[guermantes]

just explaining my observations of ASIO and WASAPI.

I set my WASAPI to the "domination mode" where it blocks out all other sounds, other than what foobar is playing. It is apparently experimental, but it has worked flawlessly for me for five years.
On Linux Mint I pipe directly to alsa output bypassing pulseaudio. Has also worked flawlessly.

 

[bagwell359]

The best thing about *ix is getting the hardware to do what and when you want it to. The bad thing is you have to be *ix literate or get some packages to basically do a nice -20. I've used DeaDBeeF and Clementine, twitchy. Slow changes in supporting audio changes audiophiles care about in all of Linux land.

I was a Unix -> open source guy for 25 years, but I'm retired and tired and M$ Windoze and its music players get a lot more attention. Ready to wipe out the HD on my box and reinstall Win only, wipe out all the junk apps, and go forward.

 

[Roseval]

I am looking at making a small micro computer for just music using my external dac/amp for playing music. Has any one done this yet?

Google a little on Raspberry PI
It is a very popular platform to build a music server.
You might combine it with e.g. Volumio https://volumio.org/
Some examples can be found here: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/RaspberryPi.htm

 

[guermantes]

Google a little on Raspberry PI
It is a very popular platform to build a music server.
You might combine it with e.g. Volumio https://volumio.org/
Some examples can be found here: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/RaspberryPi.htm

That is a good suggestion. I am using a Pi 3B that is sourced with music files from my NAS and hooked up to the DAC. No need for a "Hifi-RaspberryPi" if you connect it to a DAC.

Volumio is nice, accessible both from PC and smartphone. It can be tweaked, although I have not succeded in incorporating the composer tag. I can display the entries but the MPD-musicserver won't play files when clicked. Volumio has a few issues when using large (60000+ files) music libraries (sorting may fail, occasional freezing). But overall very nice and I chose it over RuneAudio (from which Volumio was forked). Still waiting for something as powerful as foobar though.

 

[anoobis]

I'm going to shamelessly thread-jack in a plea for help because it is related

What software do you guys use for accurate and verified rips? I'm using morituri which seems okay but feels like it could be faster and a bit easier to understand the output at times.

If anyone knows about it I'd be grateful for input at https://www.head-fi.org/threads/q-eac-accuraterip-databases-morituri-for-linux.886012

Otherwise please share what good native linux tools you've found.

 

[Milck]

How well would the distros work in a virtual machine? Or would dual booting be the way to go?

 

[ahmedie]

I've created a music player called Strawberry based on Clementine with the Amarok 1.4 look and feel especially aimed at audiophiles. It's written in C++ and uses the Qt 5 framework.
It has support for multiple backends (gstreamer, xine and VLC), with advanced audio device options, like setting a custom alsa device string.
You can find it here: https://github.com/jonaski/strawberry/releases

Just tried it on windows sounds fantastic , I have debian too so I am going to use too !

 

[xeizo]

I've created a music player called Strawberry based on Clementine with the Amarok 1.4 look and feel especially aimed at audiophiles. It's written in C++ and uses the Qt 5 framework.
It has support for multiple backends (gstreamer, xine and VLC), with advanced audio device options, like setting a custom alsa device string.
You can find it here: https://github.com/jonaski/strawberry/releases

I think you should work on the backend for Windows some more, so we can be sure/have it verified we are using bitperfect and not going through any Windows mixer wizardry. Now when the WASAPI plugin is gone. Don't know how you should do it, maybe find a better WASAPI plugin or add a ASIO plugin.

Windows 10 1909 has a new per app sound setting in the new All Settings applet, which is aimed at bypassing the mixer, but it's hard to know if it's working(it should though).

Also bit resolution/sampling frequency of streams would be nice to have displayed. As of now you can only see the bitrate of the FLAC stream, which is also nice of course.

Oh, and your Windows port sounds great as is, as should the Linux version. I haven't used it on Linux since it was Clementine, but it was great back then.

 

[guermantes]

Now when the WASAPI plugin is gone.

Gone? Did I miss something? WASAPI still working flawlessly in foobar 1.4.8 under Win 10 1909.

 

[xeizo]

Gone? Did I miss something? WASAPI still working flawlessly in foobar 1.4.8 under Win 10 1909.

Not in Foobar, in Strawberry, the text about it is on the homepage.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I'm going to shamelessly thread-jack in a plea for help because it is related

What software do you guys use for accurate and verified rips? I'm using morituri which seems okay but feels like it could be faster and a bit easier to understand the output at times.

If anyone knows about it I'd be grateful for input at https://www.head-fi.org/threads/q-eac-accuraterip-databases-morituri-for-linux.886012

Otherwise please share what good native linux tools you've found.

ffmpeg on Linux is flexible, scriptable, and works very well. EAC is the leader on Windows.

 

[xeizo]

I like CDex on Windows, very no-nonsense and it fetches album information seamless. EAC now wants you to buy a license for that.

 

[Maxpain]

I also tried Strawberry and I can say its great using it to direct access my DAC with ALSA. Keep up the good work.

 

[BrownBear]

I've been using basic Ubuntu for years now with no issues. The player I use is Audacious, and the outputs are relatively easily configurable if you're into ALSA vs PulseAudio. It works seamlessly with the Modi I use with it. As for sound quality, I'd say it sounds the same as any other music player I've used over the years.

 

[smallcaps]

If you're serious about computer audio, the only *nix you should consider is BSD... in the form of OS X.