List of Applications That Support Convolution Filters

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Guys - I'm doing a bit of research for an article and would like to start a thread that lists the applications that support convolution filters. In addition to this, I'd like to note if the apps also support streaming services (Tidal or Qobuz) and UPnP.

 

Please help by adding what you know tho this thread. Thanks!

 

I'll start:

 

JRiver Media Center

Convolution: Yes

UPnP: Yes

Streaming Services (Tidal or Qobuz or Amazon HD): No

 

 

Roon

Convolution: Yes

UPnP: No (supports its own network protocol RAAT)

Streaming Services (Tidal or Qobuz or Amazon HD): Yes (Tidal and Qobuz)

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I will also tag @mitchco on this one. I'm sure he has some to add to the list (fingers crossed).

[Ran]

Something like this?

 

MinimServer / MInimStreamer

 

Convolution: Yes

UPnP: Yes

Streaming Services (Tidal or Qobuz): N/A

 

BubbleUPnP

 

Convolution: N/A

UPnP: Yes as well as OpenHome

Streaming Services (Tidal or Qobuz): Yes

 

 

[Miska]

HQPlayer

Convolution: Yes

UPnP: Yes on Embedded

Streaming Services: Yes (depends on control application)

 

[skipspence]

Daphile

 

Convolution: YES

UPnP: YES

Streaming Services (Tidal, Qobuz and more): YES

[Kal Rubinson]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Please help by adding what you know tho this thread. Thanks!

How about an entry for VST/AU Plug-In support?

[DuckToller]

AroioOS for PI by ABACUS

Convolution: Yes AcourateCV or Acourate pro  (FIR Room Correction Module)

UPnP: YES
Streaming: Spotify, Tidal. Qoboz, Youtube, Napster, Deezer, ROON, Shairport (via Plugins)

[DuckToller]

Audirvana 3.5
Convolution: AudioUnits (IOS)  or VST3 (Windows)
UPnP : Yes
Streaming:  Tidal, Qobuz, HighRes Audio

[The Computer Audiophile]

OK, so I'm investigating these apps further and discovered that while I can get Minim to use convolution filters for my local content, I can't get it to route streaming content through the filters. 

 

Do any of these apps mentioned support routing streaming content through convolution filters?

[The Computer Audiophile]

I also see that Audirvana supports all the stuff I need, except it won't use convolution on audio sent to UPnP renderers. 

 

@damien78, is there a way to use Audirvana for convolution while sending audio out to a UPnP renderer? And, can we route Qobuz through convolution before going our to a renderer?

[damien78]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I also see that Audirvana supports all the stuff I need, except it won't use convolution on audio sent to UPnP renderers. 

 

@damien78, is there a way to use Audirvana for convolution while sending audio out to a UPnP renderer? And, can we route Qobuz through convolution before going our to a renderer?

 

Yes to both.

The only limitation when sending audio to a UPnP renderer is that realtime setup is not available, because of playback latency of such renderer.

So for this, you need to setup the plugin in the audio settings page, and it'll process the audio signal during the track loading phase.

 

And yes, Qobuz tracks are routed through the same signal processing as local files: loading/decoding, signal polarity, volume levelling, plugins, upsampling, format conversion to the most appropriate one for the audio device

[Ran]

9 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

OK, so I'm investigating these apps further and discovered that while I can get Minim to use convolution filters for my local content, I can't get it to route streaming content through the filters. 

 

This is correct.

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 hours ago, damien78 said:

 

Yes to both.

The only limitation when sending audio to a UPnP renderer is that realtime setup is not available, because of playback latency of such renderer.

So for this, you need to setup the plugin in the audio settings page, and it'll process the audio signal during the track loading phase.

 

And yes, Qobuz tracks are routed through the same signal processing as local files: loading/decoding, signal polarity, volume levelling, plugins, upsampling, format conversion to the most appropriate one for the audio device

Hi Damien - I believe I have this working with a sample VST3 filter I found from Izotope. It confirms I can at least use VST3 with UPnP. I read the disclaimer saying "Note that you can’t use the Realtime mode for Audio Unit and VST3 in Audirvana with a UPnP connectivity to your DAC." to mean that VST3 plugins and convolution wouldn't work via UPnP. I'm happy to see this should work. 

 

Fingers crossed Mitch can create some convolution filters for me in VST3 format.

[nonsynchro]

@The Computer Audiophile Did you end up using Audirvana or Daphile for convoluting a streaming signal? Are both capable or did one of them fall short? Do they both support VST so we can use Room Shaper through those applications?

 

 

Keen to discover what you learned.

 

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, nonsynchro said:

@The Computer Audiophile Did you end up using Audirvana or Daphile for convoluting a streaming signal? Are both capable or did one of them fall short? Do they both support VST so we can use Room Shaper through those applications?

 

 

Keen to discover what you learned.

 

 

 

 

My research into this and subsequent testing was fraught with frustration. Daphile cant do convolution on while sending audio over the network via UPnP/DLNA. Audirvana doesn’t have its own convolution engine, so finding a VST3 plugin that supports FIR convolution filters with tens of thousands of taps has been difficult. There is supposedly one that might work, but I haven’t had time to test it. 
 

If Audirvana just had a convolution engine like JRiver, HQPlayer, and Roon, it would just work. So far it has been a laboratory experiment without success.  

[nonsynchro]

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

My research into this and subsequent testing was fraught with frustration.

Oh the joys...

 

I'm under the impression that if Daphile is its own OS on its own headless computer with tablet or phone controlling it, convolution is being performed on the Daphile computer. If this is connected to DAC via USB, then audio is not being sent over network. That would work, right?

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, nonsynchro said:

Oh the joys...

 

I'm under the impression that if Daphile is its own OS on its own headless computer with tablet or phone controlling it, convolution is being performed on the Daphile computer. If this is connected to DAC via USB, then audio is not being sent over network. That would work, right?

 

Correct, if you use USB out to a DAC directly connected you can do convolution on Daphile. Can't remember if streaming content is routed through the filter though. 

[nonsynchro]

On 4/25/2020 at 10:16 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Correct

Booyah! It works. Even Tidal content is being convoluted with automatic gain adjustment. Impressive.

Now the next challenge is for Daphile to support Room Shaper as VST/AU plugin or even standalone application.

[macuniverse]

On 4/25/2020 at 12:28 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

My research into this and subsequent testing was fraught with frustration. Daphile cant do convolution on while sending audio over the network via UPnP/DLNA. Audirvana doesn’t have its own convolution engine, so finding a VST3 plugin that supports FIR convolution filters with tens of thousands of taps has been difficult. There is supposedly one that might work, but I haven’t had time to test it. 
 

If Audirvana just had a convolution engine like JRiver, HQPlayer, and Roon, it would just work. So far it has been a laboratory experiment without success.  

 

I use Audirvana on a Macbook Pro (2019) sending Tidal to two DLNA renderers (Cambridge Audio CXN2 and MicroRendu) over Wi-Fi. I have created my own FIR filters using REW (for measurements and tests) and DRC Designer in wav stereo format. They have 65k taps. 

 

The convolution engine I use is Reverberate Core from LiquidSonics. It's a reverb plugin but can be used just as a convolution engine and it's very good at that. For both Mac and Windows.

 

Mind you Audirvana is not totally reliable for DLNA streaming. Only a select number of renderers work properly (MicroRendu is one). CA CXN2 has issues.

 

It's unfortunate that Audirvana doesn't support real time testing of filters. I use a headless Macmini directly connected to my DAC (Qutest) and JRiver to turn filters on/off to listen in real time. A by-product of this is also the ability to test clipping as JRiver tells you if clipping is occurring. I set my gain accordingly in Audirvana if needed to be.

 

Hope this helps

[Bob Stern]

On 4/25/2020 at 9:41 PM, macuniverse said:

The convolution engine I use is Reverberate Core from LiquidSonics. It's a reverb plugin but can be used just as a convolution engine and it's very good at that. For both Mac and Windows.

 

Another convolution plugin with cross-platform VST and Mac AU formats is Mellowmuse IR1 ($50).  They just updated it to version 4.0 10 days ago.  It supports IR's as long as 440K samples, i.e., 10 seconds at 44.1 KHz sample rate.  The demo version runs forever but inserts silence periodically.

 

(I haven’t used either one, but Mellowmuse and Reverberate Core are the only two I could find that run on Mac and are still being updated.)

 

https://www.mellowmuse.com/IR1A

[manueljenkin]

You can also use MATLAB or Octave to do these tasks. If you're on linux you can write scripts to push things to octave and back to your music player I guess. FREE and POWERFUL!! 😅

[bodiebill]

GentooPlayer with CamillaDSP
Convolution: yes, f.i. 64 bit mono wav files (I use Acourate correction files)
UPnP : Yes
Streaming:  Tidal, Qobuz (f.i. via BubbleUPnP or mconnect)

 

In this case convolution is moved to the renderer, which creates new possibilities for the use of player SW.