Audirvana Plus 3.5

[rn701]

Can audirvana include Tidal/Qobuz tracks along with local library tracks in smart playlists?

[matthias]

@damien78 and all other Audirvana friends

 

I would like to share an audio tweak I came across recently:

 

My set-up:

MBP mid 2010, 4 GB RAM, High-Sierra, max. memory allocated for tracks pre-load 1 GB

Audirvana, latest version, Qobuz Hi-Fi, no local stored files

MBP receives Qobuz via Wi-Fi only, output via USB to DAC

 

Directly after loading the files into RAM I turn Wi-Fi off at the menu bar.

 

The result:

From a pure SQ POV the improvement is subtle but the music is more involving, the interplay of the musicians seems to be better, the music makes more sense and some hardness disappears, the presentation is smoother.

 

Try and enjoy 🙂

 

Matt

[jimdukey]

"some hardness disappears"

 

Not much of a recommendation!

The Bane of Digital Audio, hardness.

I never use Wi-Fi, so I don't suppose I'll get the benefit.

[dgilz]

23 hours ago, matthias said:

@damien78 and all other Audirvana friends

 

I would like to share an audio tweak I came across recently:

 

My set-up:

MBP mid 2010, 4 GB RAM, High-Sierra, max. memory allocated for tracks pre-load 1 GB

Audirvana, latest version, Qobuz Hi-Fi, no local stored files

MBP receives Qobuz via Wi-Fi only, output via USB to DAC

 

Directly after loading the files into RAM I turn Wi-Fi off at the menu bar.

 

The result:

From a pure SQ POV the improvement is subtle but the music is more involving, the interplay of the musicians seems to be better, the music makes more sense and some hardness disappears, the presentation is smoother.

 

Try and enjoy 🙂

 

Matt

 

I was a bit more extreme : on my Mac Mini I disconnected the wifi and bluetooth antennas and stopped all sharing services either file or screen sharing

[matthias]

1 hour ago, dgilz said:

I was a bit more extreme : on my Mac Mini I disconnected the wifi and bluetooth antennas and stopped all sharing services either file or screen sharing

 

I suppose your Mini is connected via wired ethernet?

Do you use streaming services like Qobuz or do you play local files?

 

Matt

[mevdinc]

Hello @damien78,

As you know Lumin successfully implemented the Leedh digital volume in their Lumin X1 DAC.

I have been waiting for the Leedh implementation in Audirvana +. Are you still considering?
I would be grateful for some info. If Leedh is as good as the 6moons Lumix X1 review suggest then it would be great to have it with Audirvana +, if possible.

Stay safe everyone.

Best.
Mev

[greyscale]

A+  vers.3.5.38 running in Catalina running fine until today. have attached a screen capture of the error. Have rebooted Main router as well as the Macbook pro (Catalina ver.10.15.1). Can play to Macbook, but not over network. A+ running in Bootcamp Windows 10 Home plays over the same network perfectly. Debug states UPnP not started???

[greyscale]

37 minutes ago, greyscale said:

A+  vers.3.5.38 running in Catalina running fine until today. have attached a screen capture of the error. Have rebooted Main router as well as the Macbook pro (Catalina ver.10.15.1). Can play to Macbook, but not over network. A+ running in Bootcamp Windows 10 Home plays over the same network perfectly. Debug states UPnP not started???

MMMMM, now it's working. Have no clue as to what happened. Suddenly just started playing over network fine. Never seen this behavior before😓

 

[Marten]

Release 3.5.38

 

• NOT FixED offline tracks/albums status display
  
  files with off line status are not off line and are playing at the moment. 

[Jud]

On 6/27/2020 at 2:47 AM, mevdinc said:

Hello @damien78,

As you know Lumin successfully implemented the Leedh digital volume in their Lumin X1 DAC.

I have been waiting for the Leedh implementation in Audirvana +. Are you still considering?
I would be grateful for some info. If Leedh is as good as the 6moons Lumix X1 review suggest then it would be great to have it with Audirvana +, if possible.

Stay safe everyone.

Best.
Mev

 

As a couple of people knowledgeable about DSP commented quite a while ago in the forums, Leedh is a good but ordinary software volume control, i.e., there is no "secret sauce" that makes it better than other well implemented software volume controls. It obeys all the same mathematical laws.

 

Damien wound up implementing his own improved software volume control.

[greyscale]

On 6/28/2020 at 4:10 PM, greyscale said:

MMMMM, now it's working. Have no clue as to what happened. Suddenly just started playing over network fine. Never seen this behavior before😓

 

Found the problem. Had Logitech Media Server running while attempting to run A+. Answer: Catalina Sys Prefs turn off LMS. A+ runs fine.

[mevdinc]

20 hours ago, Jud said:

 

As a couple of people knowledgeable about DSP commented quite a while ago in the forums, Leedh is a good but ordinary software volume control, i.e., there is no "secret sauce" that makes it better than other well implemented software volume controls. It obeys all the same mathematical laws.

 

Damien wound up implementing his own improved software volume control.

Thanks for the update Jud.
 

From what I remember, the initial info suggested that Leedh was lossless. And the Lumin X1 reviewer seems to be very impressed with it. Clearly, it is a much better implementation. Although from your comment I take it that it is not lossless.
In that case, I do hope that Damien can make his software volume implementation just as good, if not better. That would be brilliant since I prefer to use DACs directly connected to my active system.
A much improved software volume would provide more options as it will allow us to also consider DACs with no analog volume control.

[Jud]

7 hours ago, mevdinc said:

Thanks for the update Jud.
 

From what I remember, the initial info suggested that Leedh was lossless. And the Lumin X1 reviewer seems to be very impressed with it. Clearly, it is a much better implementation. Although from your comment I take it that it is not lossless.
In that case, I do hope that Damien can make his software volume implementation just as good, if not better. That would be brilliant since I prefer to use DACs directly connected to my active system.
A much improved software volume would provide more options as it will allow us to also consider DACs with no analog volume control.

 

You can try Audirvana with improved software volume control currently - it's already implemented. If you want to try it without an analog volume control in the chain, be very careful that it's set to a suitably low level before music plays.

 

A software volume control by definition can't be "lossless." Changing the loudness in software *always* changes the bits. Anything about "lossless" is marketing-speak.

 

The real question is how many bits do you have in your volume control? Early software volume controls didn't have a lot of bits, so quality degraded fast as you got rid of bits to reduce the volume. Leedh and modern software volume controls implemented by other developers have more bits to spare and don't create a noticeable change in quality.

 

[AudioDoctor]

@Jud I have been very impressed with both the upsampling and volume control in HQPlayer. I have only guesses as to why it is so good, one of them is likely mathematically perfect channel matching which not all analog volume controls are capable of. Maybe none are as capable as HQPlayer's volume control.

[CheapSplurge]

Is hqplayer easy to run with audirvana as it is with roon? 

I used to have an audirvana trial but I was so busy I barely used it. 

Now it won't let me retry it, that I have time. To see how it behaves with the hqplayer? 

Please guide me

[copy_of_a]

16 hours ago, Jud said:

A software volume control by definition can't be "lossless." Changing the loudness in software *always* changes the bits. Anything about "lossless" is marketing-speak.

Not really true... IMHO.
Depends on the wiggle room (i.e. the bit depth and therefore SNR) of the volume control and the bit depth of your target playback device.
If your DAC is 32bit and your volume control runs in 64 bit you effectively have 192db wiggle room to losslessly reduce volume.
Given the volume control is dithered!

Otherwise you not only alter gain levels but also harmonic content (due to truncation distortions).
The latter is unfortunately true for Audirvana.

 

[AudioDoctor]

17 hours ago, CheapSplurge said:

Is hqplayer easy to run with audirvana as it is with roon? 

I used to have an audirvana trial but I was so busy I barely used it. 

Now it won't let me retry it, that I have time. To see how it behaves with the hqplayer? 

Please guide me

 

Audirvana and HQPlayer do not and can not run together as far as I know.

[Jud]

I'm thinking that HQP and Audirvana can work together, but I would have to research the forums...

[Jud]

4 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

Not really true... IMHO.
Depends on the wiggle room (i.e. the bit depth and therefore SNR) of the volume control and the bit depth of your target playback device.
If your DAC is 32bit and your volume control runs in 64 bit you effectively have 192db wiggle room to losslessly reduce volume.
Given the volume control is dithered!

The volume changes, the bitstream changes. If the bitstream changes, this is by definition not lossless. Inaudible in terms of alterations other than loudness, quite probably.

[copy_of_a]

19 minutes ago, Jud said:

The volume changes, the bitstream changes. If the bitstream changes, this is by definition not lossless.

Well, yes. But that‘s pretty quibbling and not target-oriented.

Reduce a music track by some db with high bit processing and afterwards push the gain by the same amount of dbs and finally apply dither at the bit depth of the original source file.

Do a null test with both files. They will match exactly down to the noise floor. In terms of practicabilty this is „lossless“ since you‘ve simply exchanged the original noise floor with a new noise floor (at the same level - so totally exchangable).

 

[Jud]

2 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

Well, yes. But that‘s pretty quibbling and not target-oriented.

Reduce a music track by some db with high bit processing and afterwards push the gain by the same amount of dbs and finally apply dither at the bit depth of the original source file.

Do a null test with both files. They will match exactly down to the noise floor. In terms of practicabilty this is „lossless“ since you‘ve simply exchanged the original noise floor with a new noise floor (at the same level - so totally exchangable).

 

 

Sure, I fully understand (i.e., there are excellent software volume controls). I just don't want to lose definitional precision, because if we start getting sloppy there, advocates for the Audio Format That Must Not Be Named will start screeching "But we're audibly lossless too, and you're just quibbling!"

[AudioDoctor]

8 hours ago, Jud said:

I'm thinking that HQP and Audirvana can work together, but I would have to research the forums...

 

What magic have you found?

[stefano_mbp]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

What magic have you found?

According to this statement HQPlayer Embedded can function as an UPNP renderer thus Audirvana should be able to play to it ...

https://www.signalyst.com/custom.html

In this thread there are some tests about JRiver working with HQPlayer Embedded

.... and here (Italian only, sorry) you can find how configure LMS to work with HQPlayer Embedded (using UPNPBridge LMS plugin)

https://www.nexthardware.com/forum/pc-top-software/90915-mini-guida-come-usare-hqplayer-embedded-hqplayerd-con-lms.html

 

 

[AudioDoctor]

Ok, but why would you?

 

If you want to use HQPlayer there are much better ways than hassling with the terrible UI of Audirvana while giving up it's one advantage and that's a fantastic sound when directly connected, IMO of course.

[jamesg11]

6 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

Ok, but why would you?

 

If you want to use HQPlayer there are much better ways than hassling with the terrible UI of Audirvana while giving up it's one advantage and that's a fantastic sound when directly connected, IMO of course.

“better ways” ... riff on this please!