Audirvana Studio

[Jud]

1 hour ago, bodiebill said:

 

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

Don’t feel the least bit stupid - we have all been down this road (and for my part, through far more obvious oversights than yours 🙂).

[Jud]

Regarding metadata, I recognize that many users have various good reasons for not wanting anything added or displayed other than their own methods. So the following should not be taken as advice, but simply a possible alternative for those who would like to and are able to use it.

 

I have my albums organized into folders. I might have a symphony recording in the Beethoven folder, but might have a Sudbin recording of Beethoven under the artist's name, because that is how I remember and can find them. I then use Audio File Location as the first sorting criterion for albums and tracks in AS. So no matter what metadata is added or displayed, I can find albums and artists according to the way I've organized them.

 

Of course many people have long since organized their own collections differently and won't be able to use this method, but for anyone who is able to and would like to, there it is.

[Jud]

5 hours ago, bobbmd said:

Hi @damien78 @RunHomeSlow @Jud since update to studio 1.5 studio is stopping part way my lengthy self made AND Qobuz&TIDAL playlists have to hit “play” icon — am sure this is a minor glitch but anyone else seeing this? ALSO anyone have suggestions on what settings are BEST subjectively on that Brain vs SOX choices thanks

 

Hi Bob - 

 

Don't use playlists, so I can't help you there, sorry.

 

I'm using r8brain to upsample, linear phase (works best with my speakers, your mileage may vary), % Nyquist and stop-band attenuation both all the way to the right, and B 8th order delta-sigma modulation to DSD512.  The only variation I've tried is C modulation, which I understand is the same as B 7th order.  I haven't really made a comparison of the two.  I just liked the sound from the first time I heard it, so I haven't fiddled with these settings.

[Jud]

Damien locks vanishingly few users out of the forums, including many people who are strongly critical.  Context for the prior post.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, twist222 said:

Thanks for the comment on the Audirvana forum. I never posted over there so have little knowledge about their forum. On a related matter do you know why Audivana is charging a higher $ rate for countries outside the US ? Particularly as they are based in France ?

Regards Mark

 

Sorry, I have no idea. Wish I had an explanation for you.

[Jud]

28 minutes ago, jdtitman said:

11 days. He’s pouting. 

 

Considering you've now posted twice in a separate forum about it, accusing him of "pouting" appears to be projection on your part.

[Jud]

I find AS to be much less taxing on my computer when oversampling to DSD512 or DSD256 than HQPlayer, but the latter for certain specific oversampling tasks will max out most machines.  Using a full-fledged desktop, AS doesn't come close to straining system resources.

I do remember running Audirvana Plus on the ASUS version of a NUC with an i7 CPU, and oversampling to DSD did tax that machine, so I can imagine AS makes the NUC work pretty hard.

 

As long as you've got something as nice as a Signature Rendu, you can feed it from pretty much any computer you want, so if you do like the sound when oversampling to DSD (I'm with you there), you might consider running AS on something with more resources than a NUC.

[Jud]

9 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

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

 

There's this little beast: https://www.amazon.com/MSECORE-Desktop-Computer-Monitors-Dual-Band/dp/B08RYCRJ85/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&keywords=Core%2Bi9-8950HK&qid=1625763633&refinements=p_n_feature_four_browse-bin%3A17927742011&rnid=676578011&s=pc&sr=1-12&th=1

 

(Note the spec of 4GB of RAM is for the video card - there are 64GB of DDR4 RAM in this thing.)

 

Edit: Or if you want something insane - https://www.amazon.com/i9-9900KF-Dedicated-Graphics-Bluetooth-Multi-Screen/dp/B08RJG1SFB/ref=psdc_13896591011_t3_B08RYCRJ85?th=1

[Jud]

Or you could build your own, even water-cool it. 🙂

[Jud]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

I don't believe these computers have a TPM chip (although I could be wrong), so they will not run Windows 11.  You can continue to run them with Windows 10 until October 14th, 2025, but that's not too far away.

 

There are at least some Intel chipset mobos that can have TPM 2.0 turned on in BIOS without a hardware TPM chip. (The ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero, which I used to build my desktop, is one of them.)

[Jud]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

Hopefully your processor is on the supported list.

 

Yep, everything was good except no TPM 2.0, and Google turned up hardware and firmware options for implementing it with my mobo.  Rather than install new hardware, I made the indicated BIOS change.  (Intel refers to it as PTT, if that helps anyone.)

[Jud]

6 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

The only issues I have are the temp spikes and generally only with Audirvana 3.5/Studio upsampling.  No playback quality issues at all.  To the contrary, the NUC sounds great with Audirvana.

 

I ran AS while taking a look at CoreTemp.  With a watercooled 8900K CPU overclocked to 4-something GHz, while converting files to DSD512 and storing them in memory, AS used up to 32% CPU in Task Manager, and core temps occasionally spiked to 80+ degrees C, the max achieved by any core being one that spiked to 85 degrees.  These were quite momentary.  For the most part, temps ranged in the low to mid 40s.  Once the conversion phase was over and a file was being played from RAM, CPU in Task Manager dropped to 7% and the momentary temp spikes stopped.  This is with 5 real cores, so no single core would have been close to 32% utilization.

 

What I take from this is that the Core Temp app is extraordinarily sensitive to extremely fleeting temp spikes, and I doubt damage is being done to the CPU unless such temperatures are more sustained.  The fact that the momentary spikes you see are a bit higher I'd guess is accounted for by the difference between water cooling and air cooling in a small case.  So I agree with you and @jdtitman that you should just enjoy the music and not be terribly concerned.

[Jud]

16 minutes ago, jdtitman said:

1. Yes 

2. Yes

3. No numerals appeared on the PC              screen. I’ve used the previous remote for a couple of years. It too was buggy and many users struggled with it. 

 

Uninstall and reinstall often works for any app that isn't responding correctly. You should see the numerals appear then, as you're familiar with from the past.

[Jud]

9 hours ago, jos said:

Audirvana Studio 1.5.7 is currently the newest version available, but no solution for my stuttering problem. AS is currently unusable for me, so I am playing Internet Music (HI On Line Radio & Radio Paradise) from my Yamaha player. It's definitely an AS problem, because other (computer) sources are working flawlessly. Hopefully Damien will solve this soon. I wonder if Jud is still having this problem too.

 

Hi jos -

 

No, the stuttering went away for me several builds ago.  It was only ever present in a couple of builds if I recall correctly.

 

In other good news, I'd experienced AS "freezing" (becoming unresponsive) after perhaps 30 minutes to an hour of playback over UPnP with previous builds (direct connection never gave any problem), but with 1.5.7 that doesn't seem to be happening.

[Jud]

56 minutes ago, Musicophile said:

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

 

This in particular is important to me, and I agree. Listening with the Windows version now; looking forward to getting a new MacBook Pro when Apple puts out the new line and listening to the MacOS version.

[Jud]

47 minutes ago, bnbayer said:

$1000 for the next decade makes HQ Player seem like quite a bargain.  Even Roon lifetime PLUS HQPlayer. Or a NAIM hardware network player.

 

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.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

Roon lifetime plus HQPlayer3 together cost me $657.72.  I have no good reason to upgrade HQPlayer from 3 to 4. If anything, I can even drop HQplayer3.  There is no way, I am going to pay Audirvana $69.99/year for the next 10 years. Consider also that the subscription price will rise over the years.

 

Yes, one can always choose to stick with what one has.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

I just installed Windows 11 beta on my NUC.  Audirvāna Studio is the only app or application that would not run after the OS update.  It will install and load, but the settings menu is unresponsive and the app thus cannot be set up.  
 

I know it’s early in the lives of both Windows 11 and AS, and things almost certainly will be worked out, but this is disappointing.  I really don’t want to reinstall Windows 10 just to use AS. (In contrast, JRiver, thus far, seems to run well.)

 

Not sure what the specific problem is, but AS runs fine on the latest developer version of Windows 11 here.

[Jud]

21 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Whew, that's a lot of installing/reinstalling!

 

No one can hiose a Microsoft installation quite like Microsoft, I think. I follow the Windows Insider Developer track (doesn't mean I know anything, just that I like seeing what the latest is), and when an update doesn't work quite right (never involved Audirvana in my own experience, but it did this time in Mike's), it always eventually seems to necessitate a clean reinstall and upgrade.

[Jud]

@jos, sorry to hear about the continued stuttering. What we used to do to get rid of such things that puzzlingly persisted between builds was trash the database and start over. These days that takes a bit longer, but I guess it's still there if it comes to it. (You may already have done so, but thought I'd mention it.)

[Jud]

2 hours ago, jos said:

Tomorrow there will be a new AS version (1.8) that will solve my problems (and perhaps yours too), they say. Thumbs Up for Damien, Antoine and all the others involved!

Thanks to you, @jos for doing the work of testing for the benefit of all of us.

[Jud]

3 hours ago, Mercman said:

The fact that DLNA is not as robust a format as Roon's RAAT comes with its consequences.

You’ll find I think pretty uniformly that AS uses standards-compliant rather than proprietary methods, even when this causes grief (for example metadata tagging versus iTunes’ proprietary method, UPnP/DLNA vs. RAAT or NAA). I assume standards compliance is something Damien feels is quite important. (I do too - making something different may work better for users of a particular product in the near term, but it further fragments the space and puts no pressure on other vendors to comply so we get maximum interoperability.)

[Jud]

4 hours ago, routlaw said:

So it appears AS if rife with problems, but somehow sounds better than Audirvāna 3.5.50, correct? Roon sounds worse and by some peoples description much worse. Just curious though has anyone here compared the two Audirvana players to HQ Player and if so what was the verdict? 

 

I'm still one A 3.5.50 and have few if any issues but common sense dictates its only a matter of time this player will become obsolete, sadly. Thanks

I think “rife with problems” is a bit strong, but yes, 3.5.x versions were less ambitious and the code base had been worked on far longer, so at least currently it has fewer bugs to work out.

 

I personally like the sound quality of Audirvāna (particularly Studio with r8brain) very much. I also have HQPlayer since I run a couple of Linux distributions on my computer. Whether you wind up preferring Studio or HQPlayer with your ears on your system is of course purely up to you.

[Jud]

On 11/10/2021 at 3:32 AM, Mercman said:

I wish Damien would provide a decent iOS remote. Navigating a large local library with the Remote app is torture. I had to go back to Roon even though AS sounds better. 

 

On 11/10/2021 at 6:33 AM, jos said:

I can understand your wish but most important in the first place, is a totally flawless working app for all of us, and then, later on, they can add functionality to the remote. In my opinion this is the right way of working, from a logistical point of view if recourses are limited.

I have been running a 1.8.1 test version for over 5 hours (optical Ethernet feeding copper Ethernet feeding microRendu using UPnP/DLNA), and it has been absolutely rock solid for me.

 

I think additional feature improvements for the remote are imminent as well.

[Jud]

53 minutes ago, robi20064 said:

Actually 1.8.1 is fixing the DSD playback issue, but upsampling to DSD512 is having the usual result. How is the success rate of reaching out to Damien/AS support and getting such investigated and fixed?

What are the components of the system you’re trying this with? As I mentioned, in my testing so far for many consecutive hours (including fairly frequent switching between tracks/albums using the remote, though I did play some albums in their entirety), 1.8.1 simply worked, and I was upsampling everything to DSD512 running Audirvana on Windows 11.