Computer Audio Players

Unfortunately you're probably looking at a DAW: https://transverseaudio.com/posts/best-free-daws-for-music-sound-design

 

Yaaay. I've finally got my android system to Sound good. Turns out the battery optimisations were the culprit.

Changed that in system settings for uapp, and had to fiddle out some options regarding volume control in addition (still experimenting, some inconsistencies). Other settings as before - bit perfect output and the likes. As it stands the sound out of this setup is as good as, if not better than a well configured musicbee/winyl on windows. Linux (wtfplay) on my laptop is still noticeably better no doubt but this android setup is enjoyable too.

And it sounded good out of a phone with an old battery and couple of adapters for usb connection. Would be servicing my phone battery eventually and hopefully I'll see even better gains, since my dac gets its power from usb port.

Is there a thread on usb cables? Looking for a good quality usb c to micro usb cable like shanling L2, but don't want to derail this thread into off topic oblivion.

 

Musicbee I found to sound best. You just need to configure it correctly. Volume at 100%, no normalization, disable all audio channels but L and R. No surround bullshit here. 5.1 my ass. Suck a dick Dolby.

Now this thing is the same as vinyl without the unneeded warmth. Winyl is warm. Not good warm. Bad warm. Not warm in a good way like how old dudes describe good sound. Show them ATCs off a Lynx and they will say it's warm. ATCs off an RME will be not warm. This is dope. Thanks @dietwater

 

Glad I could be of help. Winyl sounding warm or harsh depends on how your dac handles buffer underrun scenarios.

Make sure you set musicbee to push the full song to RAM (there will be a tick mark to use. first select increase buffer size, then select push full song to ram). Remove all fade in fade out effects below.

 

I tried 5 audio players for about a week, and also decided to go with MusicBee as well. Just turned off the normalization.

The difference between Foobar and MusicBee is a lot. Didn't expect it to be this obvious. Foobar sounds compressed and lacks that analog feel (depth, reverb, texture). People who wish to upgrade their chain should just upgrade their player first.
@dietwater Wanna make sure I got all the settings correct below.
Btw, did you find any improvement with MinorityClean with MusicBee?

 

I didn't experiment musicbee specifically with minority clean but I have experimented with winyl enough. It's not a very big change in my system. I also tried the standalone player developed by the same developer and it takes a long time to set things up, by then I had lost interest to listen (does some system optimization and cool down of sorts).

Your settings for musicbee are good to go. Try to use asio If your dac supports asio, instead of wasapi. Imo your next front should be linux audio, the difference is even more drastic and I highly recommend wtfplay. It is very simple and easy to use and sounds extremely good.

How did you manage to attach an image btw. I am unable to. I wanted to attach my settings to get android audio working properly, but couldn't.

 

@dietwater Firstly, thanks really for contributing. Audio Player was the one area that I completely missed. I had no idea it would make any difference. You can imagine how surprised I was for these few nights.

Noted. I will do that. FYI for Winyl, when I chose ASIO, there was a few song tracks that got messed up. The song would play really slow. It was normal again when I changed to WASAPI.

Is it possible to try Linux Audio with Windows operating system? I'm curious about WTFPlay, but still couldn't figure it out yet. Let me re-read your posting again.

I used ALT + PrintScreen on the page I want to copy. Then simply paste here.

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...endations-worth-to-pay-more-suggestions.6510/
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...-cable-mega-thread-walking-off-the-plank.260/
I myself use AudioQuest Carbon. But beware that, from my experience, USB cable difference are system dependent. It made some improvements on my Schiit Modi Multibit, but not so much on my X-Sabre Pro. Also, the difference is not as much as Foobar->MusicBee. Ha!

 

Haha. Thanks for the links. It is certainly pairing dependant and YMMV thing. But I have had very good luck with the uptone uspcb. I moved from stock apogee cable to supra and then to uptone uspcb and was able to note marked improvements along the way, about as big as foobar to musicbee, if not more.

Sbaf population doesn't seem to be very welcoming of usb cables though . I gotta ask advice elsewhere I guess.

If you're on discord or something I could let you know how to use wtfplay in a voice chat. Please pm me for further details.

 

Just did a quick listen using WASAPI exclusive between FB2K, JRMC and MBee. Bee was clearly different until I realized volume was at 50% by default. Other than that they sounded the same. YMMV etc.

 

Perhaps the overall system plays a part in it as well. In my case, the difference is quite stark. I would even go further to say that there is more to be gained here from changing dacs/amps. And what's great is that this (MusicBee & Winyl) is free. Something free shouldn't bring this much improvement.

Foobar sounds like a smooth flat porridge. I agree with @Psalmanazar about depth. In comparison, I gained dimension and texture, which makes the whole experience feel more analog, especially with live recordings. Vocal also gained weight and texture. The whole thing is just more transparent.

That MinorityClean stuff is harder to discern.

 

In my personal case, the difference between foobar+stock usb cable to wtfplay + uptone uspcb, was bigger than the difference between a hd598 and hd600. I can't guarantee it'll be translatable across systems though, will boil down to how the components synergize, reveal and react to these differences.

If you have a dedicated endpoint or streamer it might require a different analysis.

All analysis I've done have been after ensuring the volume matching, bit perfect settings, and other stuff has been taken care of btw.

 

That's been my experience with Winyl as well. Compared directly to my JRMC it's a tad syrupy. JRMC is about as neutral and razor sharp I have heard out of all the media players. foobar2000 sounds dulled and lifeless, dynamics just sound off, and I'm using the WASAPI protocol.

I know it sounds nuts but it has been noticeable in my setups. Tidal is warm like Winyl as well, I prefer using Qobuz over it but it still lags behind in SQ compared to my JRMC and FLAC files. Sounds a bit more compressed. Qobuz' desktop application is a buggy POS. I hate it.

 

Obviously I'm the dumbass in this thread: I just downloaded/installed MusicBee on my laptop. Now I can't figure out how to get it play files. I just spend 15" on it...nada. How do you control this program?

To make things worse, whatever view I'm in now gives me no access to the setup and other features. No way to bring any of that onscreen. Those features were accessible before I changed the skin.

 

It does take some time for me to get a hang of it too, mate.

Did you import the library? Go to the "musicbee" on the top left. The go to "file" then "playlist" then "import playlist"

For the layout, MusicBee is divided into several panels, but the main ones are left, center, and right. I disabled the right panel as it does nothing much. I kept the left panel for "album artist" and main panel for the tracks. I like to keep my setup minimalist.



In order to arrange panels, you must choose the option "Arrange Panels" by clicking the bee icon on the very top left. Here is mine. If you see, for my "top panel" and "right main panel", it says "disabled".


Then go to "Panel Settings". Then scroll down to tweak the "left main panel" and "main panel".


Then click "customize layout" on the "main panel" to customize the main panel.

 

Similar here. Tidal is definitely not as good as my files through JRiver. Neither is Roon. Roon sounds better than Tidal and Tidal via Roon better than the Tidal app under windows. Although the difference between Roon playing files vs Jriver is small, Roon tends to be a bit more rounded and slightly warm in both my setups.

And to think of all the years I lived with Foobar.

 

Got pulled into other stuff. Will work on your suggestions tomorrow. Thanks for responding!!

 

From the wtfplay website, it seems like wtfplay is distributed as a livecd (or, more likely these days, liveUSB) distro of Linux, so you could presumably install wtfplay-live on a spare USB drive (most of these live distros are pretty small, so an older one would probably be OK), boot your Windows machine from the USB drive, and use wtfplay in a Linux environment without changing your Windows install at all.

 

mac friends! I have inherited an early 2008 Mac Pro, retired from years of service in a recording studio. I will be using it as a dedicated music machine for playing local files.

I am going to try Audirvana but does anyone have any other recommendations for OS X playback software? I have indepth knowledge of the windows audio stack and how different players sound but this is the first time I use mac for audio. I don't need any features, just playback of mp3 and maybe flac.

 

In my experience the other obvious choices would be JRiver or Roon. Personally I use Roon, but it may not be the best first choice if you don't run the Mac as a server and take advantage of multiple endpoints throughout a house.

I miss the days when I could recommend iTunes, but they're gone. I also have used Vox in the past and been OK with it, but it's honestly been years since I put all my eggs into the Roon basket. I suppose there's also VLC, but I only use that as a last resort.

The unfortunate thing about all of this today, 2020, is everyone wants to own a piece of you. For you to have an account and to sign in and to share all your info, and subscribe to their cloud offering, etc.

 

When I ran a mac mini and tweaked it, I liked Audirvana Plus. I tried JRiver but did not care for it as much. Other players that I tried were not as good as Audirvana to my ears. Others like JRiver, though. You could always try both for free.

Now that I am on Windows I use JRiver. Slight audible benefit vs Roon and a whole heck of lot cheaper.