New OSX Opensource audiophile player : Audirvana

[damien78]

@Cherrington: have you reselected your DAC as the preferred device in Audirvana, even it gives the right DAC name as the selected preferred device ?

The identification mechanism of the DAC has changed with latest release to accomodate with multiDAC systems.

 

That may be the cause of your issue as Audirvana falls back to system default output (usually built-in audio) if the preferred DAC is not found.

 

Damien

 

[Cherrington]

Thanks, Damien! That was the problem. I registered the DAC and now I'm very happily listening to Audirvana again.

 

[57gold]

Any thoughts on implementation of max upsample rate feature?

 

Thanks.

 

Riot...

 

Tried to copy and paste terminal session...screwed that up too.

 

[audiozorro]

I seem to be getting a memory leak on a 2011 MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM. After running Audirvana continuously for about 5 days the program just stops.

 

I noticed that my computer is creating 1GB swapfiles on the hard drive and then apparently when the drive fills up with 40 swapfiles and does not have any available space for another 1GB swapfile Audirvana stops.

 

Of course when I reboot the computer, the swapfiles disappear and I have over 40GB free and everything is normal to start again.

 

I don't know if this is a problem with the wgscott script I ran last weekend or any program upgrades, including Audirvana. I will investigate this further over the next few weeks to see if the problem is limited to Audirvana or caused by the wgscott script. I am just mentioning this problem here in case anyone who runs their Mac music server 24/7 has noticed anything similar.

 

[wgscott]

Which one? (FWIW I haven't seen this happen and I reboot rarely).

 

 

TV-Stereo-mini-% ls -lh

total 262144

-rw------- 1 root wheel 64M Mar 29 05:19 swapfile0

-rw------- 1 root wheel 64M Mar 31 22:28 swapfile1

 

 

[audiozorro]

I am not sure what is causing these swapfiles and I believe this is a recent occurrence. I believe these are my recent changes to my MacBook Pro:

 

1. Upgraded to latest version of iTunes

2. Upgraded to latest version of Audirvana

3. Ran wgscott audiophool terminal script

 

Perhaps the problem has nothing to do with any of the above but I feel that with 8GB RAM that no swapfiles should be created. And if some application is creating these swapfiles, the virtual memory should be dynamically released and not held indefinitely so that more swapfiles are created up to the storage limit of the hard drive.

 

In an effort to eliminate a possible problem with Audirvana, the first thing I will try this weekend is to see if other media players like Decibel, Pure Music and Audiogate also create swapfiles.

 

[wgscott]

A memory leak would leave physical memory allocated when you quit. Check the "Activity Monitor" application and sort by memory and see what is happening. Do you have any evidence it is Audirvana that is creating the swapfiles or consuming memory?

 

On my 2GB memory iMac, the largest swap file I have is 256 MB.

 

The "audiophool" script only resets some defaults and turns off Dashboard and Spotlight indexing, if you ask it to. It shouldn't make any demands on memory once it has finished running.

 

[Jud]

audiozorro:

 

Remember that long how-to I posted on updating Audirvana yourself between releases? Well the tool used for building the Audirvana application from Damien's source code (Apple's Xcode 4) allows you to test run the code for memory leaks. I did so just a couple of updates ago and found zero, zip, nada.

 

(BTW, I also ran profiling tests to see whether there was any place the app might run faster or more efficiently. Nope. Having spent some time compiling, testing, and using other open source apps, I can tell you the complete lack of any errors, cautions, or even areas for performance improvement is unusual in my experience. Maybe it's Apple's Objective C language, maybe it's Xcode as a tool, or maybe Damien is one fine programmer. I'm gonna go with the latter for now. ;-)

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@audiozorro:

 

You are right - with 8 GB of RAM you should rarely, if ever, get swap file accumulation.

 

I am on a wheezing old 2006-vintage MacBook Pro with 2 GB of RAM. I already have 2 GB of swap files:

 

--

[11:49] macbookpro2006:/ % ls -lht /var/vm ; echo '' ; du -s -h /var/vm

total 4194304

-rw------- 1 root wheel 64M Mar 31 22:25 swapfile1

-rw------- 1 root wheel 128M Mar 31 22:25 swapfile2

-rw------- 1 root wheel 256M Mar 31 22:25 swapfile3

-rw------- 1 root wheel 512M Mar 31 22:25 swapfile4

-rw------- 1 root wheel 1.0G Mar 31 22:25 swapfile5

-rw------- 1 root wheel 64M Mar 27 07:04 swapfile0

 

2.0G /var/vm

 

--

I have managed to get that up into the 10's (i.e. 'swapfile10", etc.) on occasion - a sure way to do it is to have Google Chrome up with over 30(!) tabs in it, combined with Mail.app and other big memory gobblers.

 

But that I understand - I have very little RAM and I'm a 'power user' (for wont of a better term) that can do a lot of stuff on the machine and easily overwhelm it. But you having a new model MBP with 8 GB, that's a different story.

 

If you're conversant with Terminal, open up a big - like 220x65 lines - Terminal window and run top -s 5 -o rsize in it. That will update every 5 seconds, and sort by the process with the largest Resident Set Size (RSS), or in-memory pages.

 

You can also use top -s 5 -o vsize to sort by largest Virtual Size (VM) usage.

 

Maybe over time if you watch it you will see one process at the top which slowly creeps up and up in the size of one of those fields, and thus identify the culprit.

 

 

[wgscott]

Or you can use Activity Monitor and sort on the VM column (and also look at real memory consuption while you are at it). I'm a unix geek, but this is really an improvement over top. So much so that I alias "top" as "open -a Activity Monitor".

 

[Terry]

The player sounds interesting but I think i will let you more knowledgeable folk de bug it and jump on when it more mature. How does it sound in comparison to pure music when it is working. I use Pure music so that is the most meaningful player to me when comparing sound.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@wgscott

 

I'm not sure why you say "this is really an improvement over top" when it's basically showing the same information in a 'prettier' form.

 

Also, if you do what I say (use a 217-width Terminal window or wider), you'll notice that "top" on Snow Leopard will show you almost twice as many columns as Activity Monitor does, even when you set A.M. to show everything (via "View" -> "Columns"). "top" at full width displays

 

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #WQ #POR #MREG RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VPRVT VSIZE PGRP PPID STATE UID FAULTS COW MSGSENT MSGRECV SYSBSD SYSMACH CSW PAGEINS USER

versus

PID / Process Name / User / %CPU / Threads / Real Mem / Kind / Virtual Mem / CPU Time / Ports / Private Mem / Shared Mem / Sent Msgs / Rcvd Msgs / Sudden Term.

 

in Activity Monitor. PAGEINS in particular is an important indicator of page thrashing due to memory exhaustion, for example. (Not to mention the fact that "top" shows dynamic total pagein/pageout counts.)

 

I will definitely grant you that Activity Monitor is much friendlier for the less UNIX® geekly-inclined, but in the case of heavy VM/swap use like this, the more info the better.

 

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@Terry

 

I just checked out Pure Music®. $79 for a software player that uses iTunes for a lot of the heavy lifting? That's hysterical!

 

It strikes me as being another case of people trying rip-off the suckers in the Audiophile market. Remember when Lexicon tried to pawn off a $500 Oppo BDP-83 as their $3500 BD-30 player when all they did was change the chassis?!?

 

http://hd.engadget.com/2010/01/16/lexicon-busted-passing-oppo-off-as-a-3500-blu-ray-player/

 

Some expensive wood chassis that was ... LMFAO

 

 

[57gold]

Ignore the "world is flat" comment above. Have PM, Decibel and Audirvana on the SSD of Mini UBB to WaveLink BNC to Wadia 861i and each player sounds very different from each other and each demonstrating more definition and subtle details versus iTunes.

 

I'll share my observations based upon a recent listening session when I listened to Mark Knopfler's "Golden Heart" with all three players: PM (which I run upsampling to 88.2, memory play HOG mode) potrays a very detailed, controlled and colorful potrayal of the song, all parts seem to be in balance and there is good image depth, this player seems to take bright, poorly recorded CDs from the 1980s and make them listenable; Decibel sounds more direct, with more energy and presence to the drums, swing to the bass and to my son's ears (23 versus 53) much better for communicating rock tunes; and Audirvana seems to combine some of the features with the energy and directness of Decibel but more definition...voices seem most natural and the thickness of the bass, low register guitar and keyboards seem better defined than Decibel.

 

It is amazing to me how these players differ.

 

[Terry]

I appreciate both people expressing their comments. I may not agree obviously with the first one but that is what makes this hobby fun. I think Audirvana has some real nice potential and when it become stable and easy to use as far as playing the files if not loading them so much please let me know. I am dying to hear it on my system as the differences from Pure Music are in areas I think it could be improved on. Thanks to%7 for the support and the comparison. How is the ease of use?

 

[4est]

Audirvana has always been stable for the vast majority of users. As for loading files, drag an drop them from iTunes.

 

[Jud]

Terry, it's perfectly usable now (so's Decibel), so you shouldn't hesitate to try either of these players and decide which you prefer.

 

My personal preference (favorite first) is Audirvana, then Decibel, then Pure Music. Audirvana allows the musical magic to happen to a greater degree than the other two, I find.

 

I know my wife feels the same way, because she's asked to dance a couple of times when she's come home and something's been playing through Audirvana (title track from "All the Roadrunning" by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, and "Hold On" from Tom Waits' "Mule Variations"), which hasn't happened with either of the other two players or iTunes.

 

[lexbro]

Well tried to get some help but didn't express myself well or was lost in the shuffle. Pure Music, Decibel, and Fidelia working fine with the identical setup, but Audirvana has annoying pops and clicks. So to the trash bin with "A" until another version comes along.

 

[biberfan]

My interest in trying these players instead of iTunes is the ability to upsample. I had bad luck using Audirvana to upsample, I'd get cracks and pops.

 

Based on a tip here from CA, I rebooted my Mac into 64-bit mode by holding down the '6' & '4' keys during reboot. Now Audrivana (.7e) plays flawlessly when upsampling to 24/96. I have quality all the way up using CoreAudio, and the hog mode enabled. My Mac's a MacPro Quad with 8GB of RAM, so I thought it odd that Audrivana would have trouble playing tracks upsampled.

 

The SRC upsampler also works well when computer is in 64 bit mode.

 

I've been skeptical of what these players are really doing to make the sound any better (PureMusic, Amarra, etc.) and find A/B comparisons difficult. But the one quality I find is that there tends to be less taxation on listening, especially with headphones.

 

[iamoneagain]

Here is a free program that let's you select 32 or 64 startup so you don't have to remember to use the keyboard trick every time.

 

http://www.ahatfullofsky.comuv.com/English/Programs/SMS/SMS.html

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@biberfan

 

That seems odd - I thought all Mac Pros booted into 64-bit by default? Sounds odd to me that somehow you got it into 32-bit default mode? What vintage Mac Pro is it?

 

I'm also skeptical (my comment about Pure Music® was actually motivated by the fact that iTunes and Damien's nice little Audirvana are both, so far, free - what makes their program worth $79? Even worse - that $79 was apparently an introductory special last year - now it's $129!!!).

 

But hey, what do I know, I'm apparently a "Flat Earth-er"

 

 

[Mercman]

Riot Nrrd,

 

"I just checked out Pure Music®. $79 for a software player that uses iTunes for a lot of the heavy lifting? That's hysterical!

 

It strikes me as being another case of people trying rip-off the suckers in the Audiophile market. Remember when Lexicon tried to pawn off a $500 Oppo BDP-83 as their $3500 BD-30 player when all they did was change the chassis?!?"

 

I don't think you have spent much time actually looking at the features of Pure Music or listening to it. iTunes is not doing the heavy lifting. Pure Music utilizes the iTunes interface with minimal interaction with the Pure Music sound engine. You can bypass the iTunes interface by using the Less Is More feature. But using the iTunes interface allows apps like Remote for the iPad to work with Pure Music.

 

There are many features to Pure Music and I won't belabor this as you can read the manual provided to discover the features. I think it is easily worth the $129 asking price.

 

I think you should spend a little more time looking at this program before you trash it.

 

 

 

 

 

[Terry]

I have installed Audirvana and like some of the things about it. It seemed at least as good as Pure Music sonically if not better. I would like to know how big of a list of songs it will take. When I added anything over 100 the program would crash. I would like the player to make its on library of songs that you can easily enter into the player. I dont really think I should have to have something like iTunes running at the same time to drag and drop play lists. I'm going to download a file in FLAC and play it to see how that works. I do like the sound but I would like the program to mature a little bit in the above ways if possible. Overall it seems like your on the right track though.

 

[Jud]

Terry writes:

 

I dont really think I should have to have something like iTunes running at the same time to drag and drop play lists.

 

Hi, Terry. As long as you've made a playlist in iTunes (or if iTunes has made one of its automatic ones for you), it's easy enough to load it into Audirvana without having iTunes running. Just click the "+" under Audirvana's playlist window to choose from all your iTunes music or load entire iTunes playlists.

 

Much more detail is available in a separate thread from khollister.

 

That having been said, there are certainly capabilities people have asked for that Audirvana doesn't have just yet. You wouldn't happen to be a programmer (professional or amateur), would you? 'Cause Damien's always on the lookout for people willing to help with the coding.

 

[Jud]

Riot Nrrrd writes:

 

That seems odd - I thought all Mac Pros booted into 64-bit by default?

 

Well, most of the OS is 64-bit, but actually the kernel by default is 32-bit in order to run 32-bit compatibility kernel modules. If you don't need the modules, you can choose to run the kernel in pure 64-bit mode. There are University of Google references on how to look through the running modules and decide if you need any of the 32-bit ones, as well as how to permanently boot into 64-bit if you'd like, to avoid having to either remember the keyboard shortcut or choose 64-bit in a 3rd-party program, as was mentioned earlier in this thread.

 

I wasn't having any problems, and I was skeptical running the kernel in 64-bit would really improve the sound, but listening tests convinced me it made a small but consistent difference for the better.