Audirvana Studio

[bnbayer]

3 hours ago, jimdukey said:

When I play a File, I already know who is playing and what they are playing.

And how do you find that file? If you search, you're searching metadata. If you sort your lists, the sort is based on the metadata. I may know what I want the player to play, and who I want to play it, but if the metadata is inconsistent I won't be able to find it and select it to play. 

[bnbayer]

10 minutes ago, bobbmd said:

I don't even know where my license key is anymore.

My key came in an email from Avangate ([email protected]), entitled "Your order on www.audirvana.com: Product and payment information". (This was from my upgrade to 3.5 from 3.0).

[bnbayer]

There's no reason for Audirvana to have a Canadian price, or any other currency but their own. Our credit cards can deal with the exchange. They take a cut, of course (it's business), but they'll charge $20 less than the Audirvana price. And Audirvana won't have to worry about currency fluctuations.

 

They should have a VAT-free price for export markets.

[bnbayer]

10 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

It took so long for the list to populate that I didn't think anything was happening even though something was, so it must have been a resource issue

Possibly related to the on-going analysing? Even if it isn't writing MusicBrainzID tags to your files, perhaps the analysis is building Audirvana's own library file, and that's where it looks when populating smart playlists?

[bnbayer]

13 minutes ago, Mike Rubin said:

Could well be.  For the record, the population did vary by playlist size and it generally became quicker as I went along. (I recreated 23 smart playlists of wildly different sizes by "contains" track title, album title, album artist, or file type.

Certainly on 3.5, you can edit things like titles and artists in the files, and A+ won't have them until you re-sync or restart. Can you imagine a playlist having to look into 100,000 separate files, find the Album Artist field in each one, and then search it for Igor Kumquat or whomever? I'm sure these parts of metadata are stored in Audirvana's own db for these purposes, and the initial analysis is building that db. Studio may let us search, sort, or make smart playlists on more fields than 3.5 did, so AS is building brand-new libraries from scratch.

[bnbayer]

3 hours ago, lucretius said:

Unfortunately, my trial ends tomorrow.

Isn't there a 14-day extension available?

[bnbayer]

8 minutes ago, lucretius said:

How do you get this extension?

There was a message here...  Scroll back up page 35 to Saturday at 2:27am (that's what it is on my computer, anyway). Just an email to support, apparently.

[bnbayer]

Can Studio and A+3.5 both be installed on the same computer? Or does the computer see Studio as an update to the same app?

[bnbayer]

Studio hasn't successfully played my DSD256 files. They start (and sound great!), but then you get a short drop-out. Then another. Then a longer one. Then it stops altogether - actually, the counter says it's still playing, but no sound comes out. If you don't stop it, sound may appear again - briefly - after a few minutes, but quickly stops again.

 

2014 iMac Intel i5, 8 GB (about 6 for buffering in Studio). Local files, wired Ethernet, no other apps running.

[bnbayer]

1 hour ago, Russell_L said:

This used to happen with me regularly with 3.5, but after reducing the "Max memory allocated for tracks pre-load" (in Preferences) to about 3000 MB, the drop-outs went away.  (I had previously set this much higher but the dropouts still occurred; seems counterintuitive that a lower setting would work better.)  This setting carried over to AS when I installed it, so my DSD25 files still play without hiccups.

Reducing the buffer to 1.2GB helped a lot, but I still get some drop-outs. A couple of tracks played with none, other tracks had only one or two short ones - no brain-freezes at least! (I recall having something similar with a large DXD file in 3.5 - I suspect it's the size of the file rather than the DSD256 that's the problem. I'll try that DXD recording again when I have the chance.)

[bnbayer]

The setting for METADATA RECOVERY says "You can define how the recovered metadata are used."

 

This isn't really true: you can choose not to have the Musicbrainz ID saved in your file, but you cannot choose whether or not to use it. Studio is still adding "recovered" metadata to the already-correct-and-complete metadata in my files.

 

PLEASE DON'T "RECOVER" ANYTHING! The conductor of that last piece was NOT "Sir Simon Rattle, Simon Rattle". Once is really enough for his name, and the honorific is not required for the db listing.

[bnbayer]

I also see that Musicnobrainz ID data is being used to add a release date when you choose to see metadata. This would be nice, if it were accurate. It generally is not.

 

The last disc I looked at says release date was 31 December 2019. It actually wasn't even recorded until January 2020, with a release date early in 2021. The disc before also says release date 31 Dec 2019. It was actually recorded on 15 March 2020, and released last week.

 

Please let users turn off all uses of external data. Completely.

[bnbayer]

I'm curious if anyone here who does NOT live in the USA, sees the price for Studio on Audirvana.com in US Dollars.

 

The price announced at launch was USD $69.99, or USD $49.99 for registered users of 3.5 - Is that what you see here? https://audirvana.com/subscribe/

 

 

[bnbayer]

18 hours ago, audiobomber said:

For Canada, Studio Access $106.99 for 12 months Studio Classic $10.99 monthly, plus HST (13% in Ontario):

Yes, that's my concern. They've announced a price of USD $69.99, but this Canadian price is actually 25% higher - about USD $86.33 -  They appear to be using an exchange rate that is nearly 20 years old.  (https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/exchange/daily-exchange-rates/)

 

Of course, there is no reason for them to even consider the exchange rate. Just make all sales in US Dollars, and let the credit card take care of exchange. Audirvana get their money in US$, and users pay the credit card in their local currency.

 

(If they are charging tax, they are also wrong. Downloads from foreign companies do not attract tax or duties in Canada.)

 

 

[bnbayer]

1 hour ago, bobbmd said:

 totally disagree--i personally/subjectively feel JRiver sucks to put it mildly and bluntly especially one sanctimonius(SIC)/conceited  individual not to mention its format setup usability and cost for every new update-- haven't used it in years--BUT again just my opinion which usually means nothing

I think you misread the comment. It did not in any way praise or recommend JRiver. It merely pointed out, factually, that they now seemed to be the only player that accepted the users metadata tags without "improving" them.

[bnbayer]

2 hours ago, Chesty said:

As a previous Audirvana user, I thought I only had to pay US$50, but it actually cost me US$60 in Hong Kong.  Some entity presumably ripped me off somewhere along the food chain.

The price for previous users in Canada is also about $62 USD.

[bnbayer]

OK, here's a real-life example of how Studio is "recovering" data to "correct" the user's tags. Two albums by the same artist, each as displayed in the mini-player in A+ 3.5 and in Studio. These are local files, not streamed, and as always I have edited the metadata for accuracy and consistency before adding the files to my library.

 

First, Vilde Frang's debut album from 2009 on EMI Classics (now Warner Classics). The first image is A+ 3.5, using my metadata tags from the file:

 

The next is from Studio, using "recovered" metadata. Note the name of the orchestra has been changed, the conductor's name is truncated, and the soloist isn't mentioned at all:

 

Which info is correct? Well the orchestra's name was originally "Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Et cetera" but it was changed a quarter century ago to WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. This recording was made more than a decade after the name change. But you don't need to know that: just read the cover - the Art Director will have carefully checked the artists' contracts to be sure they used the correct name and spelling on the cover and in the booklet.

 

Now here's Frang's 2016 Warner Classics album, first on A+ 3.5 using my metadata from the file:

 

And the improved metadata from Studio. Note that the soloist has been eliminated, and a second conductor has been added to the first:

 

Which one is correct? Eliahu Inbal was the conductor of this orchestra from 1974 until 1990. This recording was made in 2015 (released in 2016), and Maestro Inbal had long moved on. He had nothing to do with this recording. But you don't need to know that: just read the cover.

 

Which data is correct? It's easy really: which matches what's on the covers?

 

Even easier: Just use my metadata.

[bnbayer]

22 minutes ago, One and a half said:

if the data is overwritten by the player software, there's more work to correct which it shouldn't have been in the first place

I should have specified: it doesn't overwrite your data in your files. It just displays this incompetent stuff on screen. It's already a problem for classical music that Audirvana almost never displays the complete field of either artist or title as it is. Since Studio puts its garbage data in front of the real data (ie, at the beginning of the field), you will only see the silly stuff, and not the correct stuff.

 

Here's what it's trying to display: Studio's opinion first, then my metadata. Of course, usually you're only going to see about the first third of this, or less:

[bnbayer]

34 minutes ago, Russell_L said:

I have no difficulty finding anything I want to play and I know who the artists are.

You might be younger than me! My memory isn't as reliable as it was... But with classical music, it can get harder. For instance, I know I want to play Vilde Frang's recording of the Korngold, but I need to be reminded who the conductor and orchestra accompanying her on that disc were. And with a couple thousand classical albums, plus thousands more I worked on in some way during my career, I don't remember them all. Or I think I have something, then realise I had worked on the release 30 years ago but never brought a copy home...

[bnbayer]

11 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

 If you know of smallish hotrods, though, let me know!

Headless Mac Mini with the M1 chip ???

[bnbayer]

I haven't had a response to an email (to contact@...) about the pricing. I will subscribe at the announced price, but not for $20 USD higher, which is what they are charging for Canada.

[bnbayer]

9 hours ago, wdw said:

Your point is obviously a good one, and surprisingly, you are the first one to raise it.

I got the same email today. (I wonder how many of us were "the first one to raise it"?) In any case, we're now at a reasonable exchange rate, at least for today (since rates constantly change).

 

I'm on the fence as well: I hate the UI, and have lots of issues with the remote, which is the main way I deal with A+. None of the new features are relevant as I don't stream... But the sound really is a big improvement, so it might be worth the upgrade (now CAD 64.99) to see if we really do get regular fixes from the subscription model.

[bnbayer]

Does anyone know how the subscription works? If you cancel - or don't renew - some years down the line, do you get to keep using the version you have? (With no updates, obviously...) Our do you get the "Your subscription has expired." message like we did today on the trial?

[bnbayer]

18 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

The very nature of this economic model is that you have no permanent license to use anything within the subscription license.  If you stop paying, you have to find some other software to play your music.

That's what I feared.

So, A+3.5 has cost me about $150 so far (Version 1 full price; upgrades to v2, v3, and v3.5, plus the iOS remote, which wasn't originally free.) For that price, I've had great sound for more than 8 years so far, and can continue as long as there are Macs which will run it. (The machine running A+ doesn't do anything else, so no need to upgrade to new Mac OSs that might eventually not run 3.5)

 

The next 8 or more years will cost me nearly $1000 ($90 per year), and I still don't own a player and to keep sending money... That's quite a price increase. It puts us in a different market.

 

The AS sound is great, but really, 3.5 sounds great already. $1000 for the next decade makes HQ Player seem like quite a bargain.  Even Roon lifetime PLUS HQPlayer. Or a NAIM hardware network player. Or...

 

[bnbayer]

49 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

If you look at the flip side of this, AS might cost as much over a decade as HQP plus a Roon lifetime subscription, *if* HQP doesn't charge for upgrades for 10 years (unlikely), and without having to pony up $700 in one go.

I don't mind paying for upgrades, if they're aimed at my needs and enjoyment of the player. With the upgrade model, I can always call a halt as I still own rights to the older version. I would have been happy to pay for an upgrade to A+ 3.5 that gave us this great sound without clogging things up with Roon-lite features. (BTW Roon really wouldn't be on my list - along with Musicbrainz, it's the opposite of what I want in a player.)