After reading a lot about all these audio players for OSX I thought I'd just try some for myself.
My test setup: Macbook Pro > TC-Konnekt 24D (FireWire) > Straightwire Rhapsody > Stax SR404/SRM-1MkII
The Software I tried: Audirvana, Clementine, Decibel, Fidelia, iTunes, Pure Music, VLC and Vox.
The music:
- Spanish Harlem / Rebecca Pidgeon
- Ganges Delta Blues / Ry Cooder + V.M. Bhatt
- Famous blue raincoat / Jennifer Warnes
I choose the first two tracks because I have the original CD release and the recent 24/96 release on HD-Tracks of both tracks. I included Famous blue raincoat (16/44.1) because I think its still a great recording and I use it for more than 20 years now to evaluate audio equipment. All songs where played from FLAC files.
Until recently I always used VLC to play a few tracks, or iTunes for albums and playlists. The main reason for using VLC was that it plays everything you throw at it. I don't know of any other player that is able to play so many audio/video formats.
The comparison
Overall there are 3 leagues for me:
- players that sound significantly better (Decibel, Clementine, Fidelia and Vox)
- average players (VLC, Audirvana)
- players that don't play the tracks in the first place (iTunes, Pure Music)
IMO the differences between these players within the same category are noticeable, but not huge.
All players in the
first category had a few things in common: better details, wider soundstage, smoother highs and more controlled bass. I found Decibel and Fidelia sounding best, both in 'exclusive mode'. Where Decibel had slightly smoother highs and more lucid mids with the 24/96 recordings.
Clementine came quite close. In comparison it is losing some detail and soundstage.
Vox was also good, but there seems to some sort of loudness curve going on. Slightly increased bass and highs. Soundstage and detailing are slightly less good, but only by a small margin. If there is some DSP involved here, its incredibly good! Nice for late-night listening, but I prefer to use an equalizer that can be switched off. NB: be aware to check the audio settings. Standard it re-samples to 44.1k!
In this category Clementine has by far the best library support. Vox and Fidelia support the use of AU plugins. Vox already includes several cross-feed plugin options. but you can also use an AU plugin such as Canz3D.
As far as I could find out only Fidelia and Decibel give manual control over the sample rate settings. Allowing to choose the original sample rate of the song. I noticed that Clementine also does this(by watching my TC-konnekt panel while switching tracks), but there is no setting to choose for fixed sample rate.
The
second category only disappointed me. I had never realized that I was missing out on such a noticeable improvement by using VLC. The soundstage is small, two dimensional and lacks detail. The bass is a bit muffled and the highs rather rough.
Surprisingly enough the same applies to Audirvana. Only with 24/96 it sounded better than VLC. Not worth keeping on my system though……
The
third category is simply not interesting for me. Since I have my entire CD collection ripped in FLAC, and bought several HD albums in the same format.
Conclusion
Overall
I found Decibel the best sounding player. Clementine is not far off, and has good library support. Apart from the nice interface, I see no additional value in Fidelia.
so I have decided to keep Clementine
as my 'general player' and use Decibel
when I want to sit down and only enjoy music.
VLC will stay on my system, but only because I might need it when I want to play some sort of exotic format (SF2 anyone
)
And iTunes will also stay on my system because……, well just because?
All the others are removed to make space for some music