Shootout at the Linux Corral: AudioLinux vs Euphony

[ted_b]

54 minutes ago, dc-audiogeek said:

I used Euphony Stylus v1 as my main player for a while, but then decided I wanted to upsample via HQPlayer. Euphony has that option baked in.

Can you expand on this?  Cuz you ended with "Then Euphony Stylus v3 was released, and my system sounds even better. ".  What are you using to choose music (i.e GUI) and what sort of architecture/setup are you using HQplayer (embedded with NAA, etc)?   Thx

[ted_b]

41 minutes ago, dc-audiogeek said:

Now I have Euphony Styus set up as a NAA, controlled by my Mac Mini, which runs HQPlayer desktop and Roon server.

Sorry I'm still confused.  As a long time HQPlayer user (I started the embedded thread) I am wondering what you mean.  I was told that Stylus is Euphony's music player, yet you describe using Roon (as library manager and ipad gui) to HQplayer (as upsampler) and then running HQplayer NAA on the PTS box.  Where does Stylus (a music player) even fit in here?  How did their going to Stylus V3 affect your sound if what you use is Roon and HQplayer?  You show Stylus as a GUI, but it's not what you use, right?  You use Roon.  Thx

[ted_b]

7 minutes ago, bobfa said:

You can use Euphony OS with either their Stylus music player or Roon or several other configs

 

 

 

I get that.  It's his use of Stylus that has me confused.

[ted_b]

7 minutes ago, dc-audiogeek said:

It's confusing because Euphony uses the word Stylus for both the operating system and the music player. I tried to differentiate between the two by referring to a Stylus music player app.

 

The option to use the Stylus OS as a NAA is one of the options for how you configure the Stylus OS server.

 

Even when I use Roon and not the Euphony Stylus music player as my source, the Euphony Stylus OS processes the incoming stream with its behind the scenes magic (via the OS, a very light dedicated Linux software not running any other apps like Windows does) before sending that stream to the DAC. The stream that comes out of the OS and goes to my DAC sounds better than using a direct connection to my computer.

 

Does that help clarify things?

thx...yes.

[ted_b]

I want to take off on Larry’s comments on the other thread; that is, that it is possible that the sound of Euphony (@ $299) is matched or even surpassed by the currently-much-more-tweakable AudioLinux various parameters. Has anyone who had tried Euphony feel comfortable customizing AL parameters to try and compare beyond just out-of-box vs out-of-box?  

[ted_b]

58 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

 

There is certainly more low frequency energy and presence to the Euphony 'sound' or if we compare that with audiolinux it could be due to the equipment used, since nothing in theory is being added.

 

 

?  Don’t you compare on same equipment?

[ted_b]

Peter,

Thanks for the informative posts, and welcome to AS.  Two things:

1) has Pink Faun ever said why their I2S bridge doesn't support DSD (nor higher rate PCM than 192k)?  My Singxer SU-1 does not have these techincal limitations (although not commenting on SQ of course)

2) although I understand why you dubbed HQplayer a DSD product, I have used it to also (in addition to upsampling DSD to DSD512) upsample PCM to 352/384k+ and found it to be wonderfully musical, with very good PCM filtering/dithering options.

 

Sorry for keeping this a bit OT.  PM me if you'd rather.

[ted_b]

1 hour ago, Peter Avgeris said:

Studio mastering is not made in DSD domain but only in PCM

Well, not really.  For example, our NativeDSD.com site is chock full of examples of music that were mastered (edited, analog-to-DSD transferred, etc) in DSD.  Hell, early Sony DSD stuff was ALL DSD mastering.  Even Pyramix edited multi-mike stuff can be 99.99% DSD (with microseconds of DXD PCM in the edits).  The results do not need to be listened to in PCM, but rather DSD.   If you define "mastering" as sweetening, well then we have a different issue, yes.

 

1 hour ago, Peter Avgeris said:

Two months ago I had listened to the very good Holo Audio Spring 2 DAC. It was so damn good in NOS mode. Switched to OS and good music was gone. No more than 5 seconds of testing.

That is merely an example of the majority of dacs' $5 oversampling electronics.  My now-years-old review of the initial Holo Spring dismissed this OS option in the first paragraghs.  However...upsampling and modulating via powerful sophisticated algorithms like HQPlayer, offsite (meaning cpu-based, then sent to the NOS setting on the dac) is a whole different kettle of fish.   But anyway,  I continue to stray OT.  My bad.