Audirvana Studio

[DonaldM]

I guess we will have to get used (if we weren't already) to the subscription model: Apple Music, Qobuz, Lightroom/Photoshop, Netflix, internet provider, telephony provider, etc. etc.

But paying for an update every other year amounts to about the same kind of money. Software you 'own' is outdated in a few years, so you are forced to renew from time to time anyhow.

For me counts which program delivers first and foremost the best audio quality, is stable and user friendly. The last time we did a comparison Audirvana won hands down from an audio quality point of view. For me it is/was a very stable program the last years with a reasonable large music collection and the user interface is good enough.

So, until some better sounding software comes along I'll stay with Audirvana. 

[DonaldM]

I listened through several files of music in an A - B comparison (I kept the sqlite database of 3.5). Probably due to the smaller cover art the new sqlite database is a lot smaller (8 Gb vs 35 Gb). Some examples:

1. Misa Criolla with Mercedes Sosa, a very spacious recording: Studio has better definition, more depth and height. A+ sounds very good, at first you think it is better because it accentuates the high middle a bit more.
2. Mozart, the Symphonies with AAM, Hogwood/Schröder: Studio has a bit more air around the instruments, e.g. the drums are better defined, the violins are more lifelike. These Mozart symphony records can sound beautiful but also terrible with the wrong equipment/software.
3. Raoul Barboza, Invierno in Paris: A+ sounds a bit more rough, maybe more accentuating the accordeon, while Studio is more exact, has better definition, more depth and better lows.
4. Bill Evans, Waltz for Debby: the same recording sounded quite different on Studio and A+. Studio sounded more if you were there in the jazz cafe; while A+ sounded more as if the recording was made in the studio. In Studio you could place the instruments better, also the noises of the public made it more lifelike.

I listened to several bitrates, no upsampling. I tried upsampling with SOX and r8brain (multiple of two) but did not like it. I missed a bit of definition and depth and height of the music.

 

Of course these are early impressions after maybe 10 hours of listening. Studio still has some inconveniences and bugs (until now all in the user interface), but the sound surprised me for a 1.0 (now 1.1) version.

Listened with:

Aitos tube pre-amp, Aitos OTL for Quad ESL and electronically crossed to horn bass loudspeakers also with Aitos OTL. Zodiac DAC with Aitos power supply. Checked with Jecklin Float electrostatic earspeakers.

[DonaldM]

This you get as an extra as the result of analyzing (In Yate did not see any other change in the metadata as I defined them):

 

 

[DonaldM]

41 minutes ago, jos said:

Agree, but It would be gentle if Damien will appear on this site with a plan regarding the bugs and the steps in time he needs to solve them. Most of us are fan of Audirvana/Damien, but I think: we all have the feeling being left alone with our bugs.

I submitted several bugs reports and got answers straightaway from Damien. So no complaints here. I have no doubts that in the end Damien will solve the bugs as he did in the older versions. I understand it is not simple to get the windows and Mac versions totally bug free in one iteration. Also people use Studio differently: I use it mainly local and some Radio use (nice feature!), I never used upsampling, but with Studio the sound improved slightly with upsampling. Then there is the integration with all kinds of DAC’s/ up-sampling scenarios and not to forget the coming implementation of the remote. This makes it difficult to give general answers from Damien, other then that he will try to solve the most prominent bugs. And, I quote Damien: “especially when playing in Integer mode that has small frames, and in high sample rate (this means many small packets sent to the DAC per second that must not be delayed), the audio output becomes quite sensitive to such interruptions due to peak activities like the ones of an anti-malware program or other programs.” Not everybody uses their Mac or windows machine as a music server alone!
I have to say that I am very happy with the sound of Studio compared to A+, and that is the most important part for me!

[DonaldM]

For a small company like Audirvana I have a huge respect. It is not simple to support so many different interfaces to their software besides keeping Studio itself up and running on a Mac as well as on Windows. If you use Studio in its basic form, like I do, there are no serious software issues. Only some minor user interface ones. Basic means: no upsampling or sometimes just simple r8 factor of two upsampling. My music resides on an OWC Thunderbolt DAS using a Mac mini 2018. Thunderbolt has its little quirks in combination with Studio, but I know how to handle them. 

I hope you all will give them time and positive suggestions to improve and ironing out glitches in their very good sounding software. That excellent sound is their raison d’être. Being a small company it will surely cost them time to realise all improvements and interfaces. 
Enjoy the music!
 

[DonaldM]

On 12/20/2021 at 2:16 PM, Dandou said:

All the issues that I reported in an earlier post were at the most basic mode: Bit-perfect. And they are all new. These issues did not exist in past versions of Studio. 

It would be interesting to understand why you experience so many problems, while I have next to none. Is it the different operating system, the attached hardware, the different file layout (AIFF, Flac, dsd, etc.), upsampling or not, etc. Maybe even tagging!?

it should not make a difference, but obviously it does…
 

Donald 

[DonaldM]

On 1/9/2022 at 1:46 PM, jos said:

Thanks! I did this and we will see how it goes... Anyhow, I lost my favorites because I could not restore them. My playlists went fine. I also stopped with this setting, because, I think, it is generating duplicates:

 

 

Hi Jos,

I noticed that Apple sometimes does not display the names of external disks of my OWC DAS correctly in the finder. If for example the disk is named Disk1, it is sometimes displayed as Volume instead of Disk1 after starting up the Mac… The synchronisation by Studio is done on the disk name, in this example Disk1, but even so Studio started to synchronise Volume. This generated duplicates in my case. The solution is simple until Damien finds a solution: before starting Studio check if the disk name (or names) is (are) displayed correctly. Since I do this I did not have duplicates anymore. 
 

Donald 

[DonaldM]

Why should you? Studio does the down sampling by itself. I have a dac that also only goes to 24-192. All files (PCM and DSD) are automatically down sampled to 24-192 or 24-176

[DonaldM]

21 hours ago, Dandou said:

Hi @The Computer Audiophile , 

 

When I tried Studio, tagging albums with it was not really practical. For instance, I wanted to change the name of the Album Artist of all the tracks of an album, and it was just impossible. I had to do it track by track. So, it's better to use a tagger. 

 

I don't have Studio at hand, but I think that it's possible to group the albums the way you want by creating "smart lists". 

You have to choose "audio channels" as a filter for the smart list, and to set it to the number of channels that you wish.  

I can do it with Audirvana 3.5, so it should be possible with Studio as well. 

You actually can change for example the title of an album in one go: select Control-I, first select one track and then select all tracks (Control-A). Within the pop-up information menu you can change the title or whatever you like for all tracks. 

[DonaldM]

But,

That said, I prefer to use an app like Yate for tagging..

[DonaldM]

21 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Does anyone know if it's possible to either tag albums or create groups of albums in Audirvana Studio?

 

I have albums that are 7.1.4, 5.1, 4.0, etc... that I'd love to have in different groups. This way I could browse my 7.1.4 content separate from the other stuff. 

You can: use the file label next to local, then you get a representation of your file hierarchy. If you label a file for example 7-1-4 and put all your 7.1.4 music in there you can see and select your music this way. If you also select the four little blocks on top of the menu representing thumpnail view and you also copy the art of the album on your album folder you get the same representation as you normally would in Studio!