New OSX Opensource audiophile player : Audirvana

[khollister]

Damien

 

I am using a HiFace EVO, and while everything plays normally whether Integrer Mode is checked or not, all tracks now indicate 32 bit in the display regardless of whether they are 16 or 24, even with integer mode off.

 

[khollister]

That's odd - I have a M2Tech Hiface Evo converter (same driver as the base model Hiface) and everything seems to play at the correct sample rate for me. A note that integer mode appears to do nothing with this DAC - no indication nor sound difference whether on or off.

 

[khollister]

BTW

 

I have just gone through all of my player SW (Amarra, PM, Decibel, Fidelia & Audirvana), and I believe I prefer Audirvana at this point! I would have had it near last place several versions ago, but it now has seems to generate the highest "goosebump" factor in terms of seeming real. While I sometimes prefer the timbre of Amarra, it truly does not have much of a soundstage compared to the others. PM still sounds "off" to me, Decibel is pleasant, but dull (no air) and Fidelia has an odd "hooded" quality to the midrange that accenuates apparent depth but does not sound natural to me.

 

Good job Damien. Now if we had the iTunes library browsing access and remote like Fidelia, this would be a win/win solution. I would even be willing to pay for a iOS remote app.

 

Contribution coming your way, dude.

 

Keith

 

[khollister]

Ah - I gather you are upsampling? I am not. Never have preferred the sound up oversampling myself - always seems to screw with the soundstage and focus somewhat.

 

[khollister]

That's really bizarre, since both the "regular" hiface (the dongle) and the Evo use the exact same OS X driver and my Evo works. There must be something about the dongle Hiface that is the problem.

 

[khollister]

A few other annoyances ...

 

1) Double clicking on the first track of a playlist will not start playback - you have to use the play button. Works fine on any other track in the playlist

 

2) Clicking on a track to select it and pressing Play always starts from the first track, regardless of what was selected.

 

3) Really need a menu command to erase all tracks (with a keyboard shortcut). Doing Select All and then Delete (which has no keyboard shortcut - delete key doesn't work) is a pain.

 

4) Need track number in the playlist window

 

5) Need the Playlist window to remember the column setup - I resize the track title column so I can see what the hell I'm playing, but on restart it always goes back to the default.

 

6) Ability to reorder the columns (and remember them)

 

[khollister]

My comments were not intended as demands, I have certainly expressed my gratitude previously and most importantly, I have said thank you with my wallet (and will again).

 

Have you?

 

Ajax, I realize you probably mean well, but I don't need to be lectured by you as to what you think is appropriate standards of conduct. If you feel I was rude, that is your opinion, but in the future kindly mind your own business.

 

And Damien, in case you took my comments as demands - thanks, you're doing a great job.

 

Some people have way too much free time ...

 

[khollister]

Ah - the "other" Delete key. I was trying the Delete key above the cursor keys on the extended keyboard. You're right, it works fine using the Backspace key (which Apple also labels as "Delete").

 

Never mind ... :-)

 

[khollister]

This might have been mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread (yeah I know - "try and keep up"), but I just discovered it and wanted to make sure it was passed along.

 

I just realized OS X has media filters in the sidebar at the bottom (only been using OS X for 9 years - idiot) . When you go to add tracks from the Finder through the File Open dialog in OS X (using the plus sign button in the playlist window for instance), scroll down to the bottom of the pane. You will see a MEDIA section in the sidebar with a Music category. If you click on that, it will display your iTunes playlists at the top and a list of tracks with artist name (no album or composer) from your iTunes library. The Spotlight search field in the upper right of the pane lets you search the library on all metadata, not just the displayed track/title.

 

Not as handy as browsing directly in iTunes, but it's pretty effective if you know what you are looking for. The huge advantage is it displays the tags, not the folder & filenames, and is searchable across all of the tags on the music library.

 

Also eliminates the need to create playlists in Audirvana - you can use what you have already set up in iTunes (inc Smart Playlists).

 

This makes Audirvana (and similar programs like Decibel and even Amarra in playlist mode) much easier to deal with for me.

 

[khollister]

No problem, although I feel really stupid for just realizing this considering I have used OS X for almost 10 years. I think it makes a huge difference in the usability of apps like Audirvana to the point of not being too concerned if Damien doesn't add direct iTunes library uptake similar to Fidelia.

 

Yo, Damien - are you interested in adding a "how to" type of thing to the Audirvana distribution along these lines? I think a lot of people struggle with managing the playlist aspect. I would be happy to assist (or even just write it myself) if you want to include it. I would probably do it in Pages and export as a PDF. Your call

 

[khollister]

Damien,

 

OK. - I'll work on some documentation and try to get something ready for review in a couple weeks. I'll start a new thread to collect user's tips to include and I'll post a link to the doc so users here can peer review it.

 

Keith

 

[khollister]

I will check this evening - I think (hope) my dedicated Mac Mini is still running 10.2.0 since I have software update disabled. If so, I can do a fresh clone of the boot drive and listen, then update iTunes and listen again. If it is worse, I can roll back the boot drive to the clone very quickly (it's only about 12 GB on an SSD)

 

[khollister]

The only time I have gotten the red overload indicator is when the sample rate changes for the next track. It will occasionally stutter and recover or sometimes I have to stop playback and restart. It always plays perfectly on the restart if it doesn't fix itself in a second or two.

 

I have 4 GB of RAM, absolutely nothing else running and 3GB allocated to the buffer.

 

[khollister]

OK - I had already updated iTunes to 10.2.1 on the Mini, but I had a cloned image with 10.6.5 and iTunes 10.1.1 from the same machine with the same OS X configuration.

 

Listened to 10.2.1, cloned the 10.1.1 OS back to the SSD, listened, updated iTunes to 10.2.1 and then recloned the drive back to the 10.1.1 image.

 

Yup, they screwed it up. I'm pretty sure the 10.1.1 version of iTunes on my OS X 10.6.5 clone sounds better with Audirvana - more air and space, better clarity, better sense of "room" (ambience retrieval).

 

Since this is used for nothing other than music, I'll just stick here for a while.

 

Seems to switch sampling rates better too - no red overload boxes so far.

 

Obviously iTunes 10.2.1 must have updated a Quicktime component with an inferior sounding version of a CoreAudio library. Since iTunes is not running, I can't imagine what else it could be.

 

Damien will probably figure this out, but it would be interesting if someone with a DAC that supports integer mode can hear the difference. I seem to recall Damien saying he only used the barest minimum of CoreAudio including the 32 bit FP HAL. Since an DAC whose driver supports native mode (24 bit integer) presumably bypasses the 32 bit float conversion, it would help narrow down what went wrong.

 

[khollister]

Uh, on my older OS X 10.6.5 image with iTunes 10.1.1, usbmuxd is running and when I kill it it immediately restarts. This is an image I cloned back over by boot drive, so it's not like it was left over from removing iTunes 10.2.1

 

Not sure that's it

 

[khollister]

You can stop usbmuxd from loading by removing (or renaming)

 

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.usbmuxd.plist

 

usbmuxd is only needed if you are syncing an iDevice of some sort.

 

[khollister]

The first two options do the same thing, the second is just more destructive.

 

Given that I still had usbmuxd running on an old OS X 10.6.5/iTunes 10.1.1 clone image, I'm not certain dropping back to iTunes 10.2 is going to fix things. Frankly, I noticed something going a little south a while back, but wrote it off as something else.

 

I think that certain DAC's or S/PDIF bridges trigger usbmuxd when the sample rate is changed even with older versions of iTunes.

 

Just nuke the plist file and leave 10.2.1 installed.

 

[khollister]

Well that explains why I was having problems on 10.1.1.

 

"trashing ... AppleMobileDevice items ..."

 

Care to share exactly else what I need to go after? I have stopped usbmuxd from loading already.

 

UPDATE: - found them

 

AppleMobileDevice.kext

AppleMobileDeviceHelper

AppleMobileSync

com.apple.pkg.AppleMobileDeviceSupport.plist

com.apple.pkg.iTunes.AppleMobileDeviceSupportDelta.4.0.10.2.plist

 

[khollister]

OK - trashed the kernel extension and the entire MobileDevice framework folder. Definite improvement after rebooting, even with switching sample rates in Audirvana.

 

Thanks for the tip on the MobileDevice stuff. Since this is a dedicated music server, I really could care less about butchering the OS since none of this will ever get used on this machine. My Mac Pro handles all of that.

 

[khollister]

Renaming, moving or deleting the usbmuxd plist file will stop usbmuxd from starting on my system. Since I have clone images available for my Mini and can restore the complete SSD image in a few minutes, I have no hesitation in trying to further streamline the OS. My opinion is it certainly can't hurt removing anything that potentially interferes with the USB ports, and servicing the mobile device sync falls in that category.

 

At this point, I am more inclined to think OS X 10.6.5 & 10.6.6 have at least as much to do with this as iTunes 10.2.1 because usbmuxd was permanently loaded on my 10.6.5 installation with iTunes 10.1.1.

 

It is confusing, which is why Roch was concerned about publishing all of the info lest someone hose up their computer. I need to do some more testing - even after deleting all of this stuff, I'm still not sure I didn't hear an improvement after rebooting.

 

I need to poke around in the dev docs and see what else might be referenced relevant to iOS device syncing.

 

[khollister]

First draft of an Audirvana playlist how-to (to be turned into a full manual) is now available for review:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Post-your-Audirvana-tips-here-No-general-discussion-or-questions-use-main-thread#comment-75676

 

Please use that thread to discuss this rather than adding even more to this one.

 

Keith

 

[khollister]

Well, just got back from a short vacation and tried 0.8.0 vs 0.7.4. They definitely sound different. While 0.8.0 seems to have a little better clarity and definition to the instruments, it also has a little more edge and hardness to the treble. I recall many versions ago that Audirvana had this same quality which was why I was using Amarra and Decibel (ayrewave then). Audirvana somewhere along the line got the same sweet, delicate highs that Amarra has, and now the new compiler appears to have gone backwards a bit on this particular aspect.

 

I am certainly keeping 0.7.4 around since I have absolutely no issues/bugs with it on my system. 0.8.0 does have a certain "presence" to voices that I like however.

 

I have no idea at this point what is "accurate" versus "euphonic". The older version compiled with GCC has more "tubelike" upper mids and highs to my ear, which I'm a sucker for.

 

Damien - it would be nice if you could build 0.8.0 with GCC as well as LLVM so we know 100% for certain we are hearing a compiler difference (which really hurts my head, BTW) rather than something else in the baseline.

 

 

 

[khollister]

It is also darker and the depth folks are commenting on comes with a "hooded" quality to the midrange that I also hear in Fidelia.

 

It will be a long term problem since Apple is deprecating support for GCC going forward in favor of LLVM, but I really think 0.7.4 sounds better IMHO.

 

[khollister]

After listening to 7.4, 8.0-LLVM and 8.0-GCC, I believe that the 8.0 versions are much closer in sound regardless of the compiler used. 7.4 still sounds different than the GCC build of 8.0 to me.

 

Damien - the only change was shuffle play?

 

 

 

[khollister]

I'm calling LLVM on the 0.8.2 version as well.