Lossless in Ubuntu (Question)

[ssrock64]

I'm sorry to clutter up the threads with something that I probably could find with enough searching, but I've been looking around both here and Ubuntu Forums and cannot find a straight-up answer to my question: What player(s) in Ubuntu will not downsample. I found plenty of threads on the general topic of this that eventually devolved into a matter or personal player preference without actually answering the question of whether the player would correctly play 96/24 FLAC. However, I cannot find one thread that answers the ultimate question of downsampling. So, without further ado, a question that needs to be answered: What music player(s) in Ubuntu do not downsample, even in top-level FLAC files?
 
Thanks!

 

[joe_cool]

If you want audiophile results in Ubuntu (Linux) then you need to know about ALSA. Pick a music player that will play directly to ALSA. Avoid OSS, Pulse, Gstreamer, Jack and all that stuff if you just want to play music. Then you can control ALSA with a simple configuration file (.asoundrc) in your home directory. The details will depend on your audio hardware. Ubuntu with ALSA doesn't use external drivers, all the functionality is built into the kernel.

 

[adamlau]

If you want audiophile results in Ubuntu (Linux) then you need to know about OSS4. 

 

[ssrock64]

I see there's disagreement on OSS. Any defense/refutation of it being the best?

 

[stv014]

MPlayer (I tested the command line version, but the GUI probably works the same) played a 24-bit 96 kHz FLAC test file without problems for me, using the hw: ALSA devices. To verify, I recorded the signal - which included a sine wave at -124 dBFS - with a loopback cable, and the lower bits were not lost.
 

 

[adamlau]

Not OSS. OSS4. A very different animal indeed. Unless OSS4 lacks driver support for your soundcard, or you are referring to USB support (which OSS4 currently lacks), there is no disagreement with regards to OSS4 vs. ALSA: OSS4 w/ vmix disabled > ALSA w/ dmix disabled unless you are comparing 'ossplay -R' to 'aplay -D hw:0,0'. 

 

[ssrock64]

Quote:

Not OSS. OSS4. A very different animal indeed. Unless OSS4 lacks driver support for your soundcard, or you are referring to USB support (which OSS4 currently lacks), there is no disagreement with regards to OSS4 vs. ALSA: OSS4 w/ vmix disabled > ALSA w/ dmix disabled unless you are comparing 'ossplay -R' to 'aplay -D hw:0,0'. 

Are there any fully-built players that run through OSS4 in Ubuntu? I'm not experienced with programming or command prompt (not even html), so if possible I'd want something like Rythmbox, Banshee, or Amarok that's already a fully-built system that's easy to navigate.
 

 

[ssrock64]

Anyone?

 

[Rizlaw]

Quote:

What music player(s) in Ubuntu do not downsample, even in top-level FLAC files?
 

Are there any fully-built players that run through OSS4 in Ubuntu?
 

To the best of my knowledge, the answer to question 1 is: they all down sample because of the way audio currently works in Linux. The answer to question 2 is: no.
 
Most of the popular Linux distro's use PulseAudio/ALSA/gstreamer to play back audio files. The problem (if you intend to play bit perfect hi-rez 24/96 or better files) is that Linux automatically down samples hi-rez files to 16/44.1 (audio) or 16/48 (video). To avoid this you need to bypass the Linux mixer (just like you would in Windows) and go straight to the sound card's digital output and then to an external DAC. This is not intuitive in Linux. If you read my earlier post here http://www.head-fi.org/t/561961/bit-perfect-audio-from-linux#post_7596268 you will see how it can be done in several top flight Linux music players without the need of removing Pulse Audio which, in Ubuntu Linux, can cause problems if done incorrectly.
 
Regarding PulseAudio, I think this blog post is also helpful: http://arunraghavan.net/2011/10/alternate-sample-rates/
 
 
 

 

[ssrock64]

Quote:

To the best of my knowledge, the answer to question 1 is: they all down sample because of the way audio currently works in Linux. The answer to question 2 is: no.
 
Most of the popular Linux distro's use PulseAudio/ALSA/gstreamer to play back audio files. The problem (if you intend to play bit perfect hi-rez 24/96 or better files) is that Linux automatically down samples hi-rez files to 16/44.1 (audio) or 16/48 (video). To avoid this you need to bypass the Linux mixer (just like you would in Windows) and go straight to the sound card's digital output and then to an external DAC. This is not intuitive in Linux. If you read my earlier post here http://www.head-fi.org/t/561961/bit-perfect-audio-from-linux#post_7596268 you will see how it can be done in several top flight Linux music players without the need of removing Pulse Audio which, in Ubuntu Linux, can cause problems if done incorrectly.
 
Regarding PulseAudio, I think this blog post is also helpful: http://arunraghavan.net/2011/10/alternate-sample-rates/
 
 
 

Thanks!