Audirvana 3.1

[watercourse]

Just updated to 3.1. No problems here. Great work @damien78

[watercourse]

Haven’t done any tweaking of SoX, but using default settings, SoX trails pretty significantly behind iZotope in terms of resolution and soundstage depth.

Also, one of the tracks I listened to yesterday (from Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack) distorted at peaks - during the children’s chorus sections. This track has never distorted before with any playback method on computer.

[watercourse]

36 minutes ago, watercourse said:

Haven’t done any tweaking of SoX, but using default settings, SoX trails pretty significantly behind iZotope in terms of resolution and soundstage depth.

Also, one of the tracks I listened to yesterday (from Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack) distorted at peaks - during the children’s chorus sections. This track has never distorted before with any playback method on computer.

 

OK, let me backtrack a little. I just read about the default settings a few posts back, and noticed that the SoX "bandwidth" setting is initially set using the "steepness" setting from iZotope - if you did what I did and simply switch to SoX filtering. Once I set bandwidth to 99.5, they are a bit closer. One other bug: SoX on my system crashes when I choose max upsampling, I have to reduce to power of two, then play, then stop playback, and then I can change to max upsampling and not have an error.

 

I need to do some listening now, but both sound pretty good, although iZotope seems more stable.

[watercourse]

10 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

 

I'm not an expert on that, but Max Upsampling should not be choosen i think... You don't want to play 44.1 at 96 or 192 whatever your DAC can, 44.1 should be upsample at 88.2 or 176 for best results and less calculations or funny results. Power of 2 is best i think to get to your max DAC resolution or the manual max you give to each sample rates in A+ prefs

 

It depends - what you said is true for my 2010 Mac Mini, but on my 2012 Mini, the max upsampling (up to 192 based on my DAC's limit) sounds a bit more spacious.

[watercourse]

Actually, I believe that SoX is handling DSD to PCM conversion slightly better than iZotope, at least it has bit more ease in its presentation. No loss in resolution at the SoX default filter settings (my previous negative SQ comments were based on short listening with a bandwidth setting of 55). And 16/44 FLAC sounds great too.

 

Will be getting a DSD DAC soon, so will be starting up another sonic adventure soon. (And no, the new DAC will not be MQA capable by choice.)

[watercourse]

On 12/25/2017 at 3:21 PM, watercourse said:

Actually, I believe that SoX is handling DSD to PCM conversion slightly better than iZotope, at least it has bit more ease in its presentation. No loss in resolution at the SoX default filter settings (my previous negative SQ comments were based on short listening with a bandwidth setting of 55). And 16/44 FLAC sounds great too.

 

Update: after listening to many locally-stored 16/44 FLAC files, I'm finding that I prefer the ability to fine-tune in iZotope - a bit more texture and depth than SoX. I feel the fixed steepness of SoX doesn't allow the ability to dial in sonics in the same way as iZotope. There is an initial apparent increase in resolution via SoX that I find is more fatiguing than iZotope over time.

 

Will focus on hi rez local files and Tidal streams next.