is done because the digital to analog conversion usually (almost always) involves internal logic gate arrays (in order to speed up processing and save power), because those are expensive (die wise), DAC manufacturers/designers want to use as little of those gate arrays as possible, therefore they process/convert the sound beforehand to fit the DAC logic's requirements (they usually go for something very close/similar (but not strictly identical) to DSD with 1 (or up to 5 in some cases) bit streams), this has nothing to do with making audio sound better, in fact it sacrifices on sound quality (because let's face it, conversion always degrades sound, by design) in order to save on power, heat dissipation and clock cycles, while those DAC internal operations are usually unavoidable (short of changing your DAC/Device or designing your own DAC, which may/will have other tradeoffs), you (and anyone else) would want to avoid adding unnecessary post processing steps to your audio as (as I have said, and as sound engineers and physicists know), it WILL always technically sound worse for EACH post processing step you add (unless it's a bit perfect step, but I digress), there is no such thing as a perfect conversion (especially not when changing the bit/sample rate) and there cannot be such a thing, ever.

You (and/or others) may want to stand against the laws of physics to suit whatver makes you feel better, that does not change facts.

Please study on sound engineering before posting what is essentially nonsense.

 

[gLer]

Seriously, which part of "actual physics" did you not understand?

You CANNOT and WILL NOT make music "sound better" by upsampling a track, no matter how the placebo effect tells you otherwise. You are not adding information from the original Master back into the music when you upsample it. There is no such thing as "opinions are varied as the equipment we use", science itself makes it that it will ALWAYS sound worse, you cannot change the physical properties of sound, you might as well attempt to move faster than the speed of light.

While indeed some (most) DACs internally convert audio (which cannot be technically qualified as upsampling per se, but I digress), this is NOT to improve sound quality, it is done because the digital to analog conversion usually (almost always) involves internal logic gate arrays (in order to speed up processing and save power), because those are expensive (die wise), DAC manufacturers/designers want to use as little of those gate arrays as possible, therefore they process/convert the sound beforehand to fit the DAC logic's requirements (they usually go for something very close/similar (but not strictly identical) to DSD with 1 (or up to 5 in some cases) bit streams), this has nothing to do with making audio sound better, in fact it sacrifices on sound quality (because let's face it, conversion always degrades sound, by design) in order to save on power, heat dissipation and clock cycles, while those DAC internal operations are usually unavoidable (short of changing your DAC/Device or designing your own DAC, which may/will have other tradeoffs), you (and anyone else) would want to avoid adding unnecessary post processing steps to your audio as (as I have said, and as sound engineers and physicists know), it WILL always technically sound worse for EACH post processing step you add (unless it's a bit perfect step, but I digress), there is no such thing as a perfect conversion (especially not when changing the bit/sample rate) and there cannot be such a thing, ever.

You (and/or others) may want to stand against the laws of physics to suit whatver makes you feel better, that does not change facts.

Please study on sound engineering before posting what is essentially nonsense.

All good and well. So each and every one of the people on that link, who are far more knowledgeable than me, are wrong? All the upsampling algorithms built into the best available playback software is a waste of time and in fact BAD for your music playback?

Just wanted to be clear that you’re saying you’re right and everyone else is wrong.

 

[Mathieulh]

All good and well. So each and every one of the people on that link, who are far more knowledgeable than me, are wrong? All the upsampling algorithms built into the best available playback software is a waste of time and in fact BAD for your music playback?

Just wanted to be clear that you’re saying you’re right and everyone else is wrong.

I am guessing because those people write something (with no agenda whatsoever! Because, of course, audionirvana, Jriver staff et al. are definitely not attempting to sell you a product, right?) they are (and will be) always right, and their word gospel, the laws of physics be damned!

Also those people do not fit the definition of "everyone else". I wonder what unbiased sound engineers would think about that, I am fairly certain they wouldn't be part of your "everyone else" group.

Here is a fun fact about the "best available playback software"; it turns out the authors of some of these software are more honest than others, below is a screenshot of USB Audio Player Pro's setting page, notice the comment in the Upsample settings.

 

[DjBobby]

deleted.