Audirvana 1.5.10 have best SQ so far

[Mike Pinkerton]

In a recent issue of Sterophile, there was an article on a dedicated music player where the reviewer heard differences and preferred the sound of a previous version of the firmware over the current one. The manufacturer was baffled since they had made absolutely no changes to the audio engine in that update. It turns out they adjusted (reduced) the max output by 1db, and the reviewer equated "louder" to "better". This is someone with golden ears. Editor measurements backed up the manufacturer's assertion.

 

Just saying. I hope Damien can jump in here and say what changes he's made to the audio engine between versions. My guess is that there likely aren't any.

[odelay]

Thanks Bob.

I don't know what system permutations effect these differences. While the 1.4+ betas were being tested, I preferred ten, whilst most liked seven. I wondered then if Damien may be able to keep two versions going simultaneously... but I guess that's impractical...

 

I only came around to using Izotope after, but imagine that might have swung my preference. I wonder if messing with isotope may bring you some soundstage joy?

 

I have no idea what a living soundstage might sound like, but It's something to listen out for, no doubt :-)

[BobP63]

Unfortunately there are still too many variables without explanation. Case in point this tread relates to 1.5.10 being preferred to the current 1.5.12 however; nothing in the release notes points to what would have changed to cause this. Similarly when a change resulted in soundstage depth, in my system at least, after 1.5.7 nothing explained this change.

 

My fear is that the balancing act being performed by the audio engine within the software package is extremely delicate, so much so, that seemingly unrelated coding changes create subtle impacts to SQ.

 

Only Damien can say, unfortunately he's not said anything one way or the other.

[Mike Pinkerton]

In my 20 years of consumer software development, I've seen numerous examples where I shipped a release with *only* an icon change and had users rave about how the app got faster. Source code control doesn't lie; humans are notoriously unreliable.

 

It's very possible that these dot releases have changed something, but given the scale of the audible changes people are reporting in multiple versions, it seems unlikely for small bugfix releases.

[eltee00]

Anyone have the installation file for 1.5.7? I'm interested in doing a comparison.

[jvlata]

Check your PM

 

 

Anyone have the installation file for 1.5.7? I'm interested in doing a comparison.

[greentrumpet]

I have 1.5.12 and would like to compare it with 1.5.10 or 1.5.7 if anyone could pm it to me, thanks.