[C3RV1X CRU5H3R]

It won't send 24 bits if your music is not 24 bit. The playback engine is very simple and there is not much ways to deviate from bit perfect here (other than if you use directsound or if you have eq enabled).

In case you liked this, please try hysolid. It is even better than winyl (the difference is bigger than moving between different tiers of headphones).

I have moved to Linux playback, using wtfplay, a live boot Linux distro that sounds absolutely fantastic.

I tried hysolid but the android app didn't work. I'll try using wtfplay.

 

[daid1]

I tried hysolid but the android app didn't work. I'll try using wtfplay.

looking on the hysolid website it appears the app is for adroid until version 6, not newer, or using ios, maybe is there the android crash problem

 

[ok computer]

I agree with OP. I tried out winky recently and I really like it. Cleaner and easier on the eyes than foobar Sounds substantially better to me than foobar as well. And I’ve used foobar for years with every possible combination of drivers/settings/oversampling. Winyl just sounds better.

previously I would use xxhighend for serious listening sessions which I consider to be the best playback I’ve heard in my computer, but it is not well supported and can be extremely buggy to the point where it won’t work much of the time.
Wtfplayer is pretty good as well might do a comparison soon although it’s impossible to do a proper A/B since it takes too long to switch too.

and bit perfect isn’t the end all be all of digital audio, this has been known for quite a while. Even in foobar asio wasapi and KS all are bit perfect and all of them sound different. Different buffer settings can be bit perfect but sound different as well. A LOT of things can affect digital audio with it still being bit perfect. Use your ears and decide for yourself.

 

[C3RV1X CRU5H3R]

@manueljenkin I'm very curious about MinorityClean. The page is almost all in japanese and I don't know the language. Can you please explain to me how to use it? And if the info is very useful why not create a thread about it?

 

[ok computer]

There’s a thread on the Jplay forum about it, that’s about all the info I could find. It’s just a utility that makes some registry tweaks that supposedly makes things sound better. I don’t think the author goes into much detail on how it works.

 

[Vamp898]

After testing tons of Audio Players i found that VLC is the only one who never asses things up.

You play Music with VLC and its just the best quality that you can out of the file. No matter the file, it just does it right.

As i am using Linux, Audio Players (normally) have no sound Engine there, they are only GUIs. You Install Sound engines and all players you have, use the same Engine. Right now, after i found that VLC Player have best playback quality, i decided to use libvlc as my Playback Engine which is now used for every application that outputs Audio.

Also its the only Player i found so far that does not ass up the music quality when you use the EQ. I disabled of course the preamp (don't know who needs that) and then the EQ just sounds perfect. You enable it without touching a single band and guess what, nothing changes, the music is exactly as it was before.

Most player, even with the Bands totally flat, change the sound as soon you enable the EQ.

And then you can setup the bands from -20db to +20db in 0,1db steps. Just the way it should be.

That way i can have an clean, perfect EQ but also use the PureAudio Mode on my Onkyo. The result is amazing and exactly the way it should be.

 

[C3RV1X CRU5H3R]

After testing tons of Audio Players i found that VLC is the only one who never asses things up.

You play Music with VLC and its just the best quality that you can out of the file. No matter the file, it just does it right.

As i am using Linux, Audio Players (normally) have no sound Engine there, they are only GUIs. You Install Sound engines and all players you have, use the same Engine. Right now, after i found that VLC Player have best playback quality, i decided to use libvlc as my Playback Engine which is now used for every application that outputs Audio.

Also its the only Player i found so far that does not ass up the music quality when you use the EQ. I disabled of course the preamp (don't know who needs that) and then the EQ just sounds perfect. You enable it without touching a single band and guess what, nothing changes, the music is exactly as it was before.

Most player, even with the Bands totally flat, change the sound as soon you enable the EQ.

And then you can setup the bands from -20db to +20db in 0,1db steps. Just the way it should be.

That way i can have an clean, perfect EQ but also use the PureAudio Mode on my Onkyo. The result is amazing and exactly the way it should be.

Wow, I never expected VLC to be mentioned. I didn't know it was good. I have a question: how do I set it up to output a bit perfect signal? That is, with the same sample rate as the file and without changing the sound.

 

[Vamp898]

Wow, I never expected VLC to be mentioned. I didn't know it was good. I have a question: how do I set it up to output a bit perfect signal? That is, with the same sample rate as the file and without changing the sound.

Just play music with it. At least on Linux (and i am pretty sure its the same on Windows), thats supposed to be the default settings. Everything else have to be enabled.
I mean its not wrong to look into the advanced settings of it, there are tons of them, but most of them are supposed to enable things, even the EQ is completely disabled per default.

I know that lot of things heavily rely on Drivers and stuff, so VLC tries to not be in the way of the Audio File and your hardware as much as technically possible. So if something sounds strange, you can be pretty sure that its not VLC.

The only thing that is enabled by default, is resampling, but its not really enabled, its set on automatic which "should" do nothing with flac music files, but you can disable it to be sure.

At least for me (on Linux) i did not have to do anything in the settings, it just play music with it and it sounds perfect, exactly it should be.

But the highest quality i do have is 24bit/96KHz, and with that, i did not experience any issues yet.

And if you don't trust me that the sound is perfect, just look at the SourceCode and see for yourself. Its Free Software, no need to trust, you can just make sure.

VLC itself really is just a Graphic User interface. If you play a FLAC it uses the FLAC Library from the inventors and Developers of FLAC from Xiph.org (https://xiph.org/flac/)

If they don't know how to play a FLAC correct, nobody does. As said before, they try to be as less as possible in the way of the audio file and the hardware as it is technically possible.

On Linux you can actually see that VLC is just a graphical interface and doesn't do much on its own, just look at the dependencies, there you can see it just uses the original flac to play flac and doesn't play it on its own

Name            : vlc
Version         : 3.0.8-10
Description     : Multi-platform MPEG, VCD/DVD, and DivX player
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Licenses        : LGPL2.1  GPL2
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : a52dec  libdvbpsi  libxpm  libdca  libproxy  lua  libidn 
libmatroska  taglib  libmpcdec  ffmpeg  faad2  libupnp  libmad  libmpeg2 
xcb-util-keysyms  libtar  libxinerama
 libsecret  libarchive  qt5-base  qt5-x11extras  qt5-svg  freetype2  fribidi 
harfbuzz  fontconfig  libxml2  gnutls  wayland-protocols  aribb24
Optional Deps   : avahi: service discovery using bonjour protocol [installed]
                  aom: AOM AV1 codec [installed]
                  gst-plugins-base-libs: for libgst plugins [installed]
                  dav1d: dav1d AV1 decoder [installed]
                  libdvdcss: decoding encrypted DVDs [installed]
                  libavc1394: devices using the 1394ta AV/C [installed]
                  libdc1394: IEEE 1394 access plugin [installed]
                  kwallet: kwallet keystore [installed]
                  libva-vdpau-driver: vdpau backend nvidia
                  libva-intel-driver: video backend intel
                  libbluray: Blu-Ray video input [installed]
                  flac: Free Lossless Audio Codec plugin [installed]
                  twolame: TwoLAME mpeg2 encoder plugin [installed]
                  libgme: Game Music Emu plugin [installed]
                  vcdimager: navigate VCD with libvcdinfo
                  libmtp: MTP devices discovery [installed]
                  systemd-libs: udev services discovery [installed]
                  smbclient: SMB access plugin [installed]
                  libcdio: audio CD playback [installed]
                  gnu-free-fonts: subtitle font [installed]
                  ttf-dejavu: subtitle font
                  libssh2: sftp access [installed]
                  libnfs: NFS access
                  mpg123: mpg123 codec [installed]
                  protobuf: chromecast streaming [installed]
                  libmicrodns: mDNS services discovery (chromecast etc)
                  lua-socket: http interface
                  live-media: RTSP input
                  libdvdread: DVD input module [installed]
                  libdvdnav: DVD with navigation input module [installed]
                  libogg: Ogg and OggSpots codec [installed]
                  libshout: shoutcast/icecast output plugin [installed]
                  libmodplug: MOD output plugin [installed]
                  libvpx: VP8 and VP9 codec [installed]
                  libvorbis: Vorbis decoder/encoder [installed]
                  speex: Speex codec [installed]
                  opus: opus codec [installed]
                  libtheora: theora codec [installed]
                  libpng: PNG support [installed]
                  libjpeg-turbo: JPEG support [installed]
                  librsvg: SVG plugin [installed]
                  x264: H264 encoding [installed]
                  x265: HEVC/H.265 encoder [installed]
                  zvbi: VBI/Teletext/webcam/v4l2 capture/decoding [installed]
                  libass: Subtitle support [installed]
                  libkate: Kate codec [installed]
                  libtiger: Tiger rendering for Kate streams [installed]
                  sdl_image: SDL image support
                  srt: SRT input/output plugin [installed]
                  aalib: ASCII art video output [installed]
                  libcaca: colored ASCII art video output [installed]
                  libpulse: PulseAudio audio output [installed]
                  alsa-lib: ALSA audio output [installed]
                  jack: jack audio server [installed]
                  libsamplerate: audio Resampler [installed]
                  libsoxr: SoX audio Resampler [installed]
                  chromaprint: Chromaprint audio fingerprinter [installed]
                  lirc: lirc control
                  libgoom2: Goom visualization
                  projectm: ProjectM visualisation
                  ncurses: ncurses interface [installed]
                  libnotify: notification plugin [installed]
                  gtk3: notification plugin [installed]
Required By     : elisa  phonon-qt5-vlc
Optional For    : kdenlive  youtube-viewer
Conflicts With  : vlc-plugin
Replaces        : vlc-plugin
Installed Size  : 58.72 MiB
Packager        : Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <jan.steffens@gmail.com>
Build Date      : Sat Feb 22 12:47:05 2020
Install Date    : Tue Mar 17 19:49:38 2020
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

Because things are different and more complicated in the Windows World, they ship all these codecs with their software in a package bundle. But the FLAC shipped with VLC on Windows is still the original FLAC from xiph.org, they just bundle it for your convinience.

 

[manueljenkin]

After testing tons of Audio Players i found that VLC is the only one who never asses things up.

You play Music with VLC and its just the best quality that you can out of the file. No matter the file, it just does it right.

As i am using Linux, Audio Players (normally) have no sound Engine there, they are only GUIs. You Install Sound engines and all players you have, use the same Engine. Right now, after i found that VLC Player have best playback quality, i decided to use libvlc as my Playback Engine which is now used for every application that outputs Audio.

Also its the only Player i found so far that does not ass up the music quality when you use the EQ. I disabled of course the preamp (don't know who needs that) and then the EQ just sounds perfect. You enable it without touching a single band and guess what, nothing changes, the music is exactly as it was before.

Most player, even with the Bands totally flat, change the sound as soon you enable the EQ.

And then you can setup the bands from -20db to +20db in 0,1db steps. Just the way it should be.

That way i can have an clean, perfect EQ but also use the PureAudio Mode on my Onkyo. The result is amazing and exactly the way it should be.

I'll give it a shot on Linux. Unfortunately on windows, vlc is among the worst for sound quality. Its volume control even comes with a built in compressor. Not that I hate vlc. I love it for its support for being able to virtually play back any format even if mildly corrupted, and it's loop function. Thanks for the mention.

 

[Vamp898]

I'll give it a shot on Linux. Unfortunately on windows, vlc is among the worst for sound quality. Its volume control even comes with a built in compressor. Not that I hate vlc. I love it for its support for being able to virtually play back any format even if mildly corrupted, and it's loop function. Thanks for the mention.

I never used the volume control on VLC 100% means ±0db. The same is true for the sound system in Linux in general. 100% (almost always) means just ±0db

So I set everything to 100% and connect it to my Sound system which then controls the volume.

Even when I connected an DAC I set everything to 100% and control the volume on my DAC.

At least on Linux this means no compression, distortion or similar artefact.

 

[ok computer]

I’ve been messing around with HQ Player this week and I really like it as well. When upsampling to 32/768 or dsd256 I think it clearly sounds much better than winyl. But with no oversampling I don’t think I could tell a difference. But that is the entire point of hq player. How much upsampling will help however depends on what dac you are using so keep that in mind.

HQ player vs XXhighend is a more interesting discussion. They’re hard for me to AB since I have them on different desktops so these are more subjective comparisons but I feel like xxhighend still sounds a little bit nicer, with a blacker background, and a smidge less harsh in the treble.

Where xxhighend gives you a ton of control over the playback engine, hq player gives you a ton of control over the upsampling filters/dithering etc. so they both have a ton of options that don’t really overlap with each other. Xxhighend also focus much more on minimizing the OS with min OS mode and unattended playback mode,I think this is where the blacker background comes from. Xx also does the upsampling offline prior to playback which I think would be a cool option for HQ player to have as well. Cpu usage for me while using HQ player is like 30% across four cores.

tpossibly bigger than sound quality however is usability. HQ player has been rock solid for me. Xxhighend is only supported on a few versions of win10 which I can never get installed reliably. And it’s an unstable buggy mess when I try to run it on a current win10 build. Maybe that’s just me but I can’t get it to work consistently for the life of me.

with all of that being said I think I’m going to use HQPlayer as my main from now on but I’ll still most likely keep trying with xxhighend as well. Someone else should try it out and le me know if you have any luck!

 

[manueljenkin]

I’ve been messing around with HQ Player this week and I really like it as well. When upsampling to 32/768 or dsd256 I think it clearly sounds much better than winyl. But with no oversampling I don’t think I could tell a difference. But that is the entire point of hq player. How much upsampling will help however depends on what dac you are using so keep that in mind.

HQ player vs XXhighend is a more interesting discussion. They’re hard for me to AB since I have them on different desktops so these are more subjective comparisons but I feel like xxhighend still sounds a little bit nicer, with a blacker background, and a smidge less harsh in the treble.

Where xxhighend gives you a ton of control over the playback engine, hq player gives you a ton of control over the upsampling filters/dithering etc. so they both have a ton of options that don’t really overlap with each other. Xxhighend also focus much more on minimizing the OS with min OS mode and unattended playback mode,I think this is where the blacker background comes from. Xx also does the upsampling offline prior to playback which I think would be a cool option for HQ player to have as well. Cpu usage for me while using HQ player is like 30% across four cores.

tpossibly bigger than sound quality however is usability. HQ player has been rock solid for me. Xxhighend is only supported on a few versions of win10 which I can never get installed reliably. And it’s an unstable buggy mess when I try to run it on a current win10 build. Maybe that’s just me but I can’t get it to work consistently for the life of me.

with all of that being said I think I’m going to use HQPlayer as my main from now on but I’ll still most likely keep trying with xxhighend as well. Someone else should try it out and le me know if you have any luck!

If you're fond of the black background, please try wtfplay. It's a Linux live OS made for music playback only (basically a stripped down Linux to the bare bones). I have really been pleased and been using it as my sole choice for the last 3 months. I'm quite convinced that it's as best as I could get from my existing pc. If I were to move up, I'd be looking at dedicated music pc or Ethernet streamer like uptone ether regen.

I would also recommend swapping USB cables if you can. I highly recommend the uptone uspcb.

 

[Vamp898]

I don't see how USB Cables would have any influence on sound quality. Its digital, so 0100101 stays 0100101, no matter how bad the USB Cable is.

A bad USB Cable might cause connection errors, but no influence on sound quality.

Bascially digital Audio is extreme simple and pretty hard to mess up.

1. You want an Audio Player and an Operating System (SoundEngine) that doesn't mess up the sound quality. Linux is the best choice by far for this scenario because in Windows, there are too many black boxes and magic before the sound actually leaves the PC.

So if the audio file says 0100101 you want that 0100101 leaves your computer. At least with VLC on Linux i can say for sure, that this is the case. And if you use the EQ on VLC (what i do), and disable the preamp, it does exactly what you tell him to do and nothing more, so audio quality is stall saved and 100%

2. You want an connection that transfers the data without any compression to your Amp/DAC

In my case, i use HDMI which, in the standard i have, supports 24bit/192KHz

So my computer sends 0100101 and my A/V Receiver receives 0100101

3. You want nothing between your computer and the DAC

I use an Onkyo TX-NR686 AV Receiver for example which provides an so called "Pure Audio" Mode. In this modus, all settings, EQs, are disabled. So as soon you enable Pure Audio, the digital audio signal goes to the DAC without getting touched by any component in the Reciever, so the DAC still receives 100% Audio Quality.

4. You want an good DAC

In my case its an AKM 32bit/384KHz DAC

5. You want an Transistor Amp (no Tube!) that amplifies without touching the analog signal and without noise

In my case the amp does have distortion of 0,08% an SNR of 106db which means there is almost no distortion and the Audio Signal is 106db louder than the noise it produces

So in theory, its as simple as that. Get the digital signal in the audio file to the DAC without getting touched in between, have an good DAC and have an good amp behind the DAC (good DACs normally always come in combination with good amps) and there you go, thats digital audio.

 

[manueljenkin]

I don't see how USB Cables would have any influence on sound quality. Its digital, so 0100101 stays 0100101, no matter how bad the USB Cable is.

A bad USB Cable might cause connection errors, but no influence on sound quality.

Bascially digital Audio is extreme simple and pretty hard to mess up.

1. You want an Audio Player and an Operating System (SoundEngine) that doesn't mess up the sound quality. Linux is the best choice by far for this scenario because in Windows, there are too many black boxes and magic before the sound actually leaves the PC.

So if the audio file says 0100101 you want that 0100101 leaves your computer. At least with VLC on Linux i can say for sure, that this is the case. And if you use the EQ on VLC (what i do), and disable the preamp, it does exactly what you tell him to do and nothing more, so audio quality is stall saved and 100%

2. You want an connection that transfers the data without any compression to your Amp/DAC

In my case, i use HDMI which, in the standard i have, supports 24bit/192KHz

So my computer sends 0100101 and my A/V Receiver receives 0100101

3. You want nothing between your computer and the DAC

I use an Onkyo TX-NR686 AV Receiver for example which provides an so called "Pure Audio" Mode. In this modus, all settings, EQs, are disabled. So as soon you enable Pure Audio, the digital audio signal goes to the DAC without getting touched by any component in the Reciever, so the DAC still receives 100% Audio Quality.

4. You want an good DAC

In my case its an AKM 32bit/384KHz DAC

5. You want an Transistor Amp (no Tube!) that amplifies without touching the analog signal and without noise

In my case the amp does have distortion of 0,08% an SNR of 106db which means there is almost no distortion and the Audio Signal is 106db louder than the noise it produces

So in theory, its as simple as that. Get the digital signal in the audio file to the DAC without getting touched in between, have an good DAC and have an good amp behind the DAC (good DACs normally always come in combination with good amps) and there you go, thats digital audio.

Whatever you have said is a vague abstraction. There are way more aberrations that can happen, not delving into that now.

Regarding USB audio. The protocol is not that well structured. It doesn't mandate proper data transfer, and there is not error correction or retransmission. A delta Sigma dac would just interpolate the missing packets to an extent and there are also patents on packet loss masking. And to answer your question even cleaner I have been able to make clearly distinctly audible buffer underruns and overruns, which result in a static harshness or stutter. The players would otherwise turn up bit perfect when probed into the cpu level (which is what most bit perfect tests do). The lesser of these aberrations are smoothly masked by either packet loss concealment or the inherent intepolation capabilities of the delta Sigma dac.

Even tweaking the buffer can change the sound significantly. It's matter of fact that USB cables do sound different with the current audio protocols. And there are also junk cables that can throw in too much error because they are out of the recommended impedance spec.

 

[Vamp898]

There are junk cables, that is true. But if you just use the cable that comes with the device or just an non no-brand cable, you will never have any problems. I highly doubt that there is any need to upgrade the cable at all.

Stutter is what can happen with packet loss and even though it is possible, i never ever experienced that ever in my life with an OEM cable ever.

Even with 24bit/92KHz the bit rate is around 4000kbit/s at best which is roughly 0,5mbyte/s.

An average USB3 cable can transport way more than 100mbyte/s without packet loss.

Sure don't use bad crappy cables, you should never do that, no matter for what, but sometimes there is just too much Trust, Hope and Faith when it goes into the Hi-Fi section.

There exists cables that cost thousands of € and even with an high end calibrated laser measuring system like the ones from Kippel there is no difference.

There is just lots of hardware that wants your money and rips you off without giving you anything back beside a good feeling that you payed so much money, it have to be the best quality now.

Yes, i agree, dont use bad cables, but for me thats common sense. My DAC came with an USB Cable and there is absolutely no reason to upgrade it if the vendor says "This is all you need".