[airpodmkii]

I use ONKYO R695 connected via HDMI to my Nvidia 2080ti using Dolby ATMOS with Monoprice Immersive Satellite Speakers in the front and Polk T15s in the back. ONKYO sub and center channel

I'm temped to buy Audirvana, Flac and MP4s sound great on it and the best "audiophile" music player i've heard right now and nearly tried them all.

$75 is a lot considering its not packed with features. Anything else worth looking at before I press the buy button? lol

have you tried foobar2000

 

[daid1]

I usually use Musicbee, I have also Foobar2000 and Winyl and with Wasapi in exclusive mode, to me, on my system, they sound all the same, out of curiosity I tried also Qctahedron, is like the Wasapi version of Bughead, and I think the music became more clear and the instrument are more in focus, is the only software tried for now that I can say sound different from the others, but is a pain in the ass to use it, if you are used with the other software

if someone tried Bughead, Nontallion, Qctahedron, or PinkHQ, I will be curious to see if it is only an impression of mine or they sound really different from the others, I don't have unfortunately any experience to measure scientifically to see if there is any real difference, only my hears

 

[adydula]

Jriver MC 24 or Foobar 2000

JRiver is audiophile, bit perfect WASAPI etc....easy to use. Great interface. I dont updat all the time. Only when there is something that means something to me....Been on 24 level for a few years. No issues.

Foobar, a more complex player, but sounds exactly like Jriver, no real differences. Lots of versatility but you need to know what your doing and how to implement. Adding plugins etc may impact the bit perfect flow if you dont understand what your doing. Some issues with compatibily wit certain dacs, hangs, stop playing and popping intermittents...mainly with WASAPI event....things that I have never experienced with JRver...

IMO JRIver is worth the initial cost....

Alex

 

[manueljenkin]

I usually use Musicbee, I have also Foobar2000 and Winyl and with Wasapi in exclusive mode, to me, on my system, they sound all the same, out of curiosity I tried also Qctahedron, is like the Wasapi version of Bughead, and I think the music became more clear and the instrument are more in focus, is the only software tried for now that I can say sound different from the others, but is a pain in the ass to use it, if you are used with the other software

if someone tried Bughead, Nontallion, Qctahedron, or PinkHQ, I will be curious to see if it is only an impression of mine or they sound really different from the others, I don't have unfortunately any experience to measure scientifically to see if there is any real difference, only my hears

I would like to say that I have heard differences in nearly every player I have tried. The ones that sound "similar" are the ones that use bass audio library and even there, there are differences (that get more profound when you have mismatched buffer settings).

And yes I have heard pinkHQ, and have also used minority clean. They sound different, but I can't say they are completely superior to winyl as stock. Better in some areas, but unsure if they are better or worse in some other.

I would also recommend to try albumplayer (from a Russian website) if you haven't heard it yet.

Out of curiosity, have you installed the necessary drivers for your dac? If not they typically act in isosynchronous mode, which is inferior and less resolving (can mask a lot of things).

 

[marcelnl]

On Windows (7 and 10) I have been using PurePlayer, a DIY player made by a member of DIYAudio forum long ago, it outperformed all of the players I tried and only benefitted marginally from Fidelizer. The biggest jump in SQ was going to Daphile (Linux, I know...) on a dedicated old laptop, revived using a new SSD drive.

 

[someyoungguy]

I used Foobar for years, then finally experimented with Fidelizer (free version) and Audirvana this year. Didn’t really gel with the sound from Fidelizer - it made music brighter in a way that I wasn’t that fond of - so I didn’t buy the full version. Not sure how the free vs full versions differ in terms of sound.

But Audirvana impressed me, noticeable difference in sound from Foobar and in a direction I felt was an improvement. It’s now the only thing I use for music from my laptop. Nice simple interface and music library management too.

 

[manueljenkin]

On Windows (7 and 10) I have been using PurePlayer, a DIY player made by a member of DIYAudio forum long ago, it outperformed all of the players I tried and only benefitted marginally from Fidelizer. The biggest jump in SQ was going to Daphile (Linux, I know...) on a dedicated old laptop, revived using a new SSD drive.

Hi. Can you help me with pure player link? I came across the place a few months ago when looking at ap-linux (the developer commented that he loved ap-linux). Tried searching for the player but couldn't find it.

I will be installing ap-linux on my pc soon, but curious to know if you've compared daphile against ap-linux. I have an image of daphile also ready but I am trying ap-linux first coz I typically trust diy guys (and pureplayer designer liked ap-linux).

 

[xeizo]

The writer of Pure Player seem to have disappeared from the net in 2014, all links are dead. Noone looks to have put up an archive, so if anyone here is using Pure Player it would be nice if you shared it somewhere. Just for testing, does it do any good?

 

[daid1]

I would like to say that I have heard differences in nearly every player I have tried. The ones that sound "similar" are the ones that use bass audio library and even there, there are differences (that get more profound when you have mismatched buffer settings).

And yes I have heard pinkHQ, and have also used minority clean. They sound different, but I can't say they are completely superior to winyl as stock. Better in some areas, but unsure if they are better or worse in some other.

I would also recommend to try albumplayer (from a Russian website) if you haven't heard it yet.

Out of curiosity, have you installed the necessary drivers for your dac? If not they typically act in isosynchronous mode, which is inferior and less resolving (can mask a lot of things).

Albumplayer downloaded, thanks ..now is time to try it

 

[daid1]

The writer of Pure Player seem to have disappeared from the net in 2014, all links are dead. Noone looks to have put up an archive, so if anyone here is using Pure Player it would be nice if you shared it somewhere. Just for testing, does it do any good?

I'm curious to try it too

 

[manueljenkin]

Albumplayer downloaded, thanks ..now is time to try it

Please do note that, configuration file will be present as a seperate executable. You can set the application priority, ram buffer/full flush to memory, asio/wasapi etc. I set priority to realtime, full use of ram, asio. Once you set asio, you'll have one more executable to configure asio settings.

 

[clarkydaz]

I used Foobar for years, then finally experimented with Fidelizer (free version) and Audirvana this year. Didn’t really gel with the sound from Fidelizer - it made music brighter in a way that I wasn’t that fond of - so I didn’t buy the full version. Not sure how the free vs full versions differ in terms of sound.

But Audirvana impressed me, noticeable difference in sound from Foobar and in a direction I felt was an improvement. It’s now the only thing I use for music from my laptop. Nice simple interface and music library management too.

Agreed on Audirvana, i want to listen to my music as quickly and simply as possible, with a nice big album cover

 

[marcelnl]

I did not compare daphile to AP linux, simply because my Linux skills are nonexistent.

The writer of PurePlayer did in fact disappear, I have used it in several versions until the 'final' version. It does sound better than all other players I have tried, but what good does that do to anyone with the prog not being available anymore. I can say that Daphile sounds better, I'd rather investigate if you can (it;s possible) use daphile (it runs from a 4Gb USB if needed) on a dedicated machine or f.e in a dual boot mode.

 

[manueljenkin]

Yeah MusicBee is pretty good. Though I thought hysolid sounded better and had less of a footprint.

Thank you very much for bringing hysolid back to my attention. Two months ago when I tried I was put off by its broken android remote app.

Yesterday I re installed it, and borrowed an ipad to control it. Wow!! Never knew windows could sound this good. I am really in love with the player design. No unneccessary user handles like scrubbing etc. Only play/pause. So super well structured and well timed instructions for the cpu to go though before pushing it to usb. And the detail improvement is staggering, even when pitted against the next best I've heard.

I have for few months used bass library based players like winyl, musicbee,xmplay and hqplayer as my reference. Albumplayer was a lot more analog sounding but didn't have that stronghold in dynamics that winyl had. Audirvana was fine but not as good as winyl. Didn't like jriver/roon much using as streamer and server in same system they sounded slightly like an input clipped amp (their architecture is better suited for Ethernet playback). All these players were levels ahead of mud-fi foobar (yea I'm fully with you on foobar being not high fidelity enough, and it's been measured as well). But all those players still had issues going in one way or other - glarey and intense but well textured, or laid back but lacking in texture (apart from foobar which had neither in a positive note).

I thought it was inherent to recordings or reproduction method. Boy was I wrong. Now I can hear a thousand shade in the treble notes with hysolid. Thank you so much. If anyone is still using foobar, I'd say the difference from foobar to hysolid on a decent DAC+amp system is greater than the difference from hd598 to hd600.

Note: all tests were done in asio whenever supported. Have made enough attempts to ensure that the differences are not stemming from un intended modifications in any configuration i set. No upsampling/resampling, no bit depth upscaling or padding.

 

[manueljenkin]

I did not compare daphile to AP linux, simply because my Linux skills are nonexistent.

The writer of PurePlayer did in fact disappear, I have used it in several versions until the 'final' version. It does sound better than all other players I have tried, but what good does that do to anyone with the prog not being available anymore. I can say that Daphile sounds better, I'd rather investigate if you can (it;s possible) use daphile (it runs from a 4Gb USB if needed) on a dedicated machine or f.e in a dual boot mode.

Thanks. I just tried a player that works on a foundation similar to pureplayer. It is called hysolid, and I was blown away. The android remote is buggy so need apple based device to access the remote but once done it sounds simply amazing.

I wanted to proceed further and tried to install ap-linux on my system. But I messed up the bootloader. Gonna try again tomorrow and probably try all 3 - ap-linux, daphile and gentooplayer. Hopefully atleast one (preferrably all 3) end up matching or beating hysolid, considering that you mentioned daphile beats pureplayer, and even pureplayer developer endorsed ap-linux.