A toast to PGGB, a heady brew of math and magic

[austinpop]

55 minutes ago, mrkoven said:

if what @austinpop mentioned proves true (wavpack lowers SQ a bit) then thats unfortunate.

 

I really would like people to test this themselves! Your perception may be different than mine. Plus, some may be fine with a smidge reduction in SQ for 3x less storage. One size (pun intended!) does not fit all.

[Fourlegs]

1 hour ago, austinpop said:

 

I really would like people to test this themselves! Your perception may be different than mine. Plus, some may be fine with a smidge reduction in SQ for 3x less storage. One size (pun intended!) does not fit all.

I will try today!

 

if my ears tell me right, I am in any case hearing better sound quality with my MPD playback instead of what you use so even if there is a slight trade off with wavpack it might be less noticeable. just kiddin’ 🤪

[austinpop]

45 minutes ago, Fourlegs said:

I will try today!

 

if my ears tell me right, I am in any case hearing better sound quality with my MPD playback instead of what you use so even if there is a slight trade off with wavpack it might be less noticeable. just kiddin’ 🤪

Yeah, every platform is different, with different trade offs and options. The K50 and Extreme are very different beasts. Curious to know what you hear.

[Fourlegs]

I have found that on a mac the easiest and quickest way to update PGGB to a later version is to rename the existing 'remastero' folder in Applications (I merely add the revision number of the existing version to 'remastero' so I can keep track of past versions). Leave the Matlab folder untouched. Then launch the new version installer. The installation of the new version happens too fast for me to time it. Job done.

[Progisus]

 

6 hours ago, Fourlegs said:

I will try today!

 

if my ears tell me right, I am in any case hearing better sound quality with my MPD playback instead of what you use so even if there is a slight trade off with wavpack it might be less noticeable. just kiddin’ 🤪

What are you using as a controller for your MPD? Rigelian is mine.

[Fourlegs]

1 minute ago, mancolh said:

 

What are you using as a controller for your MPD? Rigelian is mine.

I use Mconnect. I have not been able to get Rigelian to work because it does not support UPnP on my server in the Antipodes (or at least that is what the Rigelian developer had told me).

[Progisus]

22 minutes ago, Fourlegs said:

I use Mconnect. I have not been able to get Rigelian to work because it does not support UPnP on my server in the Antipodes (or at least that is what the Rigelian developer had told me).

You must be running a dlna server on your antipodes as mconnect cannot see my library. Audirvana works well also. Unfortunately it means my library is on the Audirvana host and then streamed to the EX. The beauty of MPD on the EX and files on the EX is they never leave the EX when being played. I am going to experiment some more with the HQPlayer embedded on the EX. Audirvana also plays to it.

[ASRMichael]

I’m up & running after the following purchases. 
 

Home PC to convert files:
 

- 64gb of memory 

- 4TB M.2 Storage 

- Full PGGB license 

 

Audio Server:

 

- Extra 8gb Apacer RAM for audio server running Euphony, enables me to buffer full upsampled albums. 

 

Started converting my 320gb library, 50% converted in last 24 hours. 
 

PGGB upsampling on my system is absolutely stunning. I appreciate system dependent. I’m clearly one of the lucky ones. 
 

I encourage anyone who has not trialled PGGB to go and do so. You might be lucky like me. 
 

I want to now sit back and cherish the improvements. Then I’ll try the convolution. 
 

Thanks again to everyone involved! 

[ＪｎＬ]

Can PGGB fix and restore loudness war music? or at least improve the audio once processed??

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

45 minutes ago, ＪｎＬ said:

Can PGGB fix and restore loudness war music? or at least improve the audio once processed??

No PGGB does not, it is nearly impossible to reverse the effect of dynamic range compression. There are ways to improve though and something i may consider in the future.

[ＪｎＬ]

21 minutes ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

No PGGB does not, it is nearly impossible to reverse the effect of dynamic range compression. There are ways to improve though and something i may consider in the future.

Or any distortion related caused by the same?? Also can do that? I can't hear Death Magnetic too well, not even from Mastered for iTunes Hi-Res :/

[auricgoldfinger]

3 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

I’m up & running after the following purchases. 
 

Home PC to convert files:
 

- 64gb of memory 

- 4TB M.2 Storage 

- Full PGGB license 

 

Audio Server:

 

- Extra 8gb Apacer RAM for audio server running Euphony, enables me to buffer full upsampled albums. 

 

Started converting my 320gb library, 50% converted in last 24 hours. 
 

PGGB upsampling on my system is absolutely stunning. I appreciate system dependent. I’m clearly one of the lucky ones. 
 

I encourage anyone who has not trialled PGGB to go and do so. You might be lucky like me. 
 

I want to now sit back and cherish the improvements. Then I’ll try the convolution. 
 

Thanks again to everyone involved! 

 

Are you experiencing any playback hiccups between your NAS and music server?

[ASRMichael]

4 hours ago, auricgoldfinger said:

 

Are you experiencing any playback hiccups between your NAS and music server?

Hi. No, not so far. Are you?

[auricgoldfinger]

2 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

Hi. No, not so far. Are you?

 

Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to even try yet.  A series circumstances outside my control have kept me from getting my system set up since moving at the end of 2020.  Hopefully, I'll get a chance in the next month.  I really miss listening to music.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

4 hours ago, ＪｎＬ said:

Or any distortion related caused by the same?? Also can do that? I can't hear Death Magnetic too well, not even from Mastered for iTunes Hi-Res :/

There are some (badly mastered) recordings that can benefit, but due to the subjective nature, I cannot make an assertion, it is best to try with tracks you listen to. 

 

 

[atxkyle]

Downloaded PGGB today and emailed for a trial license (thanks @Zaphod Beeblebrox!)

 

I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to use it on my Windows PC, which is several years old and only supports 16GB of RAM, with an elder-generation quad-core i5. For 44.1khz files up sampled to 705/768 and 32 bits it worked like a charm on my hardware! 3-5 minutes to process a standard length track. I did assign the specified 128GB virtual memory on a fast SSD. 

 

I’m sure it runs much faster on a higher-power PC, but if you’re in the same boat as me and limited to 16GB RAM, don’t let that hold you back from trying it! With my system and my ears, it’s a fantastic SQ improvement.

 

[ASRMichael]

Converted DSD files with PGGB is magical, defies belief.....Been listening to all my DSD rips today... well converted to PCM. 🤪 

[Gavin1977]

On 4/17/2021 at 10:18 PM, bobfa said:

8. I have found that the results with the three Chord DACs I have is rather impressive.

Hi Bob - are you able to write some more about your impressions for each Chord DAC with PGGB?

 

I’m going to see if I can run PGGB tomorrow to generate some files for my Chord Qutest.  I used to run T+A DAC 8 DSD with HQPlayer.  USB to qutest sounded ok, but it wasn’t until I bypassed USB and went down the spdif/toslink route that the qutest performed better (I’m 100% behind the recommendation for the Opto-DX).  Even red book sounds better than the T+A & HQPlayer on the Qutest once you ditch USB.

 

Looking forward to see what PGGB brings - I might be back in the upsampling game again!

 

I am also relatively unique in that I currently have two SOTA PCIe cards to compare the outputs through (JCAT USB XE + Sablon vs Pink Faun Ultra clock Spdif/toslink).

[bobfa]

I have not had any time to do comparisons or write anything.  I need to update my music server with some new software and see what that does first.  It will be a couple of weeks before I can even think about this.

 

 

[kennyb123]

6 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Converted DSD files with PGGB is magical, defies belief.....Been listening to all my DSD rips today... well converted to PCM. 🤪 

It’s really astonishing, isn’t it?  That was the biggest surprise to me.

[atxkyle]

Hey @Zaphod Beeblebrox - I just told my kids that I 'garble-blasted' a song for them... is 'garble-blast' the appropriate verb?? Feel like it rolls off the toungue a little easier than 'PGGB'd' 😃

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

19 minutes ago, atxkyle said:

Hey @Zaphod Beeblebrox - I just told my kids that I 'garble-blasted' a song for them... is 'garble-blast' the appropriate verb?? Feel like it rolls off the toungue a little easier than 'PGGB'd' 😃

I like that! From here on we will gargle-blast tunes.

 

This is the way!

 

 

 

[JohnA]

Hi guys

Say I want to upscale a 300Mb flac from a cd to 16fs (the max my Dave can ingest)

Would PGGB provide different options for this conversion? say 16M or 16B taps?

If so, roughly what sort of file sizes are we talking about after the conversion?

 

I had an MScaler with a QuTest for a few weeks and couldn't hear any difference with any of its upscaling levels, so I'm hoping PGGB might work better, if it is practical for me of course.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

12 minutes ago, JohnA said:

Hi guys

Say I want to upscale a 300Mb flac from a cd to 16fs (the max my Dave can ingest)

Would PGGB provide different options for this conversion? say 16M or 16B taps?

If so, roughly what sort of file sizes are we talking about after the conversion?

 

I had an MScaler with a QuTest for a few weeks and couldn't hear any difference with any of its upscaling levels, so I'm hoping PGGB might work better, if it is practical for me of course.

Yes you can choose the maximum number of taps to use for your track, but the number of taps has no bearing on the file size. The output file size is determined by the 16FS output rate and bit depth.

 

At 16FS 32bit output, you can expect every three minutes of track length to occupy 1Gb of disk space uncompressed. If you use wavpack compression, you can reduce that to about 330Mb for every 3 minutes. FLAC does not support 16FS rates

[JohnA]

Thanks ZB

 

In real life, does it really sound any different 24bit vs 32bit?

I understand that even 24bit depth is rather optimistic with consumer electronics