Audirvana Studio

[Dandou]

My trial was renewed as a Christmas gift, so I took the time to evaluate  Audirvana Studio again. 

The good points are that the developers increased the size of the fonts, and added a folder hierarchical navigation view. 

 

But there are still tons of bugs, many of which did not exist in the past versions of Audirvana Studio. 

 

At each launch of the application, Studio says first that it cannot verify the license, because the computer is not connected tot the internet! 😜🤪 A second launch provokes the display of a dialogue box to enter the license key. 

Studio is just unable to remember the key between two launches! 🥵 

 

The analysis is still present, so I loaded to the player only 215 albums, most of which are ISO SATA albums. The albums are stored on a drive that is directly connected to the Mac, and I have a fast fiber optics internet connection. Nevertheless, it took Studio and MusicBrainz 28 hours to analyze this small quantity of albums! 

 

A day later, Studio was upgraded from 1.8.5 to 1.8.7. 

In this new version, the user can disable the display of the wrong metadata that Studio gets from MusicBreainz. But to get rid of the wrong metadata that Studio got already, it's necessary to trash the existing database of the player, and make it analyze the albums a new. 

It was too much for me, so I only loaded in Studio some 20 new ISO SATA albums to see what will happen. 

I was surprised to see that the addition of this very small quantity of albums triggered a new, very long analysis. Why Studio does that is unclear, since I selected the option that I don't want any metadata from MusicBrainz. The analysis of these additional albums lasted many hours, but this time, I did not pay attention to how much exactly. 

 

The player crashes or just stops seeing the streamer if the connection with it is lost for some reason, like a reboot of the streamer. To remedy to this, it is necessary to quit Studio and relaunch it. But then, it asks you again to enter the license key… 

 

Studio does not function as it should with Volumio. 

It emits a serial of small noises at each launch of a new track. It continues to emit small noises during the playback. 

From time to time, the playback just stops abruptly in the middle of a track. Very frustrating. 

 

With Gentooplayer, Studio sees Gmediarender in the output selector, but won't play the tracks with it, while my other UPNP players do. 

Studio works fine with UpMpdCli. 

 

During the few hours that I used it, I noticed many other bugs. Just a few examples: 

In the new folders hierarchical  view, clicking on any track in order to launch it, provokes, from time to time, the playback of another track from another album. This behavior persists, unless you quit the application. When this happens, it makes the whole folders view unusable. 

At a given moment, Studio did not recognize the precise specs of my DAC, while displaying the loudspeaker of the Mac as an output that is DSD 256 capable! 🤪

Though SystemOptimizer was installed, Studio asks me from time to time to install it again, and the process ends with an error message… 

 

It's amazing that six months after its initial release, this player remains so buggy with so many frustrating dysfunctions. 

 

[Dandou]

13 hours ago, fheller said:

We need an alternative to Roon.

I agree that competition is important.  IMO, in the subscription segment, Volumio became already a good alternative to Roon with version 3. 

[Dandou]

They are at least three in the team of Audirvana. 

There's Damien, the developer. Manuel, the business strategist, who staged with Damien on Facebook. And there's a guy named Antoine who is in charge of support on their forum. 

[Dandou]

3 hours ago, DonaldM said:

If you use Studio in its basic form, like I do, there are no serious software issues. Only some minor user interface ones.

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. 

[Dandou]

You are right, SysOptimizer's bug existed in the beginning. But after that it was fixed. And with this latest version, it reappeared. 

[Dandou]

I gave all the details in the short report that I posted. 

I tried it with a Mac M1 Mini, in bit-perfect, with Allo USBridge as a streamer, Volumio and GentooPlayer editions, most of the files were ISO SATA. 

 

I have on my computers about 12 different audiophile players without dysfunctions. 

[Dandou]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

ISO SACD?

Yes. It was a mistyped word. 

[Dandou]

Not only Studio knows to do that.

All Audirvana players, since Audirvana Plus 1.x, knew to downsample PCM and DSD tracks to fit the specs of 24-192 or 24-96 DACs. So there's really no reason to convert tracks. 

[Dandou]

Hi @jos , 

With which streamer you were getting stuttering, and your new Limetree Bridge will replace? 

[Dandou]

Hi @jos , I hope that your new streamer will fix this issue, and will satisfy you.

The various players do not stream the same way, even if you set them to stream bit-perfect. (For instance, AS decodes the tracks, while JRiver streams without decoding them, and they are decoded by the streamer.) 

Did you try to stream to the Yamaha with other players to check if stuttering occurs with them as well? 

[Dandou]

5 minutes ago, jos said:

No, I didn’t, because I want to stay with AS.

Don't misunderstand me. The reason Audirvana players have a good sound is due to the way they stream. It's a strength of Audirvana. 

I asked you if you tried the Yamaha with other players out of curiosity. It's an interesting point to check. 

[Dandou]

I think that it's interesting to try. 
I have a friend who has issues when A3.5 and AS stream to his Marrantz streamer. He was told on the forum of Audirvana that the problem comes from the implementation of UPNP by Marrantz. Exactly what you said about your Yamaha. 

[Dandou]

20 minutes ago, jos said:

I was considering to try Roon, just for testing.

If the issue is due to the UPNP implementation by Yamaha, it will be interesting to try with another UPNP player. 

Roon is not a UPNP player, so it may work fine. 

[Dandou]

1 hour ago, jos said:

Indeed, because they want to support there own eco-systems in the first place.

If Yamaha did it intentionally, you should have the same stuttering with all the UPNP players : JRiver, Foobar, McConnect, and so on… 

Try to see if it's the case. 

[Dandou]

5 hours ago, jos said:

Personally, I don’t want to spend my time with testing software.

This Yamaha is a streamer that you own. Unless you have the intention to throw it to the garbage, it's always good to know what it is able of.  

 

And testing software won't take you a lot of time, if you do it with simple UPNP players. 

Foobar is a free player. Downloading its basic version, that is very easy to use, loading to it a few albums, and setting it to stream UPNP, won't take you more than ten minutes. It's the same thing for McConnect (a free player, if you have an iPhone) or similar players for Android phones. 

[Dandou]

37 minutes ago, Jud said:

So it appears to be the network rather than Audirvana Studio’

You are right, the network maybe the reason for the issues of @jos. But he did not proceed with any trials with other players to try to discern the reason for the stuttering. 

I've been using Audirvana players for years, and never had stuttering. I tried Studio extensively from May to July, and had no stuttering. 

[Dandou]

Hi @jos , 

Does the stuttering with AS occur also only with Hi Res tracks? 

[Dandou]

In this case, the problem, in my opinion; is related to the network. Because if it was related to the UPNP rendering engine of the streamer, you should have got, logically, stuttering with CD files as well. 

There's maybe a weak element in the chain that provokes the issue, with a more intense stream. 

 

To be completely sure about it, the idea of @Jud to check with HQPlayer is very good, because it will use NAA, another rendering engine, on your streamer. If you get stuttering with HQPlayer with a stream above 16-44, it will be almost sure that there's an issue in the network. 

 

You can download the trial version of HQPlayer Desktop for free, and use it for the trial. It's a bit difficult to set  properly this player for your trial, but if you PM me, I'll help you to do it. 

[Dandou]

3 minutes ago, biosailor said:

Roon RAAT is rock solid!

NAA is also rock solid. For a quick trial, it's OK. 

[Dandou]

23 minutes ago, biosailor said:

Never ever happened with Roon

If he installs Roon, just to check the stuttering issue with his UPNP players, he will have to give his Credit Card number, and he will lose the opportunity to try Roon in depth for free, if he'll be interested in doing so in a few weeks or months.  

[Dandou]

18 minutes ago, biosailor said:

There’s no free lunch …

True… But why do it, when he can just check with HQPlayer what he gets at 16-44.1 and 24-192 streamings. 

[Dandou]

I don't understand your question. 

If the track is in Flac or WavPack formats, for instance, AS will decompress it and then will stream it. While JRiver will send the track to the streamer in its original, compressed format. 

[Dandou]

6 minutes ago, rodrigaj said:

Encode / Decode may or may not involve compression

What you say is true, and English is not my mother's tongue. 

I don't know what AS does with a track of an uncompressed format like AIFF, for instance. It's possible that it decodes it in order to convert it to its streaming format. But this is only an assumption, and I don't know how AS behaves precisely. 

[Dandou]

48 minutes ago, rodrigaj said:

Encode / Decode

Actually, when I think about it, I'm sure that AS decodes even uncompressed tracks in order to convert them to the Bit depth format of the DAC. 

I remember that when I tried it this summer, it was displaying the path that the track follows. For a bit-perfect playback (no DSP at all) of a CD quality file, AS was displaying with my DAC the following information: 16/44.1 > 32/44.1. 

[Dandou]

There are plenty of threads on Audirvana forum that prove it. There were people who thought that the conversion of the tracks to the bit-depth format of the DAC was a dysfunction of the player. It was the case of the guy who opened this thread: 

 

https://community.audirvana.com/t/windows-10-and-studios-bit-depth-reporting-see-signal-path-asio-sound-driver/27766/1