Subjective comparison of Software Music Player

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The premise of this is questionable because you might be comparing apples to oranges. For example I use HQPlayer with NAA and DSD upsampling/conversión with EC modulators. None of the other options do that. To compare players fairly you could do the least common denominator — which I’m not interested in, otherwise you need to optimize a system independently for each software package. 

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5 hours ago, Rexp said:

OP is correct, why bother with DSD upsampling when only .001% of the population use or will ever use it. 

99.9% of the population use it. The argument is fallacious. No matter. Use whatever software you prefer. 

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28 minutes ago, 4est said:

I always find humor that so many people don't realize that the vast majority of DACs internally convert to SDM/DSD, or in Alex's case, cannot seem to accept that simple tidbit of truth. But yes, people should use whatever software they prefer regardless.

Well implemented native DSD/SDM and PCM/R2R DACs can both sound great. The native SDM DAC is more cost effective and the upsampling to high bitrate PCM is more cost effective. Alex doesn’t have access to a fast workstation or reasonably good gaming computer so depends on DSP chips. That said great DSP chips are in mass production eg the Apple AirPods and can have very nice sound!

 

I wonder what percentage of the world is currently listening to AirPods and not reading this thread? 99.x decimal points? 

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36 minutes ago, mfsoa said:

To some extent are we discussing the different digital filtering that the software does?

 

All DACs filter. 
 

36 minutes ago, mfsoa said:

 

Last I looked at JRiver I did not see how to get it off of a linear phase filter. So it sounded really hard and sterile. Can the digital filters be changed in JRiver?

 

IMO it is difficult to dissect differences between players when the pink elephant of digital filtering is hiding behind the speaker. 

 

Not just classic filters but also modulators. Do you want to do the processing in a cheap IC, expensive IC, or in a computer? You can’t get away from filters— so pick your filters  

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17 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Seems like I have to spell it out for you, 99.9% will never use a software player (thread topic) to upsample. 

Perhaps if the title were “best sounding crippled software player” it would be clearer to me. It’s curious that folks who get technically wrapped up in things like in memory OS and all sorts of details that 99.9999% of the world need not care about, are also entirely unconcerned with issues like modulators and filters which actually change the sound coming out of the speakers. 
 

In any case if you are subjectively  comparing SQ of players then use the players as they are meant to be used. If we are comparing WTF vs HQPlayer ... I will assume that the installed base of HQPlayer is ?10,000x WTF? So what do these percentages mean? In any case use the software as intended not crippled.

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35 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

Ahem. Not all...

Hopefully DACs at least have output filters  

 

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12 minutes ago, sandyk said:

You are twisting my words and that of others,to justify what you and a select group of members are doing here with  the use of high powered PCs and specialised paid S/W to upsample everything to  a much higher frequency.

 

Whether you choose to do that is your choice, just as whether to use a particular cable or power supply or really any pice of equipment.

 

The fact that the software is paid or not should not be of concern — do you expect the ISO Regen to be free, or a particular cable? 
 

Do you even use Linux or Windows? 
 

I use Linux extensively and support its use in audio. Comparing Linux audio distributions such as Audiolinux, wtfplayer, Sonic orbiter and a handful of others including NAA could be a reasonable comparison of similar functions.
 

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Can others like Teresa or myself for that matter, readily do this with our existing typical equipment including most Laptops ? NO !!

 Is there any major benefit to the typical consumer in doing this ? NO !!!

 

There is no benefit to the typical consumer in doing anything we do here. The software is a bargain that actually does something as opposed to other things we spend our money on. 
 

In any case you ought not criticize something you admit you haven’t done and have no experience with.

 

Any frankly HQPlayer is not the only software package that upsample, for example XXHE, Roon etc ...

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10 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Yet I am still getting way better sounding Audio than the vast majority of members by correcting deficiencies in other areas that matter more.

That’s a rather strange conclusion: how do you presume to say that you get way better sound than the vast majority of members here? That is extraordinarily presumptuous  and entirely without basis.
 

You have no way of knowing what an approach may do or not, what filters do or don’t and what modulators do or don’t. You have no experience. 
 

Of course everything above modifies the bits entering the DAC and I know you prefer to stick with approaches that don’t have an effect on bits. Just so.

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35 minutes ago, sandyk said:

In my experience, every time you use S/W to convert to different formats , or process a file further , there is a minor penalty to be paid in the SQ area due to the electrical noise generated by less than perfect power supplies ,where the most obvious example is conversion to and from .flac , especially when done "on the fly" as many other members have reported,

That’s where not only are you wrong but admit that you have no experience with software such as HQPlayer or XXHE — so you continue to “say stuff” with no experience. You bandy about the term “electrical noise” without actual experience, neither subjective nor objective.
 

I suspect that you have no experience with Linux either, so neither wtfplay nor audiolinux etc. You know Linux the actually free OS that everyone can use.
 

Why are you even commenting here? 

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2 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

I refrained from adding the full comparison of hqplayer only because my pc was incapable of using it. I would really love to know your opinions and experiences on the same.

 

HQPlayer is more of a system than simply a player per se. It would be a project to fully employ its capabilities:

1) filters and modulators which run on a high powered PC and output to either a local device (ALSA) or a network device (NAA)

2) loadable convolution kernels usable for room correction, digital crossovers as well as arbitrary convolutions

3) stream input either HTTP or NAA.

4) CUDA offload

5) NAA remote/network ALSA protocol including OS distribution (intended for low power devices)

 

2 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

 

I was only comparing on the basis of system level timing/scheduling/noise in my post. That is one aspect of sound and I am confident that hqplayer is equal to winyl on that front.

 

Presumably a NAA (networkaudiod.xxx.deb) package could run on wtfplay OS.

Aside from @Miska's custom linux distributions, the scheduling on an NAA player device is determined by the underlying Linux OS. I have run NAA on custom compiled/patched linux kernels.

 

2 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

Regarding filtering, not only am I interested in the filters inside hqplayer, I am also interested in custom coding filters using AI (in fact I do a few linear filters in matlab with my audio) and non linear filters like, compressors etc. On a side note I would also love to try different hardware upsampler implementations.

 

That is an entire area of investigation and to one extent convolution kernels can be deployed and tested. I think what is unique to HQPlayer in this area is that the kernels are running or can be running in SDM space, not PCM, which is a really unique capability!

 

Custom filters and non-linear transforms that cannot be expressed as a convolution kernel are not, to my understanding, deployable with HQP.

 

2 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

Hope that cleared it off. Hqplayer discussion is not off topic but the actual filter comparison can be made in their specific thread. I definitely agree the aberrations are different and cannot be compared oranges to oranges. Wtfplay dev is working on SOX so we could get a more comparable ground between wtfplay and hqplayer in some time.

 

It would be really terrific to see further work incorporated into SOX. I understand that Jussi has done a tremendous amount of work and has developed the NAA protocol for his purposes, but I see that as the best remote ALSA implementation available. If an open source lightweight remote ALSA protocol were developed that would be terrific, and then, for example, you could use SOX or HQplayer on a workstation, and then send the audio to a low powered (or underclocked) audio machine, running wtfplay and then you could compare wtfplay against NAA which would be a great comparison!

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@manueljenkin let's look at this from the point of view of what the perfect music player should do:

 

I am using Linux ALSA here because its open and documented and anyone can look at the source code.

 

The audio will be in memory. A very simple user mode program will communicate with the DAC (setup phase) and then enter a loop where it will send buffers of audio to the ALSA USB audio driver. The job of the music player is to ensure that the ALSA USB driver has filled buffers so that an underrun doesn't happen. Very simple.

 

How does the audio get into memory? Could be already in memory as a RAM filesystem, could be read from a serial filesystem or could be in memory as a memory mapped filesystem etc. In most cases an OS process will read the audio into a buffer and the music player simply needs to move the data from the read buffers into the ALSA buffers. This could be done with a FIFO buffer.

 

This is really simple and there is no need for all the GUI gunk that involves selecting a playlist etc ... I think in both cases wtfplay as well as NAA eliminate all this extraneous GUI. Of course there are a few details about how these things should be handled, for example the ALSA driver sending interrupts to the player process to feed it more data, or the player could poll etc.

 

Now ... hmmm ... MPD has gotten waaay too complicated for this simple function (IMHO) so yes I agree that there a need for a refactored and simplified music player.

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1 hour ago, sandyk said:

Neither are my system or Teresa's system for that matter, capable of doing this .

 

You ought not speak for @Teresa, she is very articulate and has spoken well for herself. I believe she has spoken of an affinity for SACD for example. No one need do what I personally do and if cost constraints are an issue I have often posted of cost effective approaches including Raspberry Pi. In other cases simplicity is paramount. To each his or her own. 

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 Most people do not need, or want, the added complexity and cost of implementing this kind of thing with numerous settings in Software , with no setting that appears to give a universally accepted best quality. This is exactly why I originally rejected Peter's generous offer of a free copy of XXHE some years ago, with numerous program updates.

Yes I get the point that you have an active distaste for software and the use of software under any circumstances—and networks. You have endlessly posted about the evils done both by software and networks to your precious bits. 

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7 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

I'm not sure what you are saying my system is not capable of, if it's software upsampling I can't do that as I use a very basic player for DSD and PCM downloads, the Teac HR audio player.

 

There are different ways of doing things and I entirely respect the real value of simplicity.

 

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OTOH I do hardware upsampling. My Teac DAC's maximum PCM upsample rate is 192kHz PCM, I often wonder if I would enjoy PCM music files better if the Teac DAC upsampled to DSD instead. 

 

The Teac DAC does convert internally to something like DSD (perhaps multibit SDM). This is the crux of the issue.

 

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Add me to your list, I prefer finished audio products that I can plug in and enjoy my music. Also I don't know enough nor have the desire to learn how to DIY.

 

You should not need to DIY! There are those of us who have fun on the bleeding edge, but I also understand the real value of "push a button and listen"

 

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You are correct I prefer SACDs and DSD music files over PCM. Although I am impressed with high resolution PCM downloads from Chesky and Reference Recordings and a few others I can't think of right now.

 

Exactly. I like to acquire music in whatever format is closest to how it was recorded and mastered, most likely HD. For old tapes such as Coltrane etc, then a DSD transfer is also what I prefer. 

 

That said, I have been very impressed with the ability of DSD upsampling to drastically reduce the difference between HD and CD. So much so that I can't tell if the HD is better because of better mastering. For example acousticsounds.com / analogue productions or hdtapetransfers -- no need to upsample a DSD256 tape transfer!

 

It's too bad that SACD was crippled with DRM, likewise Blu-ray audio (HD PCM), but we have downloads so not all is lost. For the huge catalog of CD, upsampling is really great, yet at the cost of fiddling with computers and software etc etc etc. There is no one right answer. I tolerate command line and fiddling to set things up, but when I am listening I like an intuitive GUI. I use Roon's GUI and HQPlayer under the hood for its sound (filters and modulators). I also appreciate open source but ...hmm ... DLNA just isn't so easy to use, nor sounds so good for me.

 

You know the old iTunes and iPod was what got me to rip my CD collection to disc, but it doesn't do DSD/DSF nor FLAC ... so I think there is a big market for people like yourself who don't want to fiddle with software and just want it to work (iTunes) but not compromise on sound (support DSD/FLAC) so IDK keep using what works, or perhaps try Roon?

 

(The Linux community really needs to support people like @Teresa better)