Audirvana Studio

[bodiebill]

Opaque, buggy, unelegant UI.

Greedy short term business model

Hardly any meaningful development -- which would require an active dialogue (seemingly virtually absent) between user base and the developer.

 

I wish it would not sound so good; then I could forget about it.

[bodiebill]

11 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Precisely the opposite, I would think. Trying to keep a product going with one-time sales to a small but competitive niche market doesn't seem likely to succeed over the long haul, thus the subscription model.

 

But of course we can kibitz all we want. It's Damien's decision, with which we're all free to agree or disagree.

 

I agree. What I meant with short term is not the subscription model -- which I have no problems with, and is long term by definition -- but the lack of support and dialogue with the user base which seems incomaptible with a successful longer term business model.

[bodiebill]

31 minutes ago, BassFace said:

Is anyone still getting Audirvana crashes?    Mine seems to randomly crash at the end of an album or if I stop a track and select another track.   It was doing it a lot since I started my trial although it isn't doing it so much since the latest 1.3 update but it is still doing it.   Other than that everything else seems to work great for me using Tidal and Qobuz.

 

Same here. Some tracks hang, others do not, regardless of format. It may have to do with audio analysis, or with exclusive use that makes a file unavailable fior playback. I also had this problem when, for comparison, I switched from A+ 3.5 to AS after fully closing down the former.

[bodiebill]

17 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Who is the greedy one, people who want to pay one time and get support and updates forever, or someone who wants to be paid only if the customer continues to use and like the product?

 

See:

 

[bodiebill]

What a mess! I followed the uninstall and install instructions for Windows, and now I am unable to play anything anymore. Getting the message "Unable to change to Integer Mode". Any advice?

[bodiebill]

1 minute ago, bodiebill said:

What a mess! I followed the uninstall and install instructions for Windows, and now I am unable to play anything anymore. Getting the message "Unable to change to Integer Mode". Any advice?

 

Solved, sorry!

[bodiebill]

3 hours ago, Jud said:

For most of the people experiencing problems, a second restart seems to solve them. Don’t know if that’s what you did.

 

I feel a bit stupid: I had to select the renderer anew. :-|

[bodiebill]

My trial ended today (after an extension). I am not going to subscribe as everything feels wrong about AS as a player apart from the sound, which is the best I have had when convicted to using the network.

However, its SQ is easily bettered by a network-free setup with a NUC and wtfplay so I am going that route for serious listening (I even ordered a stand alone player), and will continue to use JRiver for browsing or casual listening via the network.

[bodiebill]

Just received an email that my previous Audirvana Studio trial (some months old) is reactivated until Dec 28th so that I can try all the improvements that have been implemented in the mean time. No luxury, given that at that time the SW weas totally unreliable and unusable, which made me decide not to subscribe.

 

So now I reinstalled it and gave it another try.

 

Streaming to Moode on a Pi2AES, the music starts but after 10 to 15 seconds is buried in ear deafening noise. Due to previous experience my stamina with this SW is reduced to nil, but maybe someone knows a remedy?

[bodiebill]

On 12/10/2021 at 7:58 PM, bodiebill said:

Just received an email that my previous Audirvana Studio trial (some months old) is reactivated until Dec 28th so that I can try all the improvements that have been implemented in the mean time. No luxury, given that at that time the SW weas totally unreliable and unusable, which made me decide not to subscribe.

 

So now I reinstalled it and gave it another try.

 

Streaming to Moode on a Pi2AES, the music starts but after 10 to 15 seconds is buried in ear deafening noise. Due to previous experience my stamina with this SW is reduced to nil, but maybe someone knows a remedy?

 

Nobody responded. Maybe a sign that people are giving up and start to get used that so many things are not working or buggy with this SW?

 

The problem remains, but lately less frequent. When I manage to play an almost complete song, the  next problem occurs: the song breaks of 30 to 15 seconds before the end; sometimes there is silence, sometimes a loud hiss, sometimes the same track starts again, and sometimes the next song abruptly starts.

 

Are there any known incompatibility issues streaming UPnP from AS to Moode?

[bodiebill]

2 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

you can read does threads here n Audirvana forum, just typed moode and only read the first three results, might get some answers with first three 😀

 

https://community.audirvana.com/search?context=topic&context_id=31014&q=Moode&skip_context=true

 

Thanks. I already read most of these posts but found no solution to my problem, nor a confirmation of incompatibility.

[bodiebill]

Trying out AS again in a setup with Hang Loose Convolver and DLNA into an SOtM sMS-200ultra Neo. I signed up for one month (after several frustrating trials in the last 5 years or so) to see how it goes.

 

Question: why does it say 'Analyzing Audio Files' top right when I have deactivated Metadata Recovery?

[bodiebill]

3 minutes ago, Dandou said:

I believe that AS does it in, order to use the metadata gathered from MusicBrainz to enhance your user experience when you use Qobuz or Tidal by suggesting you artists and albums to listen to.

 

I cringe from such behavior. Especially as I do not use the commercial album format for jazz or classical (80% of my library). A lot of cpu power for nothing and unreliable results...

[bodiebill]

5 minutes ago, Dandou said:

MusicBrainz will not be able to identify these albums, and it will not attribute to them its ID tag, despite the fingerprinting of all your music files. 

 

That makes sense. But what do you mean by 'fingerprinting'?

[bodiebill]

4 minutes ago, Dandou said:

The analysis by AS is a process that is called fingerprinting. It scans the sound of the tracks of each album, and sends it to the servers of MusicBrainz. The server of MusicBrainz is supposed to identify the album (which release, which reissue) by the uniqueness of the scan of the sound of the tracks. (It's a bit like the identification process of Shazam.) 

 

This technology is also used by MusicBrainz Picard (and other taggers) to tag albums without any input by the user. 

Here's a screenshot of Picard and its button to launch the scan of the tracks of an album that I loaded to it. (In this case, I loaded  tracks that were already tagged. But if I click "scan", Picard won't read the metadata. It will identify the album, and its precise reissue, by fingerprinting its tracks.) 

 

Thanks for the clear explanation!

 

I still wonder though what AS is NOT doing when I deactivate metadata retrieval. And what it IS doing that requires these fingerprints.

[bodiebill]

On 2/21/2022 at 11:39 PM, JSeymour said:

Even with MusicBrainz metadata turned off AS still analyzes your local files once.  So its one long analysis when you first point AS to your local library and then a very quick analysis when you add an album.  It would be nice if it never did it.

 

Here the first analysis took approx. two days for a 4TB library: the syncing bar top right filled up blue and finally disappeared, which was quite a relief. However, after restarting the PC and AS the next day, the syncing commenced again and looking at the blue bar it looks like it is going to take another two days. And that when hardly anything changed in my library since the first scan.

 

Please, please, please, give us more control of these activities. I am interested in SQ and this flawed database/syncing functionality to me is just a nuisance without any added value (as I only use folder browsing).

I know... probably another cry in the wilderness...

[bodiebill]

9 minutes ago, Dandou said:

Strange… Following my previous experience with AS, the analysis should be much much longueur than two days for a 4TB library. 

Last time I tried it, it took it more than 24 hours to analyze about 200-250 ISO SACD albums. 

 

Maybe it depends on the horse power of the specific PC?

[bodiebill]

Maybe it went faster in my case as hardly any albums were recognized by MusicBrainz.

In my case a jazz 'album' is actually a session, i.e. recorded on one day with one line-up.

And for classical it is a specific performance of one work.

I use the commercial album format only for popular music (approx. 20% of my library).

I do not maintain tags manually. They are calculated (in JRiver) from folder and file names.

 

And correction: the second sync just finished, in 'only' half a day.

[bodiebill]

9 hours ago, Dandou said:

Maybe you have a library of 4TB, but with few, very heavy Hi Res files? 

 

To be precise:

3.6TB of music files of which 700GB is DSD compressed as wavpack (not readable by AS) and 800GB hires PCM (88.2 and above).

 

Day 3: no sync activity detected, happy to say!

[bodiebill]

I know I have been nagging a bit here, frustrated by quite a few aspects of AS, but on a positive note:

 

The sound is great when it works. And I finally succeeded streaming Qobuz files with convolution applied via UPnP using @mitchco's Hang Loose Convolver (HLC) as VST3 plugin in AS. Alas I cannot use most of the main features of HLC (realtime operation, simultaneous player and convolver windows, monitoring for clipping etc.) when streaming to UPnP in this way, but being able to apply room correction to Qobuz files is really nice. I am still in my trial period for HLC. Does anyone know of a good free VST3 plugin to do the same? 

[bodiebill]

28 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

you can try here, free, Mac and PC

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_TripleEQ/

https://sonimus.com/products/soneq

 

Thanks. However I do not think that these plugins can load Acourate correction files in wav format.

I installed the Blue Cat plugin and AS lists it under 'Processing', but when I choose 'Configure' there is just a black screen.

[bodiebill]

46 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Could just spend $129 to get a really nice one with support. 

https://accuratesound.ca

 

I am using this (Hang Loose Convolver) now -- on trial for 2 weeks. Very good SW, well thought out. Great support from @mitchco! There was one minor hiccup which Mitch recognized and will solve in the next release soon. I consider to continue using it even if its unique selling points (such as standalone use with buffer settings, realtime comparison of filters, parallel HLC & player windows and monitoring for clipping) are not working for me -- not due to any shortcoming of the SW but unavoidable because I use UPnP.

Best convolution plugin I came accross so far.

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, alandbush said:

MConvolutionEZ

It is described as a reverb but it will accept .wav convolution files and apply as appropriate.

 

Thanks, this one seems to work well. However, I have not found a way yet to use multiple files:

 

The beauty of Hang Loose Convolver is that you can zip them and the program will switch between them based on the resolution of the source file.

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, alandbush said:

Select the 'Toolbar' which should expand and provide a 'A-H' comparison grid.

Select a letter, then select a convolution file.  Repeat as appropriate.  You can now simply compare convolution files.

 

If I am not mistaken, this is to switch manually from one filter to another for comparison. However I need automatic switching based on the source files' frequency.

[bodiebill]

On 2/25/2022 at 6:38 PM, bodiebill said:

If I am not mistaken, this is to switch manually from one filter to another for comparison. However I need automatic switching based on the source files' frequency.

 

Although I did not find it documented anywhere, it now appears that MConvolutionEZ does handle multiple frequencies. When I select the 44.1 filter (see screenshot above) -- and with the correction files for the other frequencies residing in the same folder -- it also convolves higher reaolution files, at least judging from the audible result. Alas for files with resolution above 96 there are frequent clicks and pops.