Audirvana Plus 3.5

[AudioDoctor]

@rodrigaj

 

How are you adding tracks to the queue?  Why are you syncing while playing and searching for other tracks to play?

[RunHomeSlow]

Select tracks where they are, select three dots on left of tracks selected... add to play queue.

Why not syncing while playing ? never bugged me.

Same with optimizing options, two out of three options, doesn't bug either... only third option have to close A+.

[Jud]

39 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

Why not syncing while playing ? never bugged me.

 

I don't like carrying out data operations on a "moving target" in general. I have a couple of hard drives, each with a copy of all my music, that I sync with each other, and I don't play music from them or carry out other operations on those files while syncing.  It might work out fine, but I just feel there's no point taking the chance two different operations might hit the same file at the same time and potentially cause corruption.

 

The database is set to sync every time I turn on Audirvana.  I don't have that many tracks, relatively speaking (about 10,000, perhaps a little over 1 TB), and maintain the database with Audirvana's tools pretty regularly, so it might take 20-30 seconds to sync, if that.

[RunHomeSlow]

i have one drive with music on..

When i put a new CDs in a folder of it, Audirvana sync by default... that is good,

if for whatever reason it doesn't, same with JRiver, i hit the reload button or sync in Audirvana

and it help syncing faster... i don't do backup while playing music or copying my Audirvana database for backup while music is playing, i wait till it is shut down for sure...

When i do a clone of my music or macOS system i surely not doing anything else while at it 

[RunHomeSlow]

9 minutes ago, Jud said:

The database is set to sync every time I turn on Audirvana

 

i turn Audirvana on in the morning and close it at night when going to sleep...

today i had 3 Kansas albums before going to work and going back from work add 2 Roland Kirk CDs...

i don't do backup or online backups while things are going on...

Maybe once a month a get back home from my father my hard drives for backups and update them

[OldBigEars]

Have been listening to 3.5 a lot over the past 24 hours.

 

With the house to myself, I got down to some extensive comparison testing vs my beloved Roon - for which I have  lifetime membership.  To my shock, I'm finding 3.5 is better.  My music has more presence, more emotion. I love what I'm hearing.  I stay up very late listening to music, entranced.

 

The only problem.....what appears to be a weird bug with Tidal.  Basically it plays Tidal beautifully - yet my saved Tidal music library appears and then disappears apparently randomly. Has anyone else got a similar problem or solution?

[Jud]

3 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

and going back from work add 2 Roland Kirk CDs...

 

A long time ago I was watching a DownBeat magazine annual awards show.  Kirk had won in the "multi-instrumentalist" category (of course), and Hubert Laws had won for flute.  They had one of those jams at the end where everyone is playing.  Laws was standing next to Kirk as Kirk put one, then two, then three instruments up to his mouth at once and played the living hell out of them.  Laws looked over at Kirk, his jaw dropped, and he forgot to play his flute for a while.

 

Fond memory!

[RunHomeSlow]

i'm pretty sure something with refreshing is bugging with Audirvana...

like your Tidal database maybe, or mine with song played not refreshing or albums covers loading

all the time you click somewhere... you click an album played it doesn't say it was played all songs once,

but if you go a different path, then back to that album, you will see that those songs were played once...

[rodrigaj]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

@rodrigaj

 

How are you adding tracks to the queue?  Why are you syncing while playing and searching for other tracks to play?

I add tracks to the queue from A+Remote by tapping on the track while in the "browser" section of A+Remote.

 

I am not syncing while playing nor when I am searching.

 

Here is the sequence of what happened:

I had added another CD to the NAS library and Audirvana did not sync. (it is on "Auto")

I loaded up the queue from A+Remote with some tracks that were in the library

I tried to add to the queue from A+Remote and from the new CD that was now in the NAS library

I realized that the sync had not occurred since the new CD was not visible in the A+ library.

I went to my computer to sync A+

After the sync, the CD was visible, but I discovered that the duplication had taken place on the tracks that had been in queue.

 

No music playing, the tracks that were duplicated were merely "sitting" in the play queue.

 

The obvious solution is to never leave tracks in queue while Audirvana syncs, but this seems like a bug. Why do I have to keep clearing the play queue?

 

[RunHomeSlow]

6 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

A long time ago I was watching a DownBeat magazine annual awards show.  Kirk had won in the "multi-instrumentalist" category (of course), and Hubert Laws had won for flute.  They had one of those jams at the end where everyone is playing.  Laws was standing next to Kirk as Kirk put one, then two, then three instruments up to his mouth at once and played the living hell out of them.  Laws looked over at Kirk, his jaw dropped, and he forgot to play his flute for a while.

 

Fond memory!

 

Cool moment !!

 

Kirk is not my favorite for sure, but i love him on some CDs...

But for playing two winds at the time i much prefer David Jackson with Van Der Graaf Generator 

[AudioDoctor]

@rodrigaj Or just sync before beginning playback? Perhaps it is a bug but it seems an easily avoided one on the users end.

[pdvm]

11 hours ago, fourstrings1891 said:

 A 24" monitor feels insufficient, I can just imagine how it is on a 13" MacBook screen. Merci!

 

 

It's cramped. Very, very cramped.

[bnbayer]

13 hours ago, Jud said:

Kirk put one, then two, then three instruments up to his mouth at once and played the living hell out of them.

In addition to his tenor sax, that would include the Manzello and Stritch - both names he coined for some oddball old saxophones from the 1920s saxophone fad.* One was actually a straight alto (they're usually curved), the other was a soprano with a curved bell like a mini alphorn. I think I recall at least one of them was in an odd key as well. Kirk used rubber bands to hold some of the keys permanently down for that piece, since he didn't have enough hands to play three saxophones at once. Sometimes he'd use both hands on one - usually the tenor - and the other two functioned as drones, like a bagpipe. Other times he'd use one hand on each of two horns, and the third as a drone. (He was really good on the flute, too, but could only play one of those at a time...)

 

*Saxophone fad - thousands of adult amateurs learned to play odd saxophones really badly in the 1920s, because they didn't have Audirvana to play their hi-res files (which were stored on shellac discs). See? Not off-topic at all...

[couchfungus]

Kirk also played nose flute (or was it a recorder?), sometimes simultaneously with other instruments, or while singing and humming. I saw him in concert a couple of times.  At times, his antics seemed like a carnival act, but he was also a damn fine musician, and had great talkative rapport with his audiences.  Here he is, doing his thing at Montreux.

 

Obligatory Audirvana content:  I'm glad that the column sorting functions are finally working in 3.5.9.  For my needs, all of the significant bugs are now fixed. But I am still seeing a minor cosmetic glitch.  At the bottom of the window, the text field for the track name is overwritten by "Label", which is probably the variable type in the interface builder.  This happens in OS X 10.12.6 "Sierra", but not in 10.14 "Mojave".  See attached screen shot:

 

 

[Nico]

40 minutes ago, couchfungus said:

I'm glad that the column sorting functions are finally working in 3.5.9.  For my needs, all of the significant bugs are now fixed

@damien78

Not for my needs: Column sorting after a search in track list view is still not possible (3.5.9). This is essential to find the right tracks in large search results (sorting was available in 3.2). And this is a basic and usual function in databases (libraries).

[jamesg11]

On 5/13/2019 at 4:50 AM, DancingSea said:

Here’s a report on my Audirvana journey.  Going back to 2.6, A+ has always sounded too bright to me, no matter what I’ve tried, including Tube Saturator plugins that cost more the A+ itself.  3.5 fell into the same boat.  I’ve always preferred Amarra Luxe and HQP.

 

I recently swapped out my DH Labs T14 (silver) speaker cables for Audioquest Rocket 33’s (copper), and added a REL subwoofer.  Got better for A+, but still not quite there.  Then a few days ago I followed some EQ settings Copy_Of_A gave me almost a year ago.  All of that combined has A+ sounding amazing.  On par with Amarra Luxe, and very close to HQP, yet more functional than either.

 

Here are Copy_Of_A’s EQ recommendations.  I did boost the low shelf a little bit.

 

”

get this very nice and very, very good free EQ:
https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-nova/

activate the filters I, II and III

 

set Filter I to:
peak (the symbol in the middle above the Q and FREQ button)
Q: 0.5
Freq: 60Hz
Gain: 0.3db

(see attachment 01)

 

set Filter II to:
low shelf (the symbol above the Q button)
Q: 0.5
Freq: 360Hz
Gain: 0.5db

(see attachment 02)

 

set Filter III to:
peak (the symbol in the middle above the Q and FREQ button)
Q: 0.85
Freq: 3.2kHz (=3200Hz)
Gain: -0.2db

(see attachment 03)

 

out gain (bottom right): -5db

This should get you close to something you might like…

 

For somewhat bolder bass increase the gain of Filter II (leave Filter I and Filter III as they are for the time being).

But don't overdo ...

 

If it’s still too bright decrease the gain in Filter III (start with -0.5db ... but I wouldn’t go lower than -1db).”

Were these settings recommended just for your specific situation, or as generally good ones?

[DancingSea]

1 hour ago, jamesg11 said:

Were these settings recommended just for your specific situation, or as generally good ones?

 

They were suggested as generally good ones for taming Audirvana brightness, if that's an issue....

[elcorso]

1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

 

They were suggested as generally good ones for taming Audirvana brightness, if that's an issue....

 

Which Audirvana brightness?

 

We could talk about listening equipment brightness , or tinnitus of some users ...

 

Roch

[DancingSea]

5 hours ago, elcorso said:

 

Which Audirvana brightness?

 

We could talk about listening equipment brightness , or tinnitus of some users ...

 

Roch

 

Well, of course, this is subjective.  But over in the Amarra thread, there has been an observation about A+ for years that its too bright compared to Amarra.  Of course, Amarra has a long list of its own sins, but to a certain contingent, A+ has always leaned bright.  And yes, system variables make it a less than precise observation.

[jos]

7 hours ago, elcorso said:

 

Which Audirvana brightness?

 

We could talk about listening equipment brightness , or tinnitus of some users ...

 

Roch

Indeed, doesn't exist! Hans Beekhuyzen (a well known independent hifi reviewer) already concluded that Amarra is sounding more 'wooly' than others (Pure Music, A+, ...). You could explain this as: 'a lack of high frequency definition and over abundance of low mids'.

[copy_of_a]

2 hours ago, jos said:

Indeed, doesn't exist! Hans Beekhuyzen (a well known independent hifi reviewer) already concluded that Amarra is sounding more 'wooly' than others (Pure Music, A+, ...). You could explain this as: 'a lack of high frequency definition and over abundance of low mids'.

Would agree with this - Amarra sounds processed towards a "tape" or "vinyl" -like sound (to some degree). Slightly more bass, slightly warmer, some slight shimmer at the top end. No other "bitperfect" player produces such a sound out of the box ... but all other players sound very, very close to each other in general (tiny differences aside).

However, of all the other players Audirvana is the one (or maybe was the one up to version 3.2) that may sound "harsh". Might be attributed to Audirvanas "resolution" (by that I mean its strong capabilities to resolve details, especially in the high mids). Don't know. But certainly Audirvana is prone to sound "harsh" with modern loud recordings when you don't reduce the gain (which, I assume, many useres don't do). Too, most users on this forums preferred upsampling settings that allow mirrored aliasing (imaging). Of those who used AU plugins I suspect only few users also used dedicated Dither at the end of the processing chain.

And all this together might add up and lead to the conclusion that Audirvana sounds bright.

If you strictly take care to avoid feeding your DAC with hot signals (personally I stay below -5db peaks max) and apply upsampling settings generating a reasonable amount of apodization to avoid imaging (which SoX provides by default BTW) things look much better.

... at least IMHO after using Audirvana for many years (and also using or used HQPlayer, JRiver, Roon in comparison).

 

[DancingSea]

8 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

Would agree with this - Amarra sounds processed towards a "tape" or "vinyl" -like sound (to some degree). Slightly more bass, slightly warmer, some slight shimmer at the top end. No other "bitperfect" player produces such a sound out of the box ... but all other players sound very, very close to each other in general (tiny differences aside).

However, of all the other players Audirvana is the one (or maybe was the one up to version 3.2) that may sound "harsh". Might be attributed to Audirvanas "resolution" (by that I mean its strong capabilities to resolve details, especially in the high mids). Don't know. But certainly Audirvana is prone to sound "harsh" with modern loud recordings when you don't reduce the gain (which, I assume, many useres don't do). Too, most users on this forums preferred upsampling settings that allow mirrored aliasing (imaging). Of those who used AU plugins I suspect only few users also used dedicated Dither at the end of the processing chain.

And all this together might add up and lead to the conclusion that Audirvana sounds bright.

If you strictly take care to avoid feeding your DAC with hot signals (personally I stay below -5db peaks max) and apply upsampling settings generating a reasonable amount of apodization to avoid imaging (which SoX provides by default BTW) things look much better.

... at least IMHO after using Audirvana for many years (and also using or used HQPlayer, JRiver, Roon in comparison).

 

 

Aloha!  What are your preferred Sox settings?

 

Thanks

[copy_of_a]

1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

 

Aloha!  What are your preferred Sox settings?

Hi DancingSea!

 

Honestly: none.

Since there is no way to apply Dither after Upsampling in the new version of Audirana (except when running AU Plugins in realtime mode) I don‘t even bother to start playing around with SoX settings (bandwidth in the range 90%-94% and linear phase seems fine for me, though).

 

Damien apparently is thinking that the Noise Floor of DACs is above 24bit (which I believe is mostly true) and therefore he thinks Dither isn‘t needed after SRC.

With the latter I certainly do not agree since equipment noise is always coloured and this is why it doesn‘t act like uniform Dither (at all frequencies). Above all: most current Plugins and SRC tools work at and output 64bit (SoX at 32bit). So when sending such high bits un-dithered to the DAC you end up with truncation (distortion) ... in the case of Audirvana 3.5 by design. This is why I do not upsample in the new Audirvana version.

 

In the meantime I have, however, batch upsampled my entire library to 88.2 kHz / 96 kHz offline and therefore disable upsampling in Audirvana (3.5). My perception of HighRes changed over time - I think 88.2 kHz and 96kHz are perfect for everything. Higher rates actually sound thinner to me (88.2 / 96 sounds somewhat beefier and snappier).

Upsampling to DSD is a different story maybe... but I‘m not a fan of the DSD upsampling in Audirvana (prefer HQPplayer for this ... but lately pretty rarely ... and if so, only when listening to classical music).

 

sorry I can‘t help you...

[MemoryPlayer]

19 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

Well, of course, this is subjective.  But over in the Amarra thread, there has been an observation about A+ for years that its too bright compared to Amarra.  Of course, Amarra has a long list of its own sins, but to a certain contingent, A+ has always leaned bright.  And yes, system variables make it a less than precise observation.

 

SoX solved this brightness, Izotope was unlistenable for me, I only returned to listen to Audirvana after SoX...

[elcorso]

19 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Well, of course, this is subjective.

 

Precisely!😂

 

19 hours ago, DancingSea said:

But over in the Amarra thread, there has been an observation about A+ for years that its too bright compared to Amarra.  Of course, Amarra has a long list of its own sins, but to a certain contingent, A+ has always leaned bright.  And yes, system variables make it a less than precise observation.

 

Still there is Amarra? I bought and used its first versions but then discarded it. It was 'good' camouflaging horrible recordings, then I decided that those are impossible to repair, an insult to the ear and simply discard them. As for HQ Player I find that it is very good, as long as the WIndows drivers are used through NAA, with all the complications that this implies when using Mac, two computers, etc.

 

Honestly it is not my habitude to refer to other music players in another's player thread, I had to make them in order to answer you.

 

I am more than happy with Audirvana 3.5. I have not had problems with my libraries. I listen to the recordings in the format that is original, be it PCM or DSD. I do upsampling to the maximum that the OS and the DAC allow me. I think Mojave (10.4) is the best OS for Audirvana 3.5. I do not use SoX, my favorite is still iZotope.

 

Chacun son goût ...

 

Cheers !

 

Roch