New OSX Opensource audiophile player : Audirvana

[damien78]

Is there any sample rate conversion happening with those tracks ?

And is the loading progress bar still displayed ? It should disappear after load is complete.

 

Damien

 

[soundscape]

I think clicking the "loop" button (so that the "loop" icon in the player lights up) gets back the previous behavior, more or less.

 

John, nice to hear it's not just me!

 

EDIT: The loading progress bar I always see at about 95%.

 

[mugsy]

Hi Damien/Soundscape.

 

No sample rate conversion, unless setting audio/midi settings to 24-bit 44.1 is wrong for playing back 16-bit files?

 

Like Soundscape my progress bar sticks at around 95%.

 

- John

 

[damien78]

I've issued an update with fixes for these two issues:

[*]Oversampling was setting incoherent file and DAC sample rates

[*]Workaround for CoreAudio underestimation of file length that lead to a pause at end of some tracks

 

Tell me if this fixes it on your system too.

 

Damien

 

[Adyc]

New version has solved both my problems. Thanks for the quick update.

 

[JS21]

Been doing some extensive listening the past few days and I absolutely love it. I can say that I now I prefer Audirvana over Pure Music. As I mentioned before, much more of an organic feel and also a much quieter/blacker background.

 

I'm wondering if most of you upsample or not. I think the bass is a bit tighter when upsampled and was wondering if others have similar experiences.

 

[Jud]

System: MacBook Pro, AirFoil with Pure Music, AyreWave & Audirvana, Airport Express, AudioQuest Toslink, M-Audio CO2 optical/coax converter, Omega Mikro digital coax, Theta DAC, Spectral pre-amp, PSE amp, Vandersteen 2Ce.

 

Test Tracks: "I Fall to Pieces," Aaron Neville & Trisha Yearwood, "Rhythm, Country & Blues;" "Life is a Carnival," The Band, "To Kingdom Come;" "Don't Look Down," Lindsey Buckingham, "Out of the Cradle;" "Beyond My Wildest Dreams" and "All the Roadrunning," Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, "All the Roadrunning," all CD -> Apple Lossless.

 

"I Fall to Pieces" - Aaron Neville has the most beautiful male human voice I have ever heard. He is built like a longshoreman, but has an incongruously high-pitched singing voice with an angelic quaver. Yearwood isn't bad either. The song is well recorded. You should be able to hear a good soundstage, the interplay of the vocalists with each taking lead and harmony in turn, then both singing lead together, and the voices as the feature with instruments providing backing, not obscuring the vocals.

 

"Life is a Carnival" - This track was originally on "Cahoots," from 1971. The recording is fairly primitive, reflecting the technological era and the American roots ethos of the Band. Levon Helm on drums, Rick Danko on bass and Garth Hudson on organ set up a unique rhythm that sounds like the studio was breathing in and out in 2/4 time. If you hear much of a soundstage, something's being added that's not really there. But if you don't get the unique rhythmic drive, you're missing something wonderful that is very much there. And if you feel like you're in a log cabin in winter smelling wood smoke - well now, that's a mighty fine system you've got.

 

"Don't Look Down" - After Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham made some solo albums where he displayed monster producing chops. When I say "monster," I mean Brian Wilson comparisons are not completely out of line. (Useful to note here that I was not a huge late Fleetwood Mac fan. I prefer "Bare Trees," from before Buckingham and Nicks joined.) He gets a combination of ethereal vocals and driving instruments that evokes memories of "Pet Sounds" and "Holland." The soundstage here should be enveloping, the song should have tremendous rhythmic drive, and when Buckingham comes in on the chorus practically shouting the title lyric, it should be nearly a scary thing.

 

"Beyond My Wildest Dreams" and "All the Roadrunning" - Knopfler has always paid tremendously close attention to recording quality since his Dire Straits days. On this album the songwriting and instrumentals have a beautiful American roots sound that Knopfler has been publicly dabbling in at least since 1990's "Neck and Neck" with Chet Atkins, and Emmylou Harris's vocals show the songs to great advantage. Knopfler doesn't have anything like a classically good voice, but somehow he manages to make his rough, sometimes half-spoken singing fit perfectly with these pieces.

 

You should hear an excellent soundstage, but not like the heavily produced Buckingham song. The instruments and vocals should each have their places and be clearly audible, but they shouldn't be isolated - the joy the players are feeling and the interplay between them should shine through.

 

Pure Music emphasized the midrange in every piece - more "chest" in the vocals, more emphasis on instruments vs. vocals. Whenever software or hardware is a "one trick pony" - imparting the same type of sound to very different pieces of music - you know it's wrong.

 

Ayrewave was accurate on all pieces, making different tracks sound different as it should. But it was just very slightly sterile. Things didn't bounce and rock quite like they should, didn't have funk where it was called for.

 

Audirvana just did everything right - accuracy, yes, but also beauty, which most of these songs have in plenty, joy, drive, funk.... My wife, no stereophile, came home at the end of my listening session. I put on "All the Roadrunning," which is a waltz, using Audirvana. As the vocals and violin swung in with the waltz, she was so taken by the music she asked me to dance. So we did, there on the family room rug.

 

[Lars]

I find that when this program is played back with a higher resolution system, your results are reversed. This is not to say that your comments aren't valid, just not universal.

 

[mugsy]

Still having problems with audio sometimes cutting out for a second. Everytime that happens the red CPU load icon appears in Audirvana.

 

This is just with standard 16-bit files, average length, ALAC lossless.

 

I only have 1GB memory in my Mac mini, but I don't have any trouble with iTunes or AyreWave so it must be something to do with how Audirvana uses memory perhaps?

 

I'm using the latest version of Audirvana, with no other software running at the same time, and using the optical output built into my 2009 Mac mini.

 

- John

 

[soundscape]

> "I'm wondering if most of you upsample or not. I think the bass is a bit tighter when upsampled and was wondering if others have similar experiences."

 

Yes, thanks for pointing this out. I'm not completely sure, but the bass seems a bit stronger and to have a bit more life.

 

Since my new DAC (not burnt-in yet), with the AKG K702, seems a bit treble-intensive, that's a welcome balance. I'll be listening with "Force upsampling" enabled, from now on.

 

In a few weeks (hopefully) I'll get the LCD-2, which is said to have a stronger bass, so the picture might be reversed then...

 

EDIT: The treble-intensity of the new DAC seems to be further reduced after turning "Resampling" on the DAC itself off (and using Audirvana's upsampling instead).

 

[damien78]

John: With 1GB of mem, the audio buffers are likely to be swapped to disk as the OS is fighting to get available RAM. (On my MBP, I already have 764MB used by kernel stuff).

To maximize SQ, Audirvana loads completely the fully decoded (and sample converted) audio tracks in RAM in a double buffer. That is both the currently playing, and the next track are loaded at the same time. And this ensures gapless playback all the time.

So the realtime playing process only needs to read data in RAM to send it to the DAC. Period.

But it expects the data to still be in RAM.

Other players like iTunes or AyreWave use a temporary rotating buffer in an additional thread to cache in advance the data to be read, and smooth the potentially long data accesses (e.g. reading back from hard drive swapped buffer pages).

In your case, I'm sorry, but you'll need to get more RAM.

 

Damien

 

[soundscape]

There seems to be more to it than that. I also get "CPU over"s on MBP with 3GB if I just launch Safari to read this page. And I'll often get multiple "CPU over" (and short distortions) within 10 secs. Are you implementing background thread loading together with "transparent split load" ?

 

Edit: And once it starts to happen, quitting Safari isn't enough, but when relaunching Audirvana, it will usually not happen anymore for a longer time, even if I then relaunch Safari as well.

 

[soundscape]

> "I find that when this program is played back with a higher resolution system, your results are reversed. This is not to say that your comments aren't valid, just not universal."

 

I appear to hear that difference also with 24/96 tracks, with equipment capable of 24/96 throughout. Most easily, though not a huge difference, I hear a larger and more open soundstage, as well as finer details. With my new system (DAC+amp) the same as with my older system (only the headphones are the same), where my new system in itself makes a similar step compared to my older system (even though that was already 24/96 capable).

 

If on some systems it is different, I don't think it is the resolution. Audirvana itself appears to subjectively have a higher resolution, if anything. Using Audirvana with a CD track (Compared to AW or PM with the same CD track) seems part of the way towards listening to a 24/96 track.

 

[Jud]

Lars writes:

 

I find that when this program is played back with a higher resolution system, your results are reversed. This is not to say that your comments aren't valid, just not universal.

 

In another computer audio forum, I read your favorable evaluation of Pure Music in terms of tonal qualities - bass, high end, etc. I tend to evaluate music differently. I tend to judge reproduced music in terms of emotional qualities, just as I would evaluate live music. After all, I've never left a live musical event raving "Wow, did you hear that treble?!" If I feel like saying that after listening to reproduced music, then it seems to me there must have been something wrong to make the upper register the focus of my attention rather than the musical performance itself.

 

Now it is very likely I'm missing things you hear with your system. Most of my components are old (the Theta and Vandersteens are nice pieces, but they aren't Wavelength or Wilsons, respectively), and I'm working with Redbook data, 16/44.1. But I also wonder to what extent we are listening differently.

 

[ted_b]

is much more different from his than you explain. Your signal path is quite complex, going from the computer, to a wireless Airfoil over to an Apple Airport Express, then traversing two different digital paths by being converted (out of the Airport Express) from toslink into a CO2, then to coax, and finally arriving at a DAC, etc. There are at least eight different connections that occur. I gotta think that takes its toll eventually. It doesn't surprise me that the Audirvana does good things to this signal path.

 

In the end it's all about the music, and it's a great thing that we have several players that allow great music to arrive at each of our speaker systems (or headphones). Ain't computer audio a PITA, er, sorry, wonderful!!

 

BTW, the Thetas and Vandersteens are no slouches...nice musical products.

 

[Jud]

ted_b writes:

 

There are at least eight different connections that occur. I gotta think that takes its toll eventually.

 

That's a very interesting issue. I haven't done a listening comparison between a simpler path (playing the original CD using an Oppo BDP-83 through coax to the Theta) and the more complex one using Audirvana. I have done the comparison using iTunes, and it wasn't terribly close. Using Audirvana, the experience was emotionally involving enough that I switched the newer and better of my two Omega Mikro digital coax cables from the Oppo to the CO2. I'm now very interested to hear what differences there may be between the two paths with the new configuration. There is even a possibility the computer audio path will sound better, something I would have had trouble believing based on the iTunes experience.

 

It doesn't surprise me that the Audirvana does good things to this signal path.

 

A few thoughts about this:

 

- Related to some of what I've said in earlier posts, I don't view my system in terms of tonal balance. Any noticeable tonal imbalance in a purportedly high end system is such a gross error that to me it's a sign of something very wrong, something not fixable with compensating tonal errors elsewhere in the system.

 

My views are more in line with those of Ivor Tiefenbrun, designer of the Linn turntables, who believes the greatest problem in a music reproduction system is loss of information. ("Professor" Keith O. Johnson, of Spectral Electronics, Reference Recordings, and HRx - and an associate of "Pflash" Pflaumer of Berkeley Audio Design - holds very similar views.)

 

To take an example from the olden days of digital audio as an illustration: When early CD players sounded too bright, some people compensated with associated components or accessories that rolled off highs. But the harsh sound wasn't the result of a tonal imbalance, it was distortion caused by loss of timing information (jitter).

 

Rolling off the highs didn't fix the jitter. It may have made it less overtly irritating, but surely a system with both jitter distortion and further masking of information caused by rolled-off highs wouldn't be musical or emotionally involving.

 

Looking at my system in terms of preservation or loss of information, I can't see how Audirvana would recover information lost further up the signal path. Neither would Pure Music or Ayrewave, which of course used the same signal path. To my way of thinking, the differences I described in my listening session (greater emotional involvement, better presentation of rhythm and interplay among instruments and vocalists, more variation in sound between different recordings) might be explained by Audirvana losing less information than the other players.

 

BTW, the Thetas and Vandersteens are no slouches...nice musical products.

 

Thanks - I like 'em just fine. :-) But I wanted to point out some differences between my system and Lars' that could very well lead to his hearing things I would miss through mine.

 

[Bob Stern]

... according to John Atkinson's measurements.

 

Chris C. says more recent models of Airport Express are even worse.

 

[soundscape]

For my part, I decided to keep it simple, and turned off both "Force upsampling" in Audirvana and Resampling on the DAC. The latter is, for a good part, meant as an anti-jitter measure, but I'm using the Halide Bridge (asynch USB) to remove jitter for good. Nevertheless, I am occasionally playing with using 4x upsampling on the DAC, to provide the DAC chip with less-granular input.

 

The mentioned treble intensity may come (given that my current headphones over-emphasize treble in the first place) from using digital vs. analog volume control. The hi-res digital volume control on the DAC is quite interesting, since it doesn't seem to introduce distortions, but preserves bass and treble better at lower volumes, compared to the analog volume on the amp. Once I have the new headphones, I'll see if they solve the treble "problem" completely. After all, when comparing the AKG K702 to "normal" headphones, they are obviously very treble oriented, whereas the LCD-2 are said to have a strong bass even compared to most other headphones, and, some say, slightly recessed highs.

 

[Lars]

Jud,

 

In the end, what gives you pleasure is the "best" player. In fact, I posted my comments at AA as I didn't want to rain on the parade of so many enthusiastic people. I think Ted has analyzed the differences between our digital setups well and this probably explains the differences we are hearing. The cost of the components is not the issue when I was referring to resolution.

 

Steve

 

[seta]

I know we only care how lossless files would sound for this new player (which is fantastic so far), but I do have some MP3 files and experiencing periodical drop outs (every 5 secs or so). I'm trying this on a 2008 Mac mini with 2GB RAM, with USB feeding a DAC.

 

 

[Jud]

Bob Stern writes:

 

Airport Express has terrible jitter

 

... according to John Atkinson's measurements.

 

Be careful here, lest inaccuracy result, "whispering down the line" style, from repeating a statement devoid of context. The terrible jitter measurements came from the AE's analog outputs, running off its cheap inboard DAC, which I seriously doubt anyone here is using. Here's what Atkinson said about the AE's digital optical output:

 

Some audiophiles have dissed the AirPort Express on the grounds that its digital output is not bit-accurate. However, I found that this was not the case, that the data appearing on the AE's digital output were identical in the original file.

 

* * *

 

However, this [analog output jitter] performance becomes moot when the AE's digital output is used. The grayed-out trace in fig.7 shows a similar spectral analysis of the Musical Fidelity X-DACV3's analog output while it was driven by the AirPort Express via the Monster TosLink cable. The noise floor has dropped by 4–5dB, the word-clock jitter to a respectably low 258ps, which is actually better than the case with the standalone D/A processor driven directly by my PC's S/PDIF output (provided by an RME PCI card).

 

* * *

 

The beauty of this unassuming component...is its S/PDIF data output, which allows the AirPort Express to assume a respectable role in a true high-end audio system.

 

[bluedy1]

Using the AE regularly from its SPDIF output in my secondary system on dacmagic and electrostatic speakers I enjoy some nice music: when the music is good it reproduces most of it.

 

[Jud]

Lars/Steve:

 

What I really appreciate is the civility of the discussion, which as we know, isn't always easy to find in online forums. Kudos to Chris and all participants for creating this very pleasant atmosphere.

 

Component cost, as you say, is not always indicative of resolution. However, while I haven't heard the Wavelength, the async interface for USB makes plenty of sense to me (and to other well-thought-of companies like Ayre), and it's obviously capable of taking input that is literally much higher resolution than the Redbook audio my system is currently restricted to. I have heard and very much liked Wilson speakers. (Nice as I'm sure the Wavelength is, I wonder whether the analog side of your system might sound better: Basis, Graham, Koetsu [drool].)

 

I'm looking forward to getting some time to compare my system with the MacBook Pro at the head of the chain vs. the Oppo BDP-83 spinning CDs. As ted_b points out, the signal path for the former ain't simple, but there are some factors, such as two levels of electrical isolation (MacBook Pro -> Airport Express, conversion to optical and back) that could conceivably work in its favor.

 

[Lars]

I agree Jud; Chris has a great site that people can come to without feeling intimidated.

 

Gordon's execution of the ESS Sabre 32 has been pretty amazing in the Crimson. It has the characteristics of excellent analog with great ease and lack of digital hardness. Gordon will be releasing a Denominator board for the Cosecant that will bring ESS Sabre performance at a more affordable price. I hope to have a Crimson HS soon that should allow me to play files greater than 96K.

 

In the end, the best software player is the one that sounds best to you. But I will continue to present what I am hearing with my Wavelength DAC.

 

Thanks,

 

Steve

 

[soundscape]

@ bluedy1

 

Hi, with the Dac202 in your sig, I was wondering whether you would be able to test the various software players for bit-transparency... at the risk of finding out that there isn't any difference at all...