Audirvana Studio

[Musicophile]

2 hours ago, matthias said:

 

Did you compare 3.5 and AS regarding SQ or musicality?

Thanks

 

Matt

Very early on I noticed a somewhat more "analog" sound of AS 1.0 vs. 3.5. I particularly like the sound of the new upsampling algorithm, r8brain, which I use a lot for redbook as my DAC is performing better at 88khz and above. Is it night and day? Clearly no, but good enough for me. But as my avatar implies, I may not be a 100% audiophile in the first place. 

[Musicophile]

I just upgraded my late 2017 MacBook Pro 13'' to a new M1 MacBook Air (both with 8GB/256GB). I don't have the old Intel one any more, but at first listen the new M1 sounds even better. Very "quiet", if that makes any sense. 

 

Probably expectation bias, but overall I'm very happy with the SQ of 1.5. 

 

On a different note, I'm just somewhat puzzled by the rapid inflation of the Studio version numbers. We're already at 1.5 with barely any visible changes, in just a couple of weeks. Remember the HUGE differences between A+ 1.x, 2.x and 3.5? At this speed we get there before year end. 

[Musicophile]

2 hours ago, JoeWhip said:

Any word on the remote app?

It was due in a week 2 weeks ago. I stopped worrying. I'll rather have them take their time and release something that works properly.

[Musicophile]

56 minutes ago, vicento said:

There is still work to do with 1.5 version ...
I still get static noise during playback when using Luminar AI or other software on M1 Mac mini 16 gig ram.
The problem exist also with Audirvana 3.5 version on the same mac.
 

❓Anyone else having this problem of static noise occurring while listening AS ?

Even with 16GB maybe it’s not a good idea to run processor heavy software in parallel to audio playback?

[Musicophile]

9 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

I really, really, really hate how Studio takes over metadata.  My “artists” section now has albums attributed not only to the actual artist, but, also, to each of the composers of the individual tracks on the album, so that the same album displays as eight or ten different “artists.”  That effectively makes “artists” a completely cluttered and pointless listing category.

 

I am that rare person who despises Roon’s metadata, GUI, and library management tools, but subscribes for sound quality, thanks to its excellent DSP implementation. I was thinking that Studio’s SQ is good enough that it might be the app that gets me to cut the Roon cord, finally.  If anything, this BS with the artists display might make Studio even more annoying and ridiculously inflexible than Roon.

 

JRiver is the only application I know right now that says “you do you” when it comes to metadata rather than “it’s my way or the highway.”  It has a few issues of its own with DSP over DLNA, but there are reasons why I keep it around. 

Agree, this should be 100% opt in.

[Musicophile]

The remote app is finally there, at least for iOS. It is an update of the same app as the previous 3.5 remote. 

 

I've only tested it for a short time, but it seems to be working on both iPad and iPhone so far. 

 

 

[Musicophile]

Quick summary of several weeks of frequent usage:

 

- Overall, the software works well and is mostly stable (on a Mac)

- A lot of minor UI quirks that I'm not really happy about, but hope for future fixes

- Good to finally have the iOS remote apps, which overall work quite well

- SQ is better than ever, particularly since I upgraded my Macbook to the M1 processor

 

 

[Musicophile]

13 minutes ago, Dandaman said:

Is there a way to search ONLY local files?  My searches are always dominated by Qobuz files.

Agree, that's a really silly feature. Would love to be able to filter research results to local files only. Don't think it's possible at this point.

[Musicophile]

13 minutes ago, Da Horsey said:

Nope, the suggestion an M1 Mac would make superior sound with Studio is a fallacy.

The world has enough fallacy (especially Dr. Fallacy). 

I noticed an improvement switching from my old 2017 intel MacBook Pro to a new M1 MacBook Air. 

 

Now, I obviously didn't do any A/B. And obviously a lot of other things (USB ports, etc.) could have changed between the two machines. 

 

And it could easily be just expectation bias. 

[Musicophile]

1 hour ago, pl_svn said:

 

... can't search local files only in AS? 😳

🙄

I haven’t found a way yet. 

[Musicophile]

3 hours ago, rex4539 said:

In order to upgrade to the new Apple Silicon ARM architecture, you would need to buy a new Mac.

To clarify, which is what I did. I had some hardware issues with my 2017 13’‘ MacBook Pro that would have been expensive to fix. The local Apple store gave me a rather generous offer to purchase the old machine back at a decent valuation so I was able to get a brand new M1 MacBook Air for less than $600. 

[Musicophile]

22 hours ago, Dandaman said:

In the new Remote version 3.1.0 I see a new column of dots at right of the screen to help with scrolling through thousands of tracks.  I don't see the same for albums which would be very nice.  Was only tracks view changed?

Apparently yes.  To bad as I mostly use the album view.

 

Beyond that I find 1.8.1 the most stable version on my M1 MacBook Air yet.