New OSX Opensource audiophile player : Audirvana

[Jeff In San Diego]

...and since Audirvana always wants to play 44.1 at 88.2, I can't play Redbook on Audirvana.

 

That makes me sad because I really like Audirvana. Is there some way to change the settings such that it will stop trying to play 44.1 at 88.2? It would be fine if Audirvana left these at 44.1, and this DAC plays Redbook fine upsampled to 96 when used with other players that don't try to mess with the sample-rate set in midi/audio utility.

 

Suggestions?

 

thanks,

jp

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

In my defense, I am only occasionally a moron. Don't know why I didn't see that when I looked right at it.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

I've been using Audirvana for a couple weeks now and like it a lot. It is my go-to player now.

 

My understanding from various places is that all of the various players around today each have their own audio rendering code...and very little of CoreAudio (the Apple provided audio libraries) is used.

 

I've seen it stated that iTunes uses something from a company Apple bought. The developer of PureAudio tells me he has his own and only uses the minimum CoreAudio code at the very output end. Audirvana and Ayrewave seem to be similar based on comments here and elsewhere in these forums. Amarra folks of course have their own also.

 

I'm wondering if this is primarily just a way to differentiate themselves? Is there really anything wrong with CoreAudio? Or it is just different, and "not invented here", and not a way to distinguish a particular player? In other words is it a non-starter for audio performance reasons, or for business reasons?

 

Also wondering if QuickTime uses CoreAudio to play audio files when they are opened from there?

 

Since the iTunes audio libraries are "old" by now, is CoreAudio probably better than iTunes, since it was ostensibly written and extensively developed much more recently?

 

thanks!

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

that you can drag a song or an album from the itunes window into the playlist window of Audirvana? That's my primary use-model.

 

It's not quite what you're asking for, but easier than the way you described.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

I will try this out this morning. Have been hoping somebody would get around to doing this before I had to learn AppleScript myself and get it done myself.

 

Since no good deed goes unpunished, can I ask for help/suggestions on adding a couple more things to the script that will make it even better for me?

 

1) What line would I need to add to the script to tell Audirvana to empty the existing playlist as a first step (since I usually just listen one album at a time and will use this as an easier way to queue up the next album to listen to).

2) Can you think of a way (in script) to make iTunes select all the songs in an album? The iTunes UI is currently rather clunky in this regard. For me, clicking on the album artwork on the left should select the whole album, but it just selects the first song. Currently that would mean manually selecting all the songs of an album before hitting the keystroke for your script.

 

Thanks again, really appreciate you sharing this with the group!

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

"The spacebar does not work for me to play/pause Audirvana. Does anyone else have this problem?"

 

Yes, I have noticed that too. Have been hoping he would add it. It is a minor thing, but I got used to having that in iTunes.

 

thanks,

jp

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Hi Damien,

Would you please add these items to your todo list? I think each one is about 10 minutes...

 

1) change "Space" on the play menu item to "space" so it will work

2) add a "Cut" or "Delete" Edit menu item hooked to the '-' button in the playlist

 

The second one is for scripting. It will make it possible for me to empty the playlist before the recently-posted Applescript for dumping an iTunes selection to Audirvana playlist. (note that my Select All addition works, but no way to then delete it from script)

 

I'm curious...what was the use-case you were going for with the "prune" menu item? I can't think of a way I would use that. As near as I can tell it deletes everything except the current item. Must be for a work flow I haven't thought of yet.

 

thanks much,

jp

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

I needed something to do while I kind-of watched the SuperBowl, so I decided to hack around on the script that Bob provided to make my own version.

 

This one is intended to be used by manually selecting one or more files in iTunes and then run the script (perhaps with a command-P key combo like I did). This should replace whatever is currently in Audirvana's playlist with your iTunes selection (and start playing it).

 

A word of caution, this is a fragile script. It had to depend on the order of windows and of buttons in the window because there is (so far) no menu item for removing the current selection from the playlist (Cut/Delete). It could easily get broken by small changes in the app over time. Also it has only had a very small amount of testing. I don't know jack about AppleScript, so there are no doubt some better ways to do some of this. Your mileage will probably vary.

 

Installation is same as described by Bob above. Thanks again to Bob for getting the ball rolling.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

I've made the changes suggested by Bob above and created a new copy of the script. It seems to run faster now too, for reasons I don't know and don't want to contemplate.

 

(BTW, most of the "original" code was not mine. It was scraped up and modified from several different sources through some distracted googling -- I don't even know enough AppleScript to be dangerous)

 

Now if only somebody would figure out enough iTunes scripting to make it extend selection of the first song of an album to encompass the whole album. Then one could just click on the album artwork and hit the shortcut key for the script...and Voila! High quality music emanating from Audirvana.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

I'm having a hard time correlating my understanding of what this feature does with how common its use is. Seems more like it should be a last-ditch compatibility solution for uncommon corner cases...discussion of it, however makes me think some people are (wishful thinking?) expecting it to improve the SQ of Audirvana playback.

 

My understanding is that the ONLY thing it does is prevent other process (such as the System, iTunes, etc.) from accessing your selected audio device (DAC for instance) while Audirvana is running.

 

Other than to play something (a beep, or ostensibly something the user has intentionally attempted to listen to) nothing else is going to mess with your audio device. There wouldn't ever be any kind of "access" going on, right?

 

Either I don't "get" it, or this is a silly feature for most (as in, almost all) people to have turned on. Please educate me.

 

thanks,

jp

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Many of you may have overlooked a very important feature of Audirvana...

 

Look under the "Audirvana" menu.

The feature is labeled "Make a Donation"

 

...it worked flawlessly for me just now.

 

Thanks Damien! Keep the great stuff coming!

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Hi Damien,

You mentioned that Integer "goes a step further (Comes on top of Hog Mode)".

 

I was left wondering if Integer mode is dependent upon the Hog Mode setting.

 

Will Audirvana use Integer even if I have hog mode turned off?

 

 

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Hi Damien,

On my iMac 24 with 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, I frequently get brief sound drop-outs and the red CPU flag for a bit when the automatic backup from TimeMachine starts up. After TM does its initial perusal and settles down to actually just copying files that have changed this seems to subside and play normally...its just when TimeMachine first starts up (once per hour I think) that it causes problems with Audirvana.

 

This is with Redbook, upsampling just to 24/44. (forced is off) Have tried some pretty low settings on the SRC slider with no change. This was happening before I got your new 0.6 version and still happens now with 0.6 and with Integer turned on.

 

Don't know if there is anything you could do but let me know if you need any other info.

 

thanks!

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

...with your wallet.

 

If not already done so, check out the Audirvana menu..."make a donation" menu item. It is really easy (paypal), and it feels good to give back.

 

 

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

He mentioned something to me in an email about this being a really busy week for him at his "real job".

 

I've been having Integer Mode panics as well. I think Damien has a little more work to do on Integer to make it solid. He's planning to focus on stability in the short term.

 

I'm running it now with the Debugger in Integer mode hoping to catch it in the act to help out. I would suggest anyone else who's having panics to switch back to regular (floating point) mode until Damien gets this sorted out.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

I think most users will have better results switching back to version 0.6d until Damien has time to hunt down these new problems.

 

If you use TimeMachine backups, that is the easiest way to go back to the earlier version. Just quit Audirvana app. Select the app in the Finder. Start up the "TimeMachine" app, then hit the "back" button until you get back to version 0.6d (which I think was the last version that worked really well for me). Then hit the "Restore" button.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

...on the destructive power of that iTunes upgrade? I would like to read more about this.

 

thanks

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Interesting now to correlate the change in sound I heard with my iPad2 acquisition (which was also when I relented to upgrading iTunes).

 

I thought I was have a string of "bad ear days". I wound up listening to Pandora through the computer's internal speakers all day Sunday just because my main system sounded so much worse than normal. With the low quality internal speakers, my expectations were much lower, so I was able to enjoy the art of the music despite the low quality of sound.

 

Hope this either gets fixed soon by a new Apple update or somebody figures out what OSX driver can be back-rev'ed to get back the creamy goodness that was Audirvana a couple weeks ago.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Hi Damien,

With all this talk about "bit perfect player" and differences between things that ought to sound exactly the same...I had a thought.

 

Should be pretty easy to insert something at the very end of Audirvana "data path" that saves the raw digital output to a test-file. For example, the method that gets called to fill the I/O buffer could do its normal work and then additionally append those bytes to a "test file".

 

If you did that and then captured a "test file" for the same music file using two different versions of the app (for instance, v0.8 compiled with the two different compilers -- or v0.8 and v0.74). Could then create a "difference file" to more rigorously compare the output of two versions of the app.

 

This might teach us something interesting about how the two versions actually differ. On the other hand, if the difference file is all zeros, it will be a painful bit of placebo for us to swallow.

 

Just thinking out loud. Yes, I know. I could do this myself, and probably should...but I've already started a (non-music-related) project of my own.

 

Keep up the great work! I'm enjoying v0.8 very much.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

...tin-foil-hat-guy on this one.

 

Knowing the basics of what a C compiler does, it is a real stretch to imagine some way in which the same C code compiled into two different executables for the same target machine (a Macintosh in this case) would give two apps that are different in a meaningful way.

 

The two apps created here would not necessarily be bit-identical. Two different compilers would have two different sets of op-code translation and two different sets of op-code optimization algorithms. They would likely create two executable files that differ in small ways.

 

They would, however, share the same logic, flow, and numerical-representation instructions. vis:

- get this number from "here"

- store it in this way with this many bits (floating point, 32 bit integer, etc)

- do this to it

- send it "there"

 

On one type of machine, any two executables that aspire to follow these steps with the same "here" (input file) will wind up with a bit-identical "something" in the location "there". The two apps could arrive at this point in very slightly different ways (two fundamental Intel op-codes swapped in order in a case where this makes no difference, for instance).

 

The two apps would not be bit-identical...BUT THEIR OUTPUT WOULD BE BIT IDENTICAL.

 

The ONLY way (and it is indeed a big stretch) for the resulting sound to be different, would be for these two executables, with their VERY similar but not identical coding structure, to have a different impact on the processor and it's ability to do the other parts of the sound rendering as they should be done.

 

In other words, a vanishingly small difference in TIMING of the execution of the Audirvana code and other code running on the system. We're talking ocean waves from the flapping of (high altitude) butterfly wings here people.

 

At some point in the development of Audirvana, I would invite Damien to make the following experiment (and make us all very red-faced). He should choose a week to take a much deserved vacation. At the end of this celebrated week, he should increment the version number of the app, and spin a new version and post it. No other changes; just change the version number and nothing else. The announcement post here should say simply "found and fixed a sound quality bug". Nothing more.

 

It would be interesting to see the comments on SQ changes for such an experiment.

 

My deepest apologies to the good people who think they hear a difference. As a card-carying member of the flat world club, I refuse to even compare them myself.

 

 

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Why not set up your favorite version of the player with some good music and let it run. Now open up a browser to pandora or youTube and set the volume of that program to zero -- so it is playing and using the CPU, but not making any actual sound.

 

Now stop and start the Pandora or YouTube playback while listening and see if you can hear the difference in your music playback.

 

Any other app that uses some amount, but not all of the processor power available would be a good choice (especially those that are easy to start and stop like the two I mentioned). Something tame enough that the red flag in Audirvana does not come on.

 

See if you can hear a difference when you activate and deactivate some truly significant amount of additional CPU usage.

 

I can't hear it on my system...but my dog is old too.

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Hi Damien,

Agreed, in sync with the software that sends bytes to the audio hardware.

 

For Integer mode that may be Audirvana.

For FP mode, wouldn't that be the OS (Core Audio)? For FP, Audirvana "just" puts big chunks in memory and waits for CA to process it. So (though counter-intuitive) I would think it is perhaps even less involved than the QT player that runs Safari sound or QT movie.

 

What are your thoughts on that? Maybe my proposed test would be valid for those of us still using FP mode?

 

cheers,

jp

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

...to use that in this thread, but when I used it, I was referring to this:

(in a self deprecating manner)

1) they are the same

2) I'm not willing to listen to prove it to myself

 

So it was the idea that one's convictions about how the world is can sometimes keep you from opening your eyes wide enough to see. I'm guilty of that on this thread. Haven't done any of the experiments. A bit ashamed of my self scientifically speaking.

 

Still interested in the discussion though.

 

jp

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

...it comes along with some evidence to be considered.

 

Sadly, in this thread and in this hobby of audiophile, we are long on theories, long on well-intentioned opinion, very short on evidence.

 

I think that makes for an interesting hobby. Lots of theories and conjecture and relatively non-scientific experimentation. Happily the world will likely not end if we never "solve" the mysteries of audiophile.

 

jp

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

Two years ago I was a Fat Bastard. I had surgery for that and am now a "flat bastard" (surgeon was not able to do anything about the bastard part).

 

So I believe I should sit on the fence for this one. I choose to be a member of the "Flat Bastards". I will cheer on both sides equally and enjoy the improvements to Audirvana that result from the skirmish.

 

 

JP