New OSX Opensource audiophile player : Audirvana

[SidHo]

For the first time I experienced the crackling from Audirvana without the cause being CPU overload. It sounded very much like small scratches plyed on an LP. I'm mentioning it here because for me I don't think it was a defect in the program and may be helpful to Damien or someone out there.

 

What seems to have caused this...

I was listening to 24/96 files with Fidelia. I switched to Audirvana to listen to a 5.1 24/96 version of Dark Side of the Moon because Fidelia only plays stereo files. As soon as the bass slowly comes up in the beginning there was soft popping sounds that sounded very similar ro a scratched LP except the noise seemed to be tied to the volume or energy in the signal, being more frequent in higher volume passages. I was pissed because this is the first time I listened to this version and thought it was a copy of an old LP. I switched to the 16/44.1 version and it was still there. I exited and restarted Audirvana and it was gone completely in both versions.

I'm not a programmer but it seems something from Fidelia was still lingering in memory. I try to shut down all other programs when listening with the mini but maybe some of us have things running in the background that could have some affect? I don't know, just putting it out there. Audirvana has become one of my favorite players though and I'm starting to have a pang of conscience and will be making a donation soon.

 

[damien78]

SidHo: If you can use HalLab to find out what is the configuration change Fidelia is making and that is creating the cracks, that'll be highly useful.

I hope this is not something that makes the audio driver half-crash though...

I'll then be able to reset it in Audirvana.

FYI, I had this kind of issue of driver semi-crashing when the max I/O driver function was too aggressive.

 

Now working on completing the shuffle feature...

 

Damien

 

[damien78]

New release 0.8.0 with shuffle playlist feature, remembers shuffle & repeat settings between launches, bug fixes, new compiler (llvm 2.0 from xcode 4).

 

I'd like to get your feedback on the impact on SQ of the use of this new compiler. It should be the only change impacting SQ as the others are only on the UI (shuffle feature).

 

Damien

 

[Jud]

Shuffle, yay! Been looking forward to this for a while. :-)

 

Regarding SQ, while listening to the build from r102 I thought that my relatively new Musical Fidelity V-Link and Audioquest Emerald USB cable were burning in nicely because images (singers, instruments) seemed to be a bit more solid, have a little more body to them. Now to compare 8.0 to 7.4 and see whether the compiler change had anything to do with it.

 

[SidHo]

Damien, I don't mind doing that check with Hallab if I can. The thing is though I don't know what it is. I did a google and found some reference to an apple utility although I don't see it in utilities on my Mac.

If I do download it ( if that's what I need to do), will it be self apparent what I will be doing with it while or after I run Fidelia?

Sorry but as I said my knowledge of computers doesn't go beyond a reasonably adept hobbyist.

 

On another note. I do get fairly frequent CPU overloads even on shorter tracks of 5 minutes. I do have the media manager portion of Plex running in the background possibly some other things I'm not aware of. This is a basic question but could you or someone tell me what I do to find out what is running in the background and how much "juice" it's using?

 

[Johnny Moondog]

I spent the past 3 weeks listening to the Usual Suspects -- iTunes, Audirvana, Decibel, Fidelia, Pure Music, and Amarra's full version. On my particular system Audirvana was the favorite (see signature below). Early on in the process I spent $80 for the advanced version of Fidelia. But because I prefer Audirvana I just donated more than that to Damien's efforts. I encourage others to consider a donation too.

 

[Joebah]

some of the same crackling sounds as described above... best description is like listening to vinyl...

 

I will try restarting when I can (but in the process of copying over some files from one hard-drive to another and still about 6 hours to go).

 

[iamoneagain]

It seems the latest version has more bass response than before but might be hearing things. I know Decibel always had more bass than Audirvana and now they seem to sound closer but Audirvana is still the better sounding of the two. Still has a wider and deeper soundstage than Decibel. Curious to see if others are hearing any difference in the sound.

 

[Jud]

I'd like to get your feedback on the impact on SQ of the use of this new compiler. It should be the only change impacting SQ as the others are only on the UI (shuffle feature).

 

I had never listened before to 7.4. In fact I missed a couple of builds in the 7.x series because Real Life got very busy for a while, so when I listened to the build from r102 (which was built with the new compiler), I didn't have a recent Audirvana build to compare it to. As I noted above, I had the impression images were more solid, that vocalists and instruments had more body. Not knowing the change in compiler could affect the sound of Audirvana, I put it down to burn-in of new components.

 

So just now is the first time I've had the chance to compare 7.4 (old compiler) to 8.0 (new compiler) directly. I listened to just one song on both, Rosanne Cash's version of "She's Got You" from her recent album "The List." Vocals are really nicely recorded and produced - not surprising, since the engineer/producer is Cash's husband.

 

The difference is not subtle. Frankly, I'm surprised how much of a difference there is. I thought Audirvana was already really good, but the new builds are, IMHO, at a new level. Now that I can compare directly, there is a substantial difference in the degree to which the new builds (1) define each vocalist and instrumentalist within the soundstage, and (2) give each a solid, full-range sound. In Cash's vocals, you can clearly hear not only the highs and breathiness, but the warmth of her midrange notes coming from her chest.

 

My wife, who is no audiophile (so she makes a great BS meter), noticed the difference as soon as I started 8.0, having listened to 7.4 first. She described 8.0 as "richer," with "more body." She also said that by comparison, the pace of the song with 7.4 seemed to drag. (I didn't notice that myself. Of course the tempo was identical in both since I was playing the same file. Perhaps it had something to do with the interplay between vocal and instrumentals coming through more clearly.)

 

Anyway - congratulations and thanks, Damien, the player has taken a substantial step forward, at least to my ears and my wife's.

 

[Carl Mawer]

Hi Damien

 

New release running without any problems.I have never had any of the issues raised in this forum, unless I try Integer Mode which I am guessing is incompatible with my Audionote Dac. SQ great.

 

Keep up the great work.

 

Carl

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@Mercman:

 

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

 

Just to be clear - I'm not trashing the program (as I've never used it). It might be quite good at what it does.

 

I *am* trashing the idea that a software playback-only program should be $129.

 

I noticed that they have a program called Pure Vinyl® as well. It appears to be a "Pro" type of Audacity-like program. I think the case can be better made for programs like these costing a bit of money.

 

[Mercman]

Riot N,

 

If you think $129 is out of line, how about $699 for Amarra? Thanks for letting us know that you never tried the program.

 

 

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

@Mercman

 

"how about $695 for Amarra?"

 

I could say something but I think PT Barnum beat me to it

 

For $695 it should perform every feature that Pro Tools has, plus playback.

 

"Thanks for letting us know that you never tried the program."

 

I've owned/tried

 

- MacAmp Lite X

- Audion

- SoundJam

- iTunes

- Vox

- Songbird

- Audirvana

- Decibel

 

How many more of them do I need to try/own to have an opinion on their pricing?

 

All of these (save perhaps Decibel) were free or relatively low cost. But throw in 96/192 sampling and all of a sudden it's worth almost $700???

 

If you ask me, by providing a good "audiophile player" in Audirvana as DonationWare (so far), Damien has really thrown down the gauntlet to the other players in this space.

 

 

[Mercman]

Damien is doing a wonderful job as I have posted previously. But your opinion is crap in my book without listening or seeing what Pure Music has to offer. Just a lot of wind to denigrate a good effort.

 

There, now you have my opinion.

 

[wgscott]

If I assign my Halide Bridge exlcusive access and integer mode, play something, and then quit, I can no longer access the bridge from (eg) iTunes or the Sound preference pane, until I reboot. It seems to fail to deallocate it. This doesn't happen with Decibel, so I suspect audirvana is the causal agent.

 

[damien78]

wgscott: you're right, I was just thinking on the fact the OS might not be able to do all the housekeeping upon exit for such non standard modes as Integer. I'll add explicit device reset upon exit.

 

Damien

 

[seta]

For the life of me I couldn't understand why re-compiling would affect sound quality. But the new version is noticeably different with a thicker midrange and/or solid center image. It's not clear whether it is better, but definitely not the same.

 

[church_mouse]

Decibel (Ayrewave) has been happily playing in my system for months but, throughout that time, I have been testing each release of Audirvana because I like the sound of the music it produces through my system. However, I am simply unable to run Audirvana for any length of time without encountering significant CPU overload problems, with the music eventually disappearing altogether in a series of cracks and break ups.

 

I am using a two year old MacMini, with just 2Gb of RAM. The Mac is used for nothing other than music, with the music held on a separate drive. All music is AIFF 16/44 CD rips. The Mac feeds a Weiss DAC2 via firewire. The only other App which is usually running is i-Tunes (though I have tried using Audirvana without i-Tunes running, but it made no difference).

 

On advice from Damien, I have reduced the load in to memory to just 256Mb (I was finding that I was getting real problems with individual tracks of a length more than 10 minutes if memory load was set any higher). However, even if I sit down to listen to a series of tracks of no more than say an individual length of 5 minutes each, after an hour of continuous use I start getting constant CPU overload flashing. I have also found that if I leave Audirvana open between sessions, on the second session my usable time is even shorter before the CPU Overload warning begins flashing.

 

My computer knowledge is very limited, so my hope is that the expertise so many of you on this site have may be able to make something of my problems and have an idea as to what is going on.

 

In the meantime, I will content myself with using Decibel, which has been completely issue free to date on my set up.

 

Regards,

 

David.

 

[SidHo]

I'll tell you what amazes Me is how so many seemingly bit perfect players can sound so different. I remember the first incarnation of Audirvana was not near the top of my favorite players. All the players I've tried without exception sounded better than my old linn ikemi cd player. All very detailed excellent base, midrange and highs to varying degrees. Until I tried fidelia the one thing I didn't hear was any real depth of the soundstage... I like the highs with Fidelia as well very liquid, no graininess. (the only talked about players I have not used are amarra and player because I don't use iTunes).

Audirvana's last update now makes it 2 players with depth. It's definitely better than the previous version to my ears with a real depth in the soundstage that wasn't there before. The base does seem to be more defined, whether there's more of it I don't know. It's definitely one of my two favorite players, a real achievement. I havn't done enough listening to say anything else. Actually I have but it's been hard not to be paying attention to the music and forget about the player!

I wonder how much more improvement is possible? Like I said, before 6 months or a year ago I wouldn't think what I'm hearing in my system now would be happening without sinking at least a few grand into a DAC.

 

Thanks for the world class player.

 

P.S. I've got a question. Would increasing my memory from 2 to 4 or 8 gigs stop the CPU overload from happening? I'm hoping people with that amount of memory in a new (aluminum) Mac mini could relate their experience with this.

 

[wgscott]

You can buy 8 gig of memory for about $100. I haven't had the problems you have described. I play from ALAC, not AIFF, so I don't have a perfect control, although I think what is stored in memory is uncompressed and therefore should be the same size. I have audirvana set to use a max of 4 gig, fwiw. Also, I don't upsample.

 

[wgscott]

Thanks!

 

[Joebah]

using Audirvana!

 

Definitely worth a donation - and so I just made one.

 

Also, thanks to the board for the suggestion to reboot the Macbook in 64 bit mode. I have done that (and set it to always do that) and everything is working great so far!

 

[Jud]

SidHo writes:

 

I'll tell you what amazes Me is how so many seemingly bit perfect players can sound so different.

 

Perhaps the simplest way to think of the ability to pass a bit perfect digital stream is that it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good sound - and even then, maybe not for the reason one might suppose.

 

Setting players and DACs to upsample provides sound that many audiophiles prefer to leaving the digital stream in original lower resolution form. Upsampling by definition doesn't leave the digital stream bit perfect (i.e., bit for bit identical input to output). So there isn't widespread agreement that a "bit perfect" stream sounds better.

 

But even if you have your player set to upsample, the fact that it has the *ability* to pass a bit perfect stream is essential, because it means the player won't make significant changes to the digital stream and thus the sound that you haven't asked it to.

 

[audiozorro]

Let's review:

 

we have convinced ourselves that we have bit perfect players

we have confirmed that we are using bit perfect DACs

we assume that our Macs are bit perfect transports

 

So what do I tell the CA readers that complain of clicks and crackling?

 

That the component parts are bit perfect but the composite whole is not?

 

I offer the above comments perhaps to share some of my own experiences with not Mac, but Windows music servers.

 

I have two almost identical Windows music server except for different Gigabyte motherboards and the fact that one computer is running XP and the other running Vista32. I often use the AudioGate player for comparisons since it runs on my Mac and Windows computers, enabling closer apples-to-apples comparisons.

 

Well on my Vista32 computer when upsampling to 24/176.4 or 24/192 I hear cracking that some have described here as playing a scratchy LP. On my almost identical XP computer the music is clean and clear. I also have a Dell running Win7, a Dell running Vista64 and a Acer running XP; obviously very different computers but all produce music that is very clean and clear.

 

Now on my Vista32 computer when I limit playback to 24/96 or lower everything seems fine. On the other hand when I use other players at 24/176.4 or 24/192 I also hear problems, but perhaps not as pronounced.

 

So where do I put the blame? Not on the player since AudioGate runs perfectly on every other computer that I have. Perhaps not even on Vista32 since I would assume that several other CA readers are using Vista32 with no problems. Perhaps the problem is with the motherboard, or not. If I only had the one Vista32 computer instead of having several different computers, I would probably say that this computer audio stuff is crap and long for the simpler life of CD/DVD transports or perhaps the Auraliti.

 

Now on to my supposed memory leak problem with my MacBookPro. After three days of running 24/7 I see no evidence of swapfiles being created and taking over my hard drive.

 

Ah, the mysteries of computers; what may be true yesterday may not be true today or tomorrow and what may be true for me may not be true for you. At face value this defies logic and while I don't believe in audio gremlins I do believe in electronic quirks. I'm sure glad I enjoy music, this audio hobby, solving problems and improving things.

 

[Joebah]

Since my last post, I have heard clicking during playback. I might just not have noticed it before, but playing albums with softer passages (Hassel - Fascinoma), I can hear them.

 

I think that I have tried all of the fixes mentioned in this thread (turning off max buffer, turning off oversampling, running in 64 bit mode) and have tried restarting, etc., and have played the same tracks using Decibel and Fidelia (no clicks).

 

Any suggestions?

 

Here's the debug file from during playing.

 

 

Audirvana rev. 0.8.0 debug information:

 

Currently playing in standard 32bit float mode

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float, 8 bytes per frame @88.2kHz

 

Hog Mode is on

Devices found : 4

 

List of devices:

Device #0: ID 0x10e Built-in Output UID:AppleHDAEngineOutput:1B,0,1,2:0

Device #1: ID 0x108 Musical Fidelity V-Link UID:AppleUSBAudioEngine:Musical Fidelity:Musical Fidelity V-Link:fd130000:1

Device #2: ID 0x104 Soundflower (2ch) UID:SoundflowerEngine:0

Device #3: ID 0x101 Soundflower (16ch) UID:SoundflowerEngine:1

 

Selected device:

ID 0x108 Musical Fidelity V-Link UID:AppleUSBAudioEngine:Musical Fidelity:Musical Fidelity V-Link:fd130000:1

5 available sample rates up to 96000.0Hz

32000.0

44100.0

48000.0

88200.0

96000.0

 

Audio buffer frame size : 29 to 9216 frames

Current I/O buffer frame size : 8192

Physical (analog) volume control: No

Virtual (digital) volume control: No

Preferred stereo channels L:1 R:2

Simple stereo device: yes

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

 

1 output streams:

Stream ID 0x109 2 channels starting at 1

10 virtual formats:

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

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32bits little endian Float @32.0kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @96.0kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @88.2kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @48.0kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @44.1kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @32.0kHz

 

10 physical formats

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

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

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

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

Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @32.0kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @96.0kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @88.2kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @48.0kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @44.1kHz

Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer @32.0kHz