New OSX Opensource audiophile player : Audirvana

[wgscott]

This is really nice. Thanks for posting.

 

Any tricks to getting the binary in Contents/MacOS to accept a file as a command-line argument?

 

Oh, and thanks for making it open-source.

 

 

 

[wgscott]

This really sounds superb. The audio midi switching works flawlessly.

 

[wgscott]

When I compiled it (from yesterday's svn), I got a lot of warnings saying that there were implicit conversions that resulted in some variables getting 32-bit instead of 64-bit namespaces.

 

If you link to static libs, you have to upgrade every time there is a bug-fix in one of those libs. Wouldn't it be advantageous to link dynamic libs?

 

Also, if you want it to be a fink package, I could do that (I might need a bit of help at some point).

 

 

[wgscott]

I should have added I also get the glitch in playback of long 24/96 tracks, with the red CPU warning thing flashing. CPU is near idle at 3% to 7%. I have 2 gig total memory; the preferences indicate I can allocate 1 gig to the program?

 

[wgscott]

The experiment is very easy to do (link at top).

 

[wgscott]

"wgscott: can you check the available mem you have when playing and encountering the dropouts?"

 

I can't give you a more quantitative estimate until this evening, but Menu Meters displays about 450 to 500 MB free memory while playing, and usually about 1500MB when it deallocates. There is lots of swapping and page-outs, from what I recall.

 

-- Bill

 

 

 

[wgscott]

I wasn't able to compile for 64-bit or 32-bit ppc on my G5 ppc, and my guess is that it would take a significant amount of re-writing for this obsolete platform. It is certainly beyond my limited capabilities.

 

[wgscott]

Haven't heard dropouts, but it just flat-out refused to play a 24/48 Mahler download I just got from B&W that is about 28 min long. File size is 285 MB (FLAC converted to ALAC so maybe uncompressed it is too big?). I hate Mahler so I guess this is an asset/feature rather than a bug.

 

[wgscott]

Is it capped at 1 gig limit or is that because I have only 2 gig memory? I can't play a lot of classical stuff as a consequence.

 

[wgscott]

What do you mean by "The Command Line playback"?

 

 

 

[wgscott]

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/afplay

 

"Hope this makes sense. Maybe someone else can elaborate more ;-)"

 

err ... unless someone else did the same thing, that was moi.

 

I cobbled together a shell script/osascript that essentially hijacks iTunes, resets the sampling frequency to match the track, and then plays it in aflay (with -q 1).

 

So it definitely works. I have a tin ear, apparently. I can't tell if it is better or worse, and have no idea whether afplay at the max quality setting is bit-perfect.

 

Here is a link to the description and download if anyone wants to give it a listen: http://sage.ucsc.edu/~wgscott/xtal/wiki/index.php/Nyquist

 

 

 

 

 

[wgscott]

If anyone wants to write an open-source command-line utility to do that, I would saw my left arm off with gratitude.

 

[wgscott]

Actually, I said it first

 

But what would be great is if the binary executable could accept the file path as a command-line argument, like standard unix players (and afplay). Then it would be possible, via applescript (already written), to use this as the player engine within iTunes, shoudl a user wish to do so. Also, it could be used with any wrapper that way.

 

[wgscott]

I'm not competent to advise, but this looks like the way:

 

http://unixjunkie.blogspot.com/2006/07/command-line-processing-in-cocoa.html

 

Pretty much any text editor program will do this (some are open-source).

 

[wgscott]

This is just feedback, not complaining ...

 

1. Loading playlists: Dragging and dropping a playlist (m3u) for some reason results in only a subset of the tracks loading. Maybe a multibyte character problem?

 

2. I've also recently noticed that the higher frequencies seem somehow muffled compared to iTunes and Ayreware playback, especially noticeable with Beethoven's Appassionata.

 

 

 

[wgscott]

That works. It was tripping on the é in Pathétique. (Ayrewave seems to be able to do this from m3u fwiw.)

 

"Fewer" issues.

 

[wgscott]

My webserver seems to be down, so I'm just attaching a zipped file. I should clarify that I made this by exporting an iTunes playlist, and I have no particular love for m3u vs. m3u8. The characters display correctly in TextMate, but if I more the file, I see this kind of thing:

 

_PatheÌtique_

 

iTunes also puts in Mac OS 9 style line endings.

 

 

 

[wgscott]

Could anything be gained by using the GPU? For a computer primarily focused on audio (at least when music is playing), the graphics card seems under-utilized...

 

 

 

[wgscott]

One very nice feature in Decibel (and Play) is that it is apple-scriptible, so you can use an iTunes script, assign it a hot-key (I use ?R), and it auto-loads everything selected into the Decibel temporary playlist window.

 

It would be great to have that ability with audirvana...

 

[wgscott]

I've noticed that even with the preference setting half way between fast and best, upsampling maxes out one of the processors. I wonder if it would benefit from the ability to use both processors, or would this compromise playback in some other ways?

 

[wgscott]

As a cheesy proof of principle, I hacked together an Applescript-based trick that allows me to hijack Apple's remote to select and play an album, playlist, or whatever using Audirvana. It's current limitation is that it only loads up the Audirvana playlist window and starts it playing. I have no further control except to add additional items to the end of the playlist. But at least it gives me some remote control over Audirvana while using the iTunes-based interface with its album art, which for me, is important as I need the visual cues. I can then use the Apple Remote Control device to play/pause and so on.

 

I realize this is half-assed, but if anyone wants it, let me know and I will upload it.

 

[wgscott]

Congratulations. If I manufactured one of those devices, I would seriously consider donating to the cause, since, after all, this can only help them sell.

 

So .... can you hear a difference?

 

[wgscott]

What would people think of the idea of purchasing a remote app for iPad/pod/phone that works with audirvana as a means for helping to support the open-source project?

 

[wgscott]

Sorry. Spoke too soon. Same problem here. Also, it is slowed down because it wrongly sets the sampling frequency (my 44.1 is 32) when integer mode is turned on (which was the default). Manually setting Audio MIDI to 24 bit instead of 32 bit seems to have fixed the problem.

 

[wgscott]

I think this does what you want:

 

http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/

 

Posting before I am awake -- sorry if this is irrelevant