Audirvana Plus 3 (official thread)

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Speed Racer said:

 

Since Audirvana does not operate in real-time, it needs to modify the system so that it is less likely to be interrupted.

 

Audirvana worked fine for years before Damien made SysOptimizer available.

 

1 hour ago, Speed Racer said:

If a DAC manufacturer wanted to implement more complex filtering, all they have to do is add the computing power to do so. Again, in real-time, which is much different than "high performance" like you get a with a conventional computer. When something goes in the DAC, it has to come out on time every time.

 

"All they have to do is add the computing power...."  With which specific DAC chip made today that will equal the resources available from a modern CPU?

 

I have no idea where this obsession with "real-time" comes from.  If we are talking about a USB DAC and A+, the software-filtered bitstream is stored in RAM, then sent when the user wants from the computer.  It is the subject of communication between the DAC's USB receiver and the computer, which sends packets in order to keep the DAC's buffer filled.  These stages are not real time, regardless of whether you upsample in A+ or leave it to your DAC.  If the bitstream is upsampled it skips some or all of the DAC chip filtering before the final analog filter (just as it would if the file were originally hi res).  In whatever part of the DAC's processing it doesn't skip, it behaves exactly the same, for "real time" purposes, as something coming out of the DAC's internal chip.  

 

If you're talking about actual dropouts while the computer is performing software upsampling, that's not a problem for PCM rates.  For DSD rates, it depends on how modern your computer is and what DSD rates you want to get to.  My 8 year old notebook with a Core 2 Duo CPU will do DSD128 without a problem.  For DSD256 I might have to wait for part of a song to load into memory.  But that's if I choose upsampling to DSD256 on an 8 year old machine.

 

So where is it that this "real time" thing produces better sound quality, or are you not talking about quality at all, but just avoiding dropouts?

[Jud]

1 minute ago, Innocent Bystander said:

Why would you want to do that? Surely the goal is to find the most accurate conversion of the encoded file of digitally recorded music into an analogue signal, and contantly tweaking suggests it not working. Or do you mean you're effectively using the process as DSP, in effect tone control, to adjust individual recordings to a sound that pleases you? The two are very different, though of course neither is wrong, as it is all about musical enjoyment.

 

in my view the DAC designers do their best, and at least with the upper echelon that means a lot of listening, while renderer designers do likewise, and I was under the impression that A+ is the result of listening not just theoretical, however perhaps I am wrong and it is just coincidence when any given version sounds right with the recommended settings?

 

 

I can completely bypass my DAC's filtering with A+.  My speakers have linear phase crossovers.  I have an iFi DAC.  I have an 8 year old computer.  My filter and modulator settings reflect that.  Your system is likely different, and you can have different filtering parameters and modulator choice to reflect that.  What if you change (or want to change) something else in your system and it no longer sounds quite right to you with your current DAC?  I can keep my DAC and change the filtering.  There are discussions about various types of filtering on this forum and elsewhere; I can try them if I like, keep the changes if it's an improvement, go back to what I had if it's not.  I've tried and rejected minimum phase and apodizing filters.  It was a matter of moving sliders.  Other people would have had to buy or borrow entirely new DACs.

 

I could go on, but you get the idea.

 

So what is the result of this experimentation?  For music listening, as opposed to testing, I've used just two different filtering setups in the past three years.

[Jud]

16 hours ago, mansr said:

 

There's definitely room for more optimisations. Bear in mind, however, that much of the time is spent in the iZotope resampler, and that's none of my concern.

 

Yes, after you're done we can move on to bothering Alexey.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, RunHomeSlow said:

People like me (i think) really wants to have the best they could get EASILY from their software or DAC, looking in forums like here on ComputerAudiophile... but mostly, people here are too specialized and forget about that simpler aproach for regular people...

 

I'm a graphic designer for a newspaper in Montreal and if i was talking about InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator to mansr or Jud (have nothing against you two (i'm sure you know), just for example...) you could be blown away from the perspective i'm talking about, for filters i used for tweaking images in Photoshop or text editing in InDesign, here, is the same, people talking about cables, filters, putting computer away from TV or wifi modem that changed sound... :-)

 

I don't know settings to upsampled best DSD for my DAC with Audirvana + or yours or should i do it in the first place... or should i used the plain settings coming from Damien's A+.

 

There is never an easy solution... some people like it simple... they don't change anything, some like it more difficult and some know what their doing... but here, NOBODY have the same settings or sound system or room distance .... that makes everything difficult to be simple  lol

 

Here, i learn something everyday...

 

My 2 cents for now...  Happy music everyone !!

 

Yes, very true.  How did you learn about filters in graphics and photography?

6 hours ago, Innocent Bystander said:

Interesting. 

Perhaps my perceptive is a bit different because my DAC does wonderful things, holographic soundstaging and remarkable clarity as fed with untweaked and un-upsampled A2.6.x, with a naturalness that makes me wary of change. I may  try v3 out of curiosity in due course, but I'm in no hurry, and in the meantime I.m hoping Damien will fix the library.

 

It is nice that A+ will accommodate both of our very different approaches.

[Jud]

7 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

 

I meant filters in photoshop menu... or effects applied to a picture  :-)

 

Yep - how did you learn about the right way/time to use these and what they did?

 

[Jud]

6 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

 

Went to Graphic Design school in '95, if i remember well  :-)

still work for a small newspaper and played since with MAC computers.

 

i'm better with MAC then izotope settings  :-)

 

Wish they had a Filter Design School (actually I guess they do, but my last math courses were 45 years ago and they didn't get into the math filters use).  It will be interesting to see whether I make time to try to learn some of these things after I retire, and if I do, whether I'm still capable of learning them.

[Jud]

5 minutes ago, TommyCat said:

How do you "update" the Kext file?

 

Someone else can give you the info, but just wanted to caution: "kext" means "kernel extension," so it's the core of the operating system.  Do a backup first!  Then *thoroughly* understand all the steps beforehand, and print them out or have them handy on another computer/device while you're proceeding.  If this concerns you, don't bother doing the process.

[Jud]

27 minutes ago, Frojo said:

..brings up view options- album artists only, or am i missing something ?

 

I wonder what you and I have done differently, since Artist continues to work for me.  Perhaps it's because I have never used the Album Artist field.

[Jud]

Obviously sailing against the tide here, but I was just about to remark on spending a lovely late afternoon/early evening with nothing else to do (extremely rare for me lately) listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Bare Trees" and Steely Dan's "Countdown to Ecstasy" and "Pretzel Logic," thinking how wonderful the music sounded.

 

The "phone home" license checking doesn't adversely affect me, but I empathize with those for whom it does and hope a workable solution is found.

[Jud]

For those of you who mind an application or OS checking with a server:

 

- Do you use any computer for anything other than listening to music?

 

- What OS and (main) apps do you use?

 

 I am pretty sure you will find that a great many of your OSs and apps are doing this.

[Jud]

30 minutes ago, watercourse said:

On my dual boot Mini, the SD card is only for music... I'm actually keeping it on a closed local network, using wifi only for A+ remote.

The SSD boot side can be considered the multipurpose side, but the entire machine is getting long in the tooth and better as a dedicated music maker.

I'd rather not have the reminders even from Apple that I need to update my OS when I want to stay on Yosemite.

 

I have one of those (long in the tooth Apple computers) myself.    It's on El Cap (too old to work with Sierra), and I connect it for a few purposes I can think of offhand, other than A+ licensing/updates - (1) OS and app updates, especially security-related; (2) uploading backups of new music to cloud storage (Amazon Cloud Drive: easy, inexpensive, and even if my house burned down - perish the thought - my ripped and downloaded music would all be safe); and (3) occasional browsing and email.

[Jud]

37 minutes ago, Innocent Bystander said:

Occasionally having to 'check in', say monthly, doesn't worry me, but as I mentioned in my first post on this aspect, what is a concern is what happens to my hifi system when Damien one day decides he's had enough of this lark, or our whinging, or something worse - I expect it to sit there, stable, working indefinitely.

 

Yes, understandable.  If Damien at some point decided to give this up (which I would be very sorry to see happen!), he would presumably not be bothered by A+ installations continuing to work after that, so perhaps he could turn off the checking then?

[Jud]

8 minutes ago, watercourse said:

I'm quite happy with the sound quality of V3, and have no real issues with the library. However, I'm trying to keep my computer audio setup from requiring internet connection, as I am not very interested in streaming right now, nor in MQA. My entire library is local, and I'd like to keep it that way. K.I.S.S.

 

Wondering if there is a way for folks who have a setup like yours or similar (in other words, the music computer is seldom if ever connected to the internet) to present the server's query and the music computer's response through an "intermediary," like an SD card or another computer on the home network?

[Jud]

10 minutes ago, win32pro said:

Plus, if anything does, it gets thrown out of any of my computers.

 

So you do no security updates and leave your system vulnerable?

[Jud]

19 minutes ago, win32pro said:

If I do security updates, I'll break direct mode.

And vulnerable to what?

If I don't connect a machine to the internet, the attack vector is minimal.

 

Plus, even if I did put security updates, those come out every few months, and I can use combo updates, thus keeping my machine off the internet, if I wanted.

 

And like I said, the Audirvana check might come smack at the beginning of my vacation, thus depriving me of my music.

 

Who thought that was a bright idea?

 

I wasn't referring to your music computer.  You said if any apps or OSs on any of your computers did the client-server contact you'd get rid of them, unless I misunderstood you.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, win32pro said:

Any piece of software that refuses to function without an internet connection gets removed.

And it doesn't matter why or how often.

 

It's this piece I have difficulty understanding.  Every OS I know of provides a server with information so the server knows what updates to suggest.  (I, like you, control whether and when updates occur.)  With MS and Apple at least, if you think there is no check to see if you're running a licensed version, think again.

[Jud]

50 minutes ago, watercourse said:

+1

In my case, if I have to connect my dedicated music computer only to be able to continue using software that I've already paid for, it's a big pain.

I already get regular reminders for OS updates that I don't want, and disconnecting my mac from the interwebs is the best solution to deal with this.

Really has nothing to do with sinister intrusiveness - I have many other computers and devices that can track my every move, I just want my dedicated A+ machine to transport me away from the real world, like the Calgon bubble bath commercial ;-)

 

If you reference the Calgon commercial, I have to give you a "like."

[Jud]

48 minutes ago, Innocent Bystander said:

 

Bad and missing metadata is indeed a problem, precisely why quite a few people have requested that Damien add a facility to the library to search/browse by folders/file structure - I posted about that on here some time back, including why trying to fix the metadata is not the answer. The same solution would either fix or provide a simple work-around to a few of the other library issues mentioned from time to time (here and on the A+ site)

 

I thought Damien may have made a reference to this at one point - was some aspect of folder structure included as a fallback...?

[Jud]

11 hours ago, jtm said:

My local iPad acts as a remote

 

Do you have updates turned off for iOS and apps on the iPad?

[Jud]

14 hours ago, jtm said:

Jud, I do appreciate your position as an advocate for Audirvana, however I feel you might need to consider that other people do not feel happy with software which monitors users behaviour or activities.

 

Call me an old fart, but I do not use facebook, whats app and rubbish like that, and I listen to my music on an old 2011 MacBook Pro with Mavericks 10.9.5, within an isolated home network on fiber dedicated to music playback, with some NAS and FireWire storage attached to it.

 

My local iPad acts as a remote and controls the player, my Hue lights, etc, and there is absolutely NO need at all why I should connect all of this to the WWW.

 

Remember the old days: never change a running system.

Why should I, there is no threat as nothing is connected to the WWW advertising machine.

 

I bought the CDs, the downloads, the software, the hardware, and I simply do not like anyone to watch me, listen to me or give me pressure to buy and update stuff when I want to enjoy my music.

 

And this is why possibly I will not use Audirvana anymore soon, nor any popular spyware like Siri, Alexa, Cortana ...

 

Btw ... Vinyl is great - no updates, no DRM, no advertising ...

 

I still have my vinyl (not buying new, but have plenty from the old days that I still love).

 

Thanks for the good conversation, jtm.

 

I did want to point out that I have no "position" with regard to Audirvana.  I like it, and have occasionally corresponded with Damien and like him, so yes, the things I say here reflect that long time use and liking of the software.  But I wanted to make sure that no one took what I was saying as any sort of official position on behalf of Audirvana or Damien, or as indicating that I know anything any of you does not with regard to the licensing - I don't.

 

Having established that some of you do not like apps that connect to a server in order to update and validate, I wanted to move on to another area of discussion.  I think we can say with confidence that all of you who have been corresponding here access the Internet occasionally, or perhaps more than occasionally.  When you have accessed this site to post, you provided your username and password, or did so by means of a "cookie" stored on the computer you were using.  This information told the website you were allowed to post here.  That, it seems to me, is a similar quantity and type of information as Audirvana Plus provides.  Granted, you knew in advance this is what you were doing to be allowed to post here at CA, and it may have been nice to inform people in advance this information would be provided by Audirvana Plus, though as we've seen, it can take time and discussion before people are ready to consider this topic thoughtfully.

 

More significantly, if you spend any time on the Internet, information about your personal browsing habits, your likes and dislikes, is constantly being provided to your ISP and companies like Google.  The information provided in an hour or two of browsing is far greater in quantity, is far more personal and detailed, than anything Audirvana Plus will provide in your lifetime.  Ever used email?  Ever had a credit card and used it online *or* offline?  A driver's license?  A Social Security card in the USA or similar national identification in another country?  You have voluntarily and involuntarily provided a great deal of detailed personal information when obtaining and using each of these, and more importantly the sum total of information from all these various sources has been sliced, diced, concatenated, analyzed, and packaged for all sorts of customers you've never met and know little or nothing about.  (Has anyone corresponding here never received any single item of spam, ever?  If you have, how did they get your email address?)  If you have said something on this site, or even looked at it without ever joining and posting, you have already provided more information about yourself than the simple "Yes, licensed" that Audirvana Plus will communicate to the server.

 

You can avoid much of this, at least in the online part of your life, by using a VPN, for example, but then if you want a VPN at all you will almost certainly have to sign up and become an authorized user, and if you want a decent one, you will almost certainly have to pay and allow the VPN's servers to check that you have a paid-up membership.   (I don't know about tor, haven't used it.)

 

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying it seems to me there is no principle of privacy at issue regarding communication from an app to a server for the purpose of validating a license, providing far less information than you already have in many other aspects of your life to parties unknown and perhaps unknowable.  So I think we should focus on consideration of the practical side of the new validation mechanism.  There I think audiocanyon's suggestion, if it is possible/convenient for Damien to implement, may be a good one.

[Jud]

59 minutes ago, pl_svn said:

@Jud my concern, and that of many others here, is not at all about privacy but about being able to run A+ on a dedicated machine *not* connected to the outside world or when traveling, on vacation (long ones  ), with no internet access. that's all!

 

looks nowadays everyone is taking for granted that everyone is connected to the internet all the time  which is *not* true at all (for different reasons and/or... in many countries, not necessarily third world ones)

 

Right, that's why I mentioned (if you read all the way to the end - it was a long note, so if you didn't you are forgiven [especially considering the season  ]) audiocanyon's idea, where he talked about an app he uses that if it hasn't "heard from you" in 30 days tells you to connect to the Internet to validate some time in the next 30 days.  I think 60 days to validate would take care of the vast majority of Audirvana users.  But I haven't asked Damien whether this is convenient/possible/preferable for him.

[Jud]

19 minutes ago, Musicophile said:

The rationale for regular checking is obvious in a subscription model, but here the entire purpose of this completely escapes me. 

 

What I read in Damien's post is that it prevents the wide distribution of "cracked" license keys, automating what must surely be a laborious process of tracking down identical keys presented by multiple users.

[Jud]

On 4/13/2017 at 9:18 AM, damien78 said:

I moved to a license number key scheme that is the one to which users are used to.

 

Except the few softwares that want to be hacked and stolen in a few minutes, all commercial softwares use a server validation mechanism.

Some vendors have even moved to a subscription model, something I’m not willing to do as I think (maybe I’m wrong) you prefer to fully own your own copy of Audirvana Plus and give you the choice to get the benefits of the next major version though a paid upgrade, or remain with the current one.

 

The need to check on regular basis the server is meant to check if a license has not been burnt because it has been widely shared by someone who thought software developers effort should not be rewarded, though they would not think to steal the expensive hardware they have bought.

All the various app store, and popular applications use such a server validation model. FYI, Adobe and Microsoft have seen a real decrease in piracy rate after implementing such mechanism.

 

If you want to know why the server validation was implemented, here you are.  (The bolding is mine.)

[Jud]

42 minutes ago, Innocent Bystander said:

Thanks rickca. Unfortunately it is a significant ongoing problem to me - another example is having more than one versions of an album (e.g. in different resolutions, or remasterings) - when saving them each album is its own folder, the name altered simply to show the difference (e,.g appending the resolution, or mastering date etc), but A+ can't differentiate and mhen you go to play one the others appear in the play queue, going track 1, track 1, track 2, track 2 etc, requiring manual identification of which is which and removing from the queue before starting play.

 

What I do with this (and I appreciate this may not be the way you like to do things) is use the track list rather than the album list and place those criteria (resolution in my case, resolution and date in yours) relatively high in the sorting order, right after artist and album.

[Jud]

Just now, Innocent Bystander said:

Thanks, Jud. I can do nothing to resolve the very great frustration of having all my classical and non-classical albums all muddled up when trying to browse,  when my first decision would be to choose what genre I fancy listeming to, and multiple names for artists and composers, and some albums simply invisible, however your tip does help,with that particular problem, which is something at least!

 

I don't even eff around with genre, having found, as you say, that it's a horrible muddle, metadatically speaking.  I was not willing to work hard enough to get it changed to my liking for all my music.  I think this means people who depend on genre will either have to do a lot of metadata work or wait for a version of A+ that uses folder structure.