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Subjective comparison of Software Music Player


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3 hours ago, nonsynchro said:

What a great comparison.

I'm digging Jukebox 2112. I like its interface, the album artwork is wide form taking up half of the screen. It looks really good. I'm in the process of finding images on the net to replace the usual square jpegs. The player has inbuilt equalizer, replay gain and many more customisable settings. And it has VU meters!

N.B. it's not free at $20. I'm not affiliated, but I am a very happy user.

I'd love to know what you think of the audio quality. 

does it support native dsd?

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I am curious what others may think of resonic...quick and easy and VERY FAST especially switching in middle of songs...the thing i like about it is that it will show let you browse by your own file structure (something roon lacks).  download it and it works right out of the box, supports dsd, and you can be up and running as fast as you can download it...check it out.

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1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

thanks for your knowledge on wtfplay....can you confirm when you say no networking, so you have to have your music stored locally?  Also, you can't control it from remote node? (both local storage and command line interface only option of playing?)

It supports usb drives in fat32, NTFS and ext4 formats. No networking, so no remote control though you could use a wireless USB keyboard I suppose.

 

Regarding resonic. It is also based on BASS audio library similar to winyl and music bee. I tried it for a while, but since asio is not supported for the free version I couldn't make proper comparisons, though I remember it being similar to winyl, musicbee, etc as expected. My friend who has owned resonic ranked this way. A well set up musicbee > resonic > winyl. However take note that the differences are quite small and changing buffer settings could make them identical. The differences are a lot more profound swapping to an entirely different code stack/library like hysolid or wtfplay.

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3 hours ago, Norton said:


You should also add Bug Head Emperor and XXHE to your list, both of which I’d put in the top tier of players although neither really aimed at simple replay of files, “as is”.

 

The former requires a powerful PC with lots of the right memory, plus a Zen-ike approach to even finding the download (although there is no charge still I think) let alone setup and operation (think secret menus, gnomic-named routines etc) A calm acceptance that music may simply not actually play 50% of the time is also needed, but I’m sure if you consider the cherry blossom long enough you will find the path to audio enlightenment.  It does sound good, but on my “life’s to short to..” list

 

 The latter is excellent but can seem daunting at first and it’s ideal use case is serious PCM upsampling via minimised OS into a NOS DAC (ie Phasure’s own) although it sounds great into my Oppo205 at 768 too. PeterSt  the developer is on this forum.  

I havent tried XXhighEnd but I have tried bughead emperor and minority clean. I refrained from adding that to the comparsion since it is quite a hard to find/use software.

 

I liked minorityclean in conjection with winyl, but the difference was minor, mostly in sustain texture. The time requirements for bughead emperor wasn't cutting well with me, and unfortunately I didn't hear sound that Blew me away. Though they may have been better and I just got frustrated enough to not bother. They certainly didn't blow me away the way hysolid or wtfplay did but then again these can be system dependant.

 

This post was only an analysis from my point of view and I have ignored a few players I have tried that seemed too much hassle or dealbreakers like not having an asio plugin etc. I would be really happy if people take the template and improve with their opinions of these other players and more, and even more so another article for realtime network streaming players etc. Not to mention certain aberrations can swing in different ways in different systems. The same buffer underrun problem from winyl that caused harshness in my and few of my friends dacs like apogee groove, nx4, etc., it caused an artifical rounding/softening sensation in my friends system that had dangerous convert 2. And a few other players like jriver and roon which sounded rounded off to me sounded sharper to him. The aberration, based on its type can manifest in different ways in different systems. If it is just noise floor modulation or something of that sort due to noise from CPU or anything making its way through the system to the dac, the effect will be same on all dacs. And that effect is there on most systems no doubt. However the above example shows that there is some other error that is more across data integrity based that might manifest in different ways in different systems. Buffer underrun I mentioned is one example. This is why I also described the test setup including the laptop used. Even memory types can make a difference apparently. Of course in all cases, a fairly transparent one would be unanimously found easily due to lack of any noticeable aberrations, in my case wtfplay is closer to that ideal. I will try xx high end sometime, especially if i get access to a good cable and dac that can convey 768khz information properly.

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5 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

It supports usb drives in fat32, NTFS and ext4 formats. No networking, so no remote control though you could use a wireless USB keyboard I suppose.

 

Regarding resonic. It is also based on BASS audio library similar to winyl and music bee. I tried it for a while, but since asio is not supported for the free version I couldn't make proper comparisons, though I remember it being similar to winyl, musicbee, etc as expected. My friend who has owned resonic ranked this way. A well set up musicbee > resonic > winyl. However take note that the differences are quite small and changing buffer settings could make them identical. The differences are a lot more profound swapping to an entirely different code stack/library like hysolid or wtfplay.

I liked resonic, so i decided to give musicbee a shot based on the recommendation...i never thought i would try a program called "music bee" simply by the name (grin)...but i was quite surprised with how fast and easy it was.  I did install a upnp plugin and it immediately saw my streamer.  I literally had everything working within 3 minutes...this is how all programs should work!  Its fast switching, has good bass punch, and nice simple and easy interface.....I will play with it some more, but right now i really like what i am seeing!!   It also supported high res dsd with no configuration changes necessary (that was a first for me)  thanks...

 

one thing i noted though that playing either a DSD64, DSD128, or DSD 256 it says 88.2K...not sure what that is about?

 

the top line is the name i gave to the track...the bottom line is what the software is reporting when playing????

 

 

 

image.png.9b8ae077e9d8460d0857a895770ac3a7.png

image.png.af30b5e994567a7a75f9d9dd1179f06f.png

image.png.b33c66a28a31a0db7d9ca1cf50c8a027.png

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

I liked resonic, so i decided to give musicbee a shot based on the recommendation...i never thought i would try a program called "music bee" simply by the name (grin)...but i was quite surprised with how fast and easy it was.  I did install a upnp plugin and it immediately saw my streamer.  I literally had everything working within 3 minutes...this is how all programs should work!  Its fast switching, has good bass punch, and nice simple and easy interface.....I will play with it some more, but right now i really like what i am seeing!!   It also supported high res dsd with no configuration changes necessary (that was a first for me)  thanks...

 

one thing i noted though that playing either a DSD64, DSD128, or DSD 256 it says 88.2K...not sure what that is about?

 

the top line is the name i gave to the track...the bottom line is what the software is reporting when playing????

 

 

 

image.png.9b8ae077e9d8460d0857a895770ac3a7.png

image.png.af30b5e994567a7a75f9d9dd1179f06f.png

image.png.b33c66a28a31a0db7d9ca1cf50c8a027.png

 

 

 

bump for miska?  do you have any idea what would cause it to report 88.2 khz  and even the 2nd figure is incorrect?  (e.g. 22579k for a dsd256 file)???

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16 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

It's a windows Store app right? I came across this but sidelined it since it was paid.

Yes Windows Store. It's $30 now. Pretty sure it came with a free trial period.

 

13 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

does it support native dsd?

Haven't looked into that.

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17 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

thanks for your knowledge on wtfplay....can you confirm when you say no networking, so you have to have your music stored locally?  Also, you can't control it from remote node? (both local storage and command line interface only option of playing?)

Yes you have to have your music on a drive in or attached to the PC you’ve booted with wtfplay.  No networking, so no remote (unless you count a wireless keyboard).

 

I’ve tended to use it mostly for RBCD to date, but tried it for the first time yesterday with  native DSD 256 into my Oppo 205 and was blown away by: a. the fact that it just worked (native DSD via Linux) and b. the SQ - an intense, detailed,  “edge of your seat” rendition that I’ve not  heard before with these files.

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1 hour ago, Norton said:

Yes you have to have your music on a drive in or attached to the PC you’ve booted with wtfplay.  No networking, so no remote (unless you count a wireless keyboard).

 

I’ve tended to use it mostly for RBCD to date, but tried it for the first time yesterday with  native DSD 256 into my Oppo 205 and was blown away by: a. the fact that it just worked (native DSD via Linux) and b. the SQ - an intense, detailed,  “edge of your seat” rendition that I’ve not  heard before with these files.

 

It might be wtf was giving the best sound in my system. I was able to access files on drives attached to my mac mini. Two reasons I not use it anymore: a) I was not able to control volume within the app, which was critical, because I was using DACs without volume control and any external volume control hardware led to SQ degradation; b) I was not able to connect mini with wtf to NAA endpoint.

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3 hours ago, Norton said:

Yes you have to have your music on a drive in or attached to the PC you’ve booted with wtfplay.  No networking, so no remote (unless you count a wireless keyboard).

 

I’ve tended to use it mostly for RBCD to date, but tried it for the first time yesterday with  native DSD 256 into my Oppo 205 and was blown away by: a. the fact that it just worked (native DSD via Linux) and b. the SQ - an intense, detailed,  “edge of your seat” rendition that I’ve not  heard before with these files.

do they have a command where you can play a play list or all files in one directory ?  if so, it may be worth the effort to set up, but if you have to issue a command to play every song, that sounds a bit tedious and not worth the time.

 

i remember trying jplay and if i remember, it was command line driven too, and sounded phenomenal...

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2 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

do they have a command where you can play a play list or all files in one directory ?  if so, it may be worth the effort to set up, but if you have to issue a command to play every song, that sounds a bit tedious and not worth the time.

 

i remember trying jplay and if i remember, it was command line driven too, and sounded phenomenal...

 

They do

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3 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

do they have a command where you can play a play list or all files in one directory ?  if so, it may be worth the effort to set up, but if you have to issue a command to play every song, that sounds a bit tedious and not worth the time.

 

i remember trying jplay and if i remember, it was command line driven too, and sounded phenomenal...


It has a keyboard- based UI where you can build a playlist  without needing command line.  I find it’s actually quicker to use than a GUI.

 

It’s so simple and well documented that I went from finding  the download to playing music in about 15 mins and there’s no charge, so my advice is just try it.

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I think the word command line puts off many people as hard to use. The reality is that it is just as easy to use as mouse interaction and often way quicker and far more automatable and rule customizable. Once you go command line, you'd want to do it for almost any task except the ones where you really need tracking. Also the auto fill commands/shortcuts are just as robust so what would take multiple clicks and navigation in a custom mouse interaction would be just a few tab button presses in command line.

 

Also one more thing about wtfplay is that it doesn't have any write permissions. The OS usage corrupting your data should be in the last of worries when using wtfplay.

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On 5/5/2020 at 9:34 PM, manueljenkin said:

I think the word command line puts off many people as hard to use. The reality is that it is just as easy to use as mouse interaction and often way quicker and far more automatable and rule customizable. Once you go command line, you'd want to do it for almost any task except the ones where you really need tracking. Also the auto fill commands/shortcuts are just as robust so what would take multiple clicks and navigation in a custom mouse interaction would be just a few tab button presses in command line.

 

Also one more thing about wtfplay is that it doesn't have any write permissions. The OS usage corrupting your data should be in the last of worries when using wtfplay.

Have you tried any 'cloud players' that play files from Google Drive?

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On 5/3/2020 at 10:24 PM, sandyk said:

 

I found that JRiver 26 had a steep learning curve. :$You also need to enable it to play from  System Memory.

 However, JRiver 26 can do many other things including conversion of Video formats which may save you from needing other paid software.

JRiver has always had a steep learning curve, and has been very arcane with essentially no help from JRiver’s creators. That’s why I stopped using it. As annoying and low-Fi as iTunes was, at least it was fairly intuitive and easy for just about anyone to use.

George

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1 hour ago, jabbr said:

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. 

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

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