Audirvana Plus 2.6

[The Computer Audiophile]

yes, but... don't you also need an MQA Consortium certified/approved DAC?

 

If you also need an MQA DAC, then this isn't news because all apps can play MQA. Decoding is what the DACs do and now it appears to be available in software.

[pl_svn]

Decoding is what the DACs do and now it appears to be available in software.

ok, so *this* is the (great?) news: in the end they gave up on hardware only! ;-p

[ray-dude]

yes, but... don't you also need an MQA Consortium certified/approved DAC?

 

To me, I optimistically read it as software decoding (no HW required), but it could be read as Tidal and A+ support for passing MQA content to a MQA DAC. I'm not sure why there would be press release for the later though (doesn't A+ do that today?)

 

Assuming MQA is licensing software decoding of MQA content, that is a HUGE step for MQA.

[damien78]

If you also need an MQA DAC, then this isn't news because all apps can play MQA. Decoding is what the DACs do and now it appears to be available in software.

Before I finish to write the post I'm making on my blog, here is the quote from the Audirvana page on MQA site, that'll give you the answers:

Audirvana Plus 3 (available end of January 2017) integrates the MQA Core Decoder, enabling to get the full MQA quality with MQA devices, including the renderer only ones. Users who don’t have a MQA capable device will also benefit from the 2x sample rate of MQA streams thanks to the decoder in Audirvana Plus 3 that performs the unfolding.

[ray-dude]

Before I finish to write the post I'm making on my blog, here is the quote from the Audirvana page on MQA site, that'll give you the answers:

Audirvana Plus 3 (available end of January 2017) integrates the MQA Core Decoder, enabling to get the full MQA quality with MQA devices, including the renderer only ones. Users who don’t have a MQA capable device will also benefit from the 2x sample rate of MQA streams thanks to the decoder in Audirvana Plus 3 that performs the unfolding.

 

My optimism has been squashed Software unfolding is probably the least compelling MQA feature.

 

Looking forward to having a rich MQA library though, even if it means needing an MQA DAC to do A/B comparisons

[YashN]

ok, so *this* is the (great?) news: in the end they gave up on hardware only! ;-p

 

That was planned from the beginning actually.

[YashN]

To me, I optimistically read it as software decoding (no HW required)

 

You don't get the full capabilities of it like that unfortunately.

[pl_svn]

That was planned from the beginning actually.

then, afterwards, dismissed and apparently, now, at least in part reconsidered

[fourstrings1891]

A+ 3.0 "early January" when 2.6 is still in alpha state...

[YashN]

then, afterwards, dismissed and apparently, now, at least in part reconsidered

I found it hard to follow the in-between!

[DonaldM]

A+ 3.0 "early January" when 2.6 is still in alpha state...

I cannot subscribe this. Audirvana is as steady as a rock on my Mac Pro 2006 with OSX el capitan

[MemoryPlayer]

A+ 3.0 "early January" when 2.6 is still in alpha state...

 

Sounds as we will be very close of Roon features...

[fourstrings1891]

I cannot subscribe this. Audirvana is as steady as a rock on my Mac Pro 2006 with OSX el capitan

 

The application itself is very fine, but the interface is mess.

[DonaldM]

Please could you be more specific as for me also the interface is rock stable software wise. Of course there are always some aspects I'd like a bit different, but that has nothing to do saying A+ has an alpha status. In my book with alpha status is meant that the software is out its first test phase after development and now available for first controlled user testing. As I mentioned before this is absolutely not the case: the application, its routines, the database and the interface are rock stable on my Mac.

[pdvm]

Please could you be more specific as for me also the interface is rock stable software wise. Of course there are always some aspects I'd like a bit different, but that has nothing to do saying A+ has an alpha status. In my book with alpha status is meant that the software is out its first test phase after development and now available for first controlled user testing. As I mentioned before this is absolutely not the case: the application, its routines, the database and the interface are rock stable on my Mac.

 

+1

[ToTo Man]

@damien78, I'm having problems updating to the latest version (2.6.3). When I select 'Check for updates' and click 'Install', after it downloads the 14.1MB update, the following message is displayed:

Update Error!

An error occurred while extracting the archive. Please try again later.

How do I fix this?

[fourstrings1891]

Please could you be more specific as for me also the interface is rock stable software wise. Of course there are always some aspects I'd like a bit different, but that has nothing to do saying A+ has an alpha status. In my book with alpha status is meant that the software is out its first test phase after development and now available for first controlled user testing. As I mentioned before this is absolutely not the case: the application, its routines, the database and the interface are rock stable on my Mac.

 

Maybe I'm being picky, but I expect a Mac application to look and feel like a Mac application. I don't know what GUI libraries that are being used in A+, but it does not "feel" like a native Mac application. Sorry, I can not explain better than that.

 

The interface is buggy, and irrational.

 

- It's not possible to select multiple albums in album view with cmd-click (cmd-A to select all album works though...). Clicking on an album in album view displays the album tracks, but the album itself (the album cover) is not selected. But if you from that position select another album, it WILL be selected ... irrational. Drag-and-drop from album view to playlist just works bad.

- The "Loading..." text that appears every time an album/playlist loads looks just stupid. I have not seen in a Mac app since 199x.

- A track will not be disapear from a playlist when removed until you open different view/playlist and then go back to the playlist.

- fast scrolling in the library view (or large playlists) is extremely choppy and stucks all the time.

 

It's perhaps small issues and the library management part of A + is still quite new. And these are bugs that Damien fixes all the time. But is not it better to work on a rock solid application, before new features are rushed out? Many people in this thread had lots of tagging issues with this release. For me it was just two albums behaving stupid for no reason (again, irrational). Why not just test the versions much longer before they leave the beta stage?

 

I like the library management in A+ because it is more adjustable than iTunes. And with scripting I've found a way to automatically manage my Music folder (as in iTunes), so I've finally been able to ditch iTunes for good (and the iTune-sync in A+ 2.6 worked worse than in 2.5...). But I can't help that I sometime miss the clean iTunes look and native feel (at least how iTunes used to look some versions ago).

[Mark P.]

Thanks Damien for MQA and 3.0 version.

 

When the time is right, please provide more details on how MQA and A+ work on Non MQA compatible hardware like DAC , and USB to coaxial interface adapter

[harry.bennett.3994]

Maybe off topic, had a quick listen to Tidal MQA from the desktop application through my Chord Hugo and sounded pretty good.

Lighting the Hugo green sample frequency which is at 96khz. There are a few settings options, exclusive mode, software pass through and one other but just left as default. Looking forward to an extended listed tomorrow.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[DonaldM]

Maybe I'm being picky, but I expect a Mac application to look and feel like a Mac application. I don't know what GUI libraries that are being used in A+, but it does not "feel" like a native Mac application. Sorry, I can not explain better than that.

 

The interface is buggy, and irrational.

 

- It's not possible to select multiple albums in album view with cmd-click (cmd-A to select all album works though...). Clicking on an album in album view displays the album tracks, but the album itself (the album cover) is not selected. But if you from that position select another album, it WILL be selected ... irrational. Drag-and-drop from album view to playlist just works bad.

- The "Loading..." text that appears every time an album/playlist loads looks just stupid. I have not seen in a Mac app since 199x.

- A track will not be disapear from a playlist when removed until you open different view/playlist and then go back to the playlist.

- fast scrolling in the library view (or large playlists) is extremely choppy and stucks all the time.

 

It's perhaps small issues and the library management part of A + is still quite new. And these are bugs that Damien fixes all the time. But is not it better to work on a rock solid application, before new features are rushed out? Many people in this thread had lots of tagging issues with this release. For me it was just two albums behaving stupid for no reason (again, irrational). Why not just test the versions much longer before they leave the beta stage?

 

I like the library management in A+ because it is more adjustable than iTunes. And with scripting I've found a way to automatically manage my Music folder (as in iTunes), so I've finally been able to ditch iTunes for good (and the iTune-sync in A+ 2.6 worked worse than in 2.5...). But I can't help that I sometime miss the clean iTunes look and native feel (at least how iTunes used to look some versions ago).

 

Thanks for your explanation. Now I can better understand what you mean. You have some valid points, but calling it an alpha version in your first reaction was a bit blunt. That was what made me react.

I think you are correct in saying that look and feel can be improved. But in my opinion most other audio players out there are much worse!

 

- I agree in what you say in your first point. Only for me the drag and drop works just fine technically, at least if that is what you mean.

- Agree

- It is a design choice I can live with, but your statement is correct.

- Fast scrolling is instantaneous on my (in computer terms ancient) mac pro. After installing a PCI based SSD in my 2006 Pro (only for OSX and applications like A+) it really flies (and sounded a lot better as a bonus). So maybe it is a hardware and not a software problem?

 

I was one of the beta testers who did not like the way Damien implemented the apparent "best of" problem because it introduced a lot of split albums of before correctly tagged albums. Happily Damien listened and deleted that part. But apart from that the tagging is not different from what I did on iTunes. The transition from iTunes to A+ went very smoothly. I do not use iTunes anymore for more than a year. The keyword here is consistency!

 

After update 2.6 the speed of the syncing process was very much improved, now as fast as iTunes used to be, which is a huge compliment!

 

The only problem I still have is that adding a new album to the database is not always synced correctly and you have to remove the album from the finder to the trash and via CMD-z have to reintroduce it in the synced folder. The reason might be that I tag the metadata outside A+ with Yate and then copy the tagged album to the folder which A+ syncs.

[Musicophile]

The application itself is very fine, but the interface is mess.

I'm not sure I'd agree with this assessment.

 

The recently introduced new handling of some meta tags (or more precisely lack thereof) created some confusion, but otherwise the software works really well for many here.

[pl_svn]

I will update to A+ 3 mostly as a thank you Damien for all you have done so far

 

though I'm still having sorting issues in 2.6.x despite my *absolutely fine* file tags and... I still hope A+ will let *me* pick what to show instead of arbitrarily picking tags by itself to display in relevant places (something I've been complaining about since v2.0)

truly hope these will be fixed in 3.x

 

on 2.6 UI... the way multi artists are displayed is just plain awful: why not showing these as a list, instead of *always*, *in the main album/tracks view*, as a tag editor? =:-/

I'd also like Album release date to be shown in "Album pane" instead of just in track

 

peace and love

[mevdinc]

My first impressions on TIDAL MQA.

 

I never normally use the TIDAL player but I tried the MQA content through it and I have to say it sounded very good. I'm very familiar with Joni Mitchel's Blue album, playing the first track sounded very nice, clean and airy with nice details.

Then I played the same track (of course, 44.1 version) via Audirvana and I thought it sounded a bit laid back and was very surprised at the difference until I discovered that I had the volume normalisation on! Please don't use this option, it destroys the music, I had it on for convenience so I could just play many different albums one after the other on the same volume setting on my DAC. Never using it again, that's for sure!

 

Anyway, I think the same track up sampled to 352 and played in Audirvana sounds almost just as good as the MQA version played by TIDAL. Of course, Audirvana at the moment uses the 44.1 version of the track. I have a great system but not in in ideal listening environment, so the test is no way comprehensive but it's enough to give me a good idea.

 

This small test showed again what a fine player Audirvana is and I'm sure the MQA material decoded and up sampled/played in Audirvana will sound better still.

So, not having to own a dedicated MQA based DAC to be able to play the 88.2 and 96 MQA material via the upcoming Audirvana 3.0 is great news. Especially if TIDAL continues with not charging extra for the new MQA material!

 

Happy listening.

Mev

[Musicophile]

I guess I'll be paying for the upgrade as well although I have zero use for MQA, just to support Damien and his efforts.

 

I just hope he throws in some other new features as well.

 

I may have missed it, do we already know how much the upgrade will be?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

[damien78]

Just released Audirvana Plus 2.6.4 with bug fixes:

• Fix FLAC loader issue leading to playback stopping sometimes in last 2s of a track
  
• Fix inability to remove offline sync folder
  
• Fix inability to select multiple albums in albums view with cmd-click
  
• Fix Play Queue not updated upon track metadata change (e.g. play count)
  
• Fix shuffled playlist on shuffled at start
  

 

To not deviate too much from this thread topic (2.6), I've replied on Jud's new thread for the Audirvana Plus 3 & MQA topic