New OSX Opensource audiophile player : Audirvana

[leggoslave]

Hi Damien,

 

I wouldn't mind upsampling of both 44.1(interpolation) and 48(x2) to 96 as that would get me to the max out for the iMac's spdif, and half way to my DAC's which is 192 oversampling anyway. Thanks.

 

[Blu]

Just a quick vote for the WAV file format, producing a more musical representation of the music compared with the same music played back from a AIFF file copy.

 

Like Forrest I would prefer this not to be the case, because of the less convenient tagging options with music stored in the WAV file format.

 

But I have decided that the point of this music server exercise is the music, so now I have my WAV files stored in a folder structure of ArtistAlbumTrack. I mainly play albums if I'm listening to music so this is not a problem.

 

This topic is discussed in previous threads on this site, which others may like to do a search on.

 

[4est]

Blu to the rescue!

 

I have to wonder if our DACs could play a part in this for some strange reason. At the risk of yet again pissing others off, possibly the resolution afforded by the buss mastering Firewire interface (I dare not call it async).

 

[Rcanoe]

Folks, I upgraded the ram from 1 GB to 3GB (actually 4gb but my CPU can only access 3gb). The sound quality is the same (great) in the 3gb setup as with the buffer maxed out in 1GIG mode. But now the playback is stable without the CPU overload issues! I think I have tweaked my 16/44 system to where I like it! BTW Itunes sounds better with the upgade and I also notice disk activity was a lot less as well. But believe me when I say the soundstage is is much more clearly defined with Audirvana!

 

FYI. Before I upgraded the RAM I tried booting the mini using a 16GB USB flash drive with OSX to run the system without a harddrive. Audirvana was also loaded on the same disk. I used another flash drive for music files. The CPU O/L issue disappeared but for some reason the soundstage collapsed sounding like a cassette recording???? I read that the USB drive is too slow on read/write?!?

 

 

 

[JR_Audio]

For my ears, I would always avoid non integer up-sampling, for example from 44.1 to 96K. I would always choose integer oversampling, for example 44.1 to 88.2 and 48K to 96K.

 

Juergen

 

[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

 

[jhwalker]

In the Audio Filters section, uncheck "Force over / up sampling" - works for me.

 

[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.

 

[danny71]

Yup, WAV is good(er)..

 

A solution for the tagging is of course if the awesome player would support cue files, a workaround for tagging WAV..

 

 

[damien78]

now brings ability to limit upsampling to integer factors (4x & 2x oversampling). This allows for example to prevent upsampling 88.2 to 96 if the DAC handles 88.2.

Also some bug fixes...

 

Damien

 

[leggoslave]

Merci Damien..sounding great upsampled to 96, wide and dynamic yet still tonally accurate ..not sure for all you x2 or x4 purists..it could just be that my dac, which is oversampling anyway, needs a leg up..?

 

[Jud]

Running Audirvana from MacBook Pro thru Airport Express via Airfoil. Get some dropouts occasionally (with 5.3). Ran "top" and found that Airfoil consistently shows greater CPU & mem usage than Audirvana.

 

- Does Airfoil show only its own CPU & mem usage, not Audirvana's as well?

 

- Could running in default "hog mode" starve Airfoil and cause dropouts?

 

-- If answer to the second question is unknown, I'd be happy to switch out of hog mode and see if it makes any difference.

 

- Any other suggestions/recommendations?

 

[bjast]

I just noticed that when the Audirvana application is running Quick View in the Finder is locked - in that it will not play audio files by using the Space bar to play them. Is this intended?

 

[Blu]

I have a Mac mini with 2GB of ram, and it upsamples any music with Decibel or Pure Music just fine, but when I try with any file format in Audirvana it will play 5 seconds of music then pause for a few seconds before playing another 5 seconds of music.

 

I have set it for exclusive access but the debug info says it is not. Debug info as follows:

Audirvana rev. 0.5.4 debug information:

 

Hog Mode is off

Devices found : 2

 

List of devices:

Device #0: ID 0x107 Built-in Output UID:Built-in Output

Device #1: ID 0x101 Weiss Firewire IO UID:Weiss Firewire IO

 

Selected device:

ID 0x101 Weiss Firewire IO UID:Weiss Firewire IO

6 available sample rates up to 192000.0Hz

44100.0

48000.0

88200.0

96000.0

176400.0

192000.0

 

Audio buffer frame size : 14 to 3000 frames

Physical (analog) volume control: No

Virtual (digital) volume control: No

Preferred stereo channels L:1 R:2

Channel mapping: L:Stream 0 channel 0 R:Stream 0 channel 1

 

1 output streams:

Stream ID 0x103 2 channels starting at 1

6 virtual formats:

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float @192.0kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float @176.4kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float @96.0kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float @88.2kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float @48.0kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float @44.1kHz

 

6 physical formats

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits big endian Signed Integer @192.0kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits big endian Signed Integer @176.4kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits big endian Signed Integer @96.0kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits big endian Signed Integer @88.2kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits big endian Signed Integer @48.0kHz

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits big endian Signed Integer @44.1kHz

 

I wonder if anyone else has the same problem?

 

EDIT:

Sorry, I have changed the Sample Rate Converter from SRC libSampleRate to Apple CoreAudio and now it works. But upsampling 44.1 to 176.4 plays about 6 minutes of music of an 8 minute track, before it stops, which I assume is the limitation of the amount of RAM I have.

 

It would be useful if you could have a choice of 2x or 4x, to get around the memory limitation until I get more RAM installed.

 

Just noticed also that in the Debug Info, Hog mode is now on using the CoreAudio sample converter.

 

 

 

 

 

[charlesc]

Bonjour, Damien,

 

since the new 0.5 version, I have 2 ""bugs"":

- the volume level does not work;

- the format is blocked at 16,1 44 and does not change for 24 96 recordings.

What to do?

Regards

Charles

 

[jp11801]

After some hard use it has become my go player! While I still very slightly prefer Amarra, and buyer bias may be at play here, this player sounds great and loads into memory almost instantly.

 

I do use it almost like a cd player, I load the recording I want into the player and remove the files after play as the library interface is difficult with a 1.4 TB library.

 

[seta]

same as @blu

 

If I used force upsample with SRC libSampleRate, the music pauses for 3 seconds every 5 seconds or so. No glitches if I use Apple CoreAudio, and everything works excellent!

 

The thing is this is a dedicated clean Mac Mini 2010 with 8GB of RAM.

 

Any suggestions? Since I really do think that SRC is a superior upsampler and feeding the data via 24/192 asynchronous USB link would have been audio-nirvana.

 

 

 

 

[jhwalker]

Sounds odd - I have a four-year-old MacBook Pro with only 2gb ram (2.0Ghz Intel Core Duo) and I don't have this issue. It usually takes a second or so to start playback (as opposed to instantly with Apple CoreAudio), but there are never any gaps or stops in the playback once it starts. Changes from one track to the next are also seamless once the first track starts playing. Note that CPU utilization typically runs at about 100% (~50% / core) during playback using SRC libSampleRate vs.

[seta]

@jhwalker

 

My best guess is that Blue and myself are upsampling to 192kHz(max). Since SRC digital filter may be somewhat more complex than Apple CoreAudio, it maybe the case. WaveEditor with Izotope algorithm takes several minutes to offline upsample one track.

 

Is there a way to set max sampling rate (e.g. 96kHz?)

 

Damien?

 

[jhwalker]

@seta

 

Got it - top quality on my setup is 96/24 (MacBook Pro MIDI limit), so you guys are getting a lot more load on your system upsampling to 192.

 

 

[seta]

Lowering the Quality slider down one notch seems to fix the drop-out issue. It now plays fine at both 4x and max 192kHz.

 

I can't tell any difference in sound quality between AppleCore's best and SRC's "better". However for piece of mind, will leave it there.

 

To me, I can't see the the reasons to limit upsampling to 2x or 4x for modern sigma-delta DACs. In theory it may make sense as the math would have been easier, but sigma delta modulators will oversample it to the max anyway and software upsampling are preferable to hardware ones.

 

 

[damien78]

Depending on the loading libraries's internal implementation (FLAC, libSndFile, CoreAudio), the files of the played & loaded tracks that are opened for read access may be locked.

And that's why QuickView can't open them.

But do you really want to play the same file in Audirvana and in the finder at the same time ?

 

BTW, for which file types do you experience the lock ?

 

Damien

 

[damien78]

Hi Jud, Bonjour Charles,

 

Jud: I don't use Airfoil. But you may want to try w/o hog mode ?

 

Charlesc: is the Rosita able to handle hires? AFAIK, airport is not able of it, so this may explain why Audirvana is downsampling to 16/44.1.

The logs in Debug Info & AudioMidi app will confirm.

What kind of volume level was working before ? (Digital Volume / Master Volume)

 

Damien

 

 

 

[damien78]

You got it, the SRC computations in highest quality may be too expensive in CPU load for realtime playback. And this is especially true for libSampleRate.

This is not a memory limitation (in fact there shouldn't be anymore with 0.5.0+ versions)

And this explains the pauses. It's like when streaming a youtube video on a slow internet connection: playback pauses often waiting for buffer to fill...

You can notice the loading progress bar is filling very slowly, and is not enough "ahead" of the playback head.

For the sake of experiment of too high quality SRC setup for your CPU, you can pause playback to allow the track to fully load before resuming playback.

 

@Blu: what are the characteristics of the 8mn file that stopped playing at 6:00, and what was your audio buffer size? It shouldn't stop. I'm wondering if this is not an issue with the next chunk load?

BTW, hog mode value is accurate only when requesting debug info during playback.

 

Damien

 

[seta]

Damien,

 

As reported, upsample to 192kHz is fine with quality slider down a notch, ie "better" rather than "best".

 

Can you kindly explain what's the slider quality refers to?