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[manueljenkin]

Does Vox have better sq than foobar iOS?

Have you tried onkyo hfplayer? I don't have an iOS device but it sounds nice in my android device. The good features are paid though.

 

[castleofargh]

Oh boy, what a battle:
On the red corner, a few guys who claim that foobar degrades the sound audibly, and you better take their word for it because that's all you'll get.
VS,
on the blue corner, many measurements easily repeatable and suggesting that foobar can output audio just fine like pretty much any other player with similar settings. Those who can't try themselves can see stuff online, like for example the many RMAA, impulse responses, and jitter tests that Archimago shared online over the years.

It's really hard to decide which side we should believe...



Last time I tried to take someone seriously on that subject of foobar sounding "bad", it was Manuel. His explanations made no sense to me, and honestly the stuff he posted(I think it was on SBAF?) would have anybody with slight technical knowledge go "wait what?".
What little I could decrypt about asio or whatever being bad in foobar, I tested myself with result contradicting his claims(just like Archimago's results when using asio in foobar TBH, and just like the very many people who on occasion have used foobar to play some test signals into some gear to measure them and didn't get any unexpected trouble). finally he showed some pics of an oscilloscope and some talk of...sample rate(I think). To this day I don't know what the pics are supposed to show or what were the testing conditions. I asked him to do his best to explain those stuff to me, he never did. But to come on various topics and crap on foobar with the same overconfident empty claims, you can be sure that he always finds the time for that.
anyway, I even asked if someone else reading the thread had understood what that was about and could explain it to me, no candidate so far.

I already said this several times, if there is really a problem with foobar, one that doesn't go away once you know what you're doing. Then we need to know about it and use another player or just have the guys maintaining foobar, to solve the issue. So instead of repeating the same empty claims over and over again as a sport, it would be real nice if one of the enlightened ones could some day pull his fingers out of his butt and actually back up his claims with a demonstration of the issue that we can replicate. that would make that person a real contributor to the community, instead of being a BS artist.

 

[manueljenkin]

Oh boy, what a battle:
On the red corner, a few guys who claim that foobar degrades the sound audibly, and you better take their word for it because that's all you'll get.
VS,
on the blue corner, many measurements easily repeatable and suggesting that foobar can output audio just fine like pretty much any other player with similar settings. Those who can't try themselves can see stuff online, like for example the many RMAA, impulse responses, and jitter tests that Archimago shared online over the years.

It's really hard to decide which side we should believe...



Last time I tried to take someone seriously on that subject of foobar sounding "bad", it was Manuel. His explanations made no sense to me, and honestly the stuff he posted(I think it was on SBAF?) would have anybody with slight technical knowledge go "wait what?".
What little I could decrypt about asio or whatever being bad in foobar, I tested myself with result contradicting his claims(just like Archimago's results when using asio in foobar TBH, and just like the very many people who on occasion have used foobar to play some test signals into some gear to measure them and didn't get any unexpected trouble). finally he showed some pics of an oscilloscope and some talk of...sample rate(I think). To this day I don't know what the pics are supposed to show or what were the testing conditions. I asked him to do his best to explain those stuff to me, he never did. But to come on various topics and crap on foobar with the same overconfident empty claims, you can be sure that he always finds the time for that.
anyway, I even asked if someone else reading the thread had understood what that was about and could explain it to me, no candidate so far.

I already said this several times, if there is really a problem with foobar, one that doesn't go away once you know what you're doing. Then we need to know about it and use another player or just have the guys maintaining foobar, to solve the issue. So instead of repeating the same empty claims over and over again as a sport, it would be real nice if one of the enlightened ones could some day pull his fingers out of his butt and actually back up his claims with a demonstration of the issue that we can replicate. that would make that person a real contributor to the community, instead of being a BS artist.

I did explain the test and there are people who tried the tweaks and heard similar improvements in sound. I am sorry for your inadequacy in critical listening or your know-it-all attitude. You're just craving for attention, hence trying to pull my name out of the blue everywhere. Most of the ones I've written in my thread are free stuff anyone can try, so there's not much need to go around seeking someone else's help to validate it.

 

[sajunky]

I did explain the test and there are people who tried the tweaks and heard similar improvements in sound. I am sorry for your inadequacy in critical listening or your know-it-all attitude. You're just craving for attention, hence trying to pull my name out of the blue everywhere. Most of the ones I've written in my thread are free stuff anyone can try, so there's not much need to go around seeking someone else's help to validate it.

These tweeks to the OS are unnecesary and unwanted. As long as a pipe is not broken, it is not a problem.
A problems is usually caused by noise on the USB connection, it may cause some differences in sound, depends on a system setup. Eliminate main problem and it is done. You take attention to the wrong things.

 

[bfreedma]

I did explain the test and there are people who tried the tweaks and heard similar improvements in sound. I am sorry for your inadequacy in critical listening or your know-it-all attitude. You're just craving for attention, hence trying to pull my name out of the blue everywhere. Most of the ones I've written in my thread are free stuff anyone can try, so there's not much need to go around seeking someone else's help to validate it.

You didn’t explain anything. As always, you posted a bunch of irrelevant word salad In response to a simple question which was directly answerable.

Your last sentence in the quoted post is telling. Essentially, your position is that you get to make up whatever bs you like and then everyone else has to prove/disprove it. Good luck with that...

 

[manueljenkin]

These tweeks to the OS are unnecesary and unwanted. As long as a pipe is not broken, it is not a problem.
A problems is usually caused by noise on the USB connection, it may cause some differences in sound, depends on a system setup. Eliminate main problem and it is done. You take attention to the wrong things.

My system is a laptop running on battery. And my dacs either run on separate battery or use usb power (I try on multiple dacs before coming to an assessment). So it's nothing relating to ground loops. Reducing usb ground plane noise (not the same as ground loop) is what these software tweaks do, the total number of access is lower when the song is fully loaded to ram and fetched from there instead of constantly having storage access in between these. And some of these softwares use sse or avx instructions to fetch larger chunk of data from ram at once so that reduces even the number of ram access. Any access will have a noise associated with it and since usb is a standard meant mainly for mass adoption (and not mainly over other fidelity related issues) almost all general implementations will not be immune to this. Ethernet is far less susceptible to this issue since it's standard is more rigorous than usb, and whenever possible it's wiser to use ethernet to stream it to some raspberry Pi or other endpoint (provided the endpoint is also fairly low noise, otherwise it's of no use). If you're rich maybe you can also buy something like a Jcat usb card , or a signal regenerator like the ifi iusb 3.0. I'm not and at that price point I'll rather try to not use usb at all. It is also entirely possible to have crazy good isolation at the dac side (like the unison board on schiit) but it'll cost you, and also likely to affect latency, the latter is not a big deal for music. The software tweaks are free for the most part.

 

[bfreedma]

My system is a laptop running on battery. And my dacs either run on separate battery or use usb power (I try on multiple dacs before coming to an assessment). Nothing relating to ground loops. Reducing usb ground plane noise is what these software tweaks do, the total number of access is lower when the song is fully loaded to ram and fetched from there instead of constantly having storage access in between these. And some of these softwares use sse or avx instructions to fetch larger chunk of data from ram at once so that reduces even the number of ram access. Any access will have a noise associated with it and since usb is a standard meant mainly for mass adoption (and not mainly over other fidelity related issues) most general implementations will not be immune to this.

Sorry, but claims have no objective support. And your position on RAM disk, disk topology, and USB operation shows a complete lack of understanding of theses technologies, their implementation, and their relationship with the data path.

Show some evidence of any of your claims being audible or move on.

 

[sajunky]

Sorry, but claims have no objective support. And your position on RAM disk, disk topology, and USB operation shows a complete lack of understanding of theses technologies, their implementation, and their relationship with the data path.

Show some evidence of any of your claims being audible or move on.

In a defense, @manueljenkin has some level of understanding of jittery nature of the USB clock, but I guess he didn't explore WASAPI event driven mode in combination with a modern DAC. It is now more common that there is an explicit feedback endpoint in the interface chip which allow to take a full advantage of asynchronous transfers. Both popular XMOS and Amanero are capable of this type transfer. It is important to note that with a proper setup, USB transfers can be synchronised with a master clock on the DAC.

For example I have to take your attention to the Audio GD digital interface device DI-20. Developers found that with asynchronous USB transfers internal PLL gives more jitter than a direct clocking. DI-20(HE) is a first A-GD device that use a high precision fixed frequency clock for USB transfers, clock synchronisation is very simple and jitter free. A success of DI-20 prompted a company to make similar changes to the all family of DACs, now 2021 versions use the same clock synchronisation and more attention is taken to the galvanic isolation on the USB connector.

 

[manueljenkin]

In a defense, @manueljenkin has some level of understanding of jittery nature of the USB clock, but I guess he didn't explore WASAPI event driven mode which in combination with a modern DAC. It is now more common that there is an explicit feedback endpoint in the interface chip which allow to take a full advantage of asynchronous transfers. Both XMOS and Amanero are capable of these transfers. It is important to note that with a proper setup, USB transfers can be synchronised with a master clock on the DAC.

For example I have to take your attention to the Audio GD digital interface device DI-20. Developers found that with asynchronous USB transfers internal PLL gives more jitter than a direct clocking. DI-20(HE) is a first A-GD device that use a high precision fixed frequency clock for USB transfers, clock synchronisation is very simple and jitter free. A success of DI-20 prompted a company to make similar changes to the all family of DACs, now 2021 versions use the same clock synchronisation and more attention is taken to the galvanic isolation on the USB connector.

Where can I read more about the DI 20. Curious to know further.

And btw, I was mostly talking about a general scenario, most of us use dacs that cost south of 400$. Good quality isolation itself would get pretty close to the same price, or even an acceptable one would cost north of 50$ if they implement something like the adum4160 + supporting circuits, or if you go the raspberry Pi way. A general inexpensive dac would most likely benefit from these noise reductions with these customisations to playback software.

I haven't followed the very recent xmos developments but my nx4dsd showed noticeable changes with these tweaks and my friends rme adi2 also did show similar benefits, and both of these are fairly modern. Is there any major improvement in the last few months? The only devices I have currently known to be almost completely immune to these issues are schiit yggdrasil with unison and holo may (and they cost serious cash).

 

[bfreedma]

In a defense, @manueljenkin has some level of understanding of jittery nature of the USB clock, but I guess he didn't explore WASAPI event driven mode which in combination with a modern DAC. It is now more common that there is an explicit feedback endpoint in the interface chip which allow to take a full advantage of asynchronous transfers. Both popular XMOS and Amanero are capable of this type transfer. It is important to note that with a proper setup, USB transfers can be synchronised with a master clock on the DAC.

For example I have to take your attention to the Audio GD digital interface device DI-20. Developers found that with asynchronous USB transfers internal PLL gives more jitter than a direct clocking. DI-20(HE) is a first A-GD device that use a high precision fixed frequency clock for USB transfers, clock synchronisation is very simple and jitter free. A success of DI-20 prompted a company to make similar changes to the all family of DACs, now 2021 versions use the same clock synchronisation and more attention is taken to the galvanic isolation on the USB connector.

I‘ve yet to see a modern DAC with jitter measurements near audible levels that wasn’t a victim of massively improper design. Did Audio GD really engineer previous products so poorly that jitter was a real issue? Good to see them changing to the same implementation model many other manufacturers have been using for years.

With many/most devices already clock syncing or reclocking, jitter isn’t an issue for the overwhelming majority of USB users.

 

[sajunky]

I‘ve yet to see a modern DAC with jitter measurements near audible levels that wasn’t a victim of massively improper design. Did Audio GD really engineer previous products so poorly that jitter was a real issue? Good to see them changing to the same implementation model many other manufacturers have been using for years.

You are wrong regarding your biased opinion on other members, you are also wrong regarding Audio GD. Where did you get it? From botchered measurements on ASR? They did the same to a TotalDAC which has a good reputation in high-end market as a good sounding device. As for a new sans-reclocking design, I know for sure the only one, in a high-end territory. If you know more please come with details, I would be glad to see something in a price bracket below $1k.

 

[sajunky]

Where can I read more about the DI 20. Curious to know further.

And btw, I was mostly talking about a general scenario, most of us use dacs that cost south of 400$. Good quality isolation itself would get pretty close to the same price, or even an acceptable one would cost north of 50$ if they implement something like the adum4160 + supporting circuits, or if you go the raspberry Pi way. A general inexpensive dac would most likely benefit from these noise reductions with these customisations to playback software.

I haven't followed the very recent xmos developments but my nx4dsd showed noticeable changes with these tweaks and my friends rme adi2 also did show similar benefits, and both of these are fairly modern. Is there any major improvement in the last few months? The only devices I have currently known to be almost completely immune to these issues are schiit yggdrasil with unison and holo may (and they cost serious cash).

There is discussion about a new feature on the DI-20 and R7/R8 thread:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/audio-gd-di-20.918123/
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/new-audio-gd-r7-r2r-7-r8-flagship-resistor-ladder-dacs.853902/

I am sure that in the price range below $400 you can't find direct clocking device. With ADI2 you pay for features, not SQ. I would suggest Audio GD R-1 or Denafrips Ares II for the best SQ, but Ares use reclocking no matter what. R-1 2021 version is a right choice around $850.

 

[manueljenkin]

There is discussion about a new feature on the DI-20 and R7/R8 thread:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/audio-gd-di-20.918123/
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/new-audio-gd-r7-r2r-7-r8-flagship-resistor-ladder-dacs.853902/

I am sure that in the price range below $400 you can't find direct clocking device. With ADI2 you pay for features, not SQ. I would suggest Audio GD R-1 or Denafrips Ares II for the best SQ, but Ares use reclocking no matter what. R-1 2021 version is a right choice around $850.

Thank you very much. I'll read into it.

 

[AxelCloris]

Let's please keep the discussion on-topic and away from personal comments. Thanks everyone, we appreciate it.

 

[timb5881]

Does any one else have a problem with Foobar when you get a windows 8 update? Every time I get one I have to reconfigure foobar, the drivers seem to mall need to be reloaded.