AirMusic

[Cebolla]

Looks like the old AirAudio app has returned under a new name. You used to require a rooted Android device (& a bit of luck with the app supporting the device's specific hardware) to avoid the horrible lower quality microphone input audio capture. However, the new version also seems to support the audio playback capture API introduced in Android 10, so it appears there's no need now for the device to be rooted.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have a new enough Android device to test the app with (or a rooted one). Presumably your device is an Android 10+ one. BTW, foobar2000's status bar is definitely capable of displaying the playing audio's bit depth & sample rate - so no need to refer to a DAC's display for that.   

[Cebolla]

Everything being played at the CD-res of 16bit/44.1kHz makes sense, as that is likely to be the base/native audio resolution of your Android device. However, the 1411kbps bitrate reading (presumably on foobar2000's status bar) merely indicates that the Android device's captured audio is being streamed over the network as uncompressed PCM, ie, either as raw LPCM or in an uncompressed file container format such as WAV.

 

As far as audio fidelity is concerned, you still have the question of the Android system audio capture being performed by the AirMusic app, on the audio output of an audio playing app (such as the Qobuz app or the TIDAL app), itself being bit perfect. One relatively simple bit perfect test is to use known HDCD music tracks as the audio source and observe if the audio is being detected as such at the receiver end - the same methodology outlined by @The Computer Audiophile's article mentioning the testing of Apple Music app's played tracks' audio received via AirPlay:

Quote

My bit perfect testing consists of a Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 that identifies and decodes HDCD on all sample rates from 44.1 up through 192 kHz. When an unaltered HDCD music track is played, the HDCD indicator on the DAC is illuminated. The HDCD flag is on the 16th bit for lossless CD files and the 24th bit for high resolution files. Any alteration, DSP, volume leveling, etc... changes this least significant bit and won't enable the HDCD indicator to illuminate on my DAC.

Quote

With respect to source files, here's what I do. 
 
I have a list of roughly ten known HDCD albums (although I could use more if needed). Many of these albums were only released as HDCD encoded CDs/files. There is no alternate lossless version. For example, Reference Recordings only releases CDs that are HDCD encoded. Pearl Jam's Live On Two Legs was only released as an HDCD master for its lossless CD version.

 

 

Luckily, foobar2000 can detect (and decode) audio that is HDCD encoded - so you don't even have to use an HDCD supporting DAC (similar to the one mentioned by Chris in his article) for that purpose. You just need to install the foo_hdcd plugin and configure foobar2000's status bar to display an HDCD indicator (foo_hdcd's %__hdcd% HDCD status field is ideal for this):

https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_hdcd

hydrogenaudio forums > foobar2000 > 3rd Party Plugins - (fb2k) > HDCD Decoder (foo_hdcd)

 

For example, appending the following foobar2000 Titleformat formatted text to the Status bar edit field in the Default User Interface's configuration settings will display '[HDCD]' as an indicator in foobar2000's status bar whenever the played audio is detected as being HDCD encoded (assuming the foo_hdcd plugin has also been installed):

 

$if($stricmp(%__hdcd%,yes),'[HDCD]  ',)

 

[Cebolla]

16 hours ago, Rexp said:

Sorry for confusion, I know AirMusic is gapless, I was asking about your upnp set up.

 

Technically, the AirMusic app is gapless indifferent - it'll depend on the app that's actually playing the music file tracks (and providing AirMusic with its captured audio output). You are only getting gapless with the AirMusic app because the Qobuz & TIDAL apps themselves are.

 

The exact same thing applies to the BubbleUPnP app when it's used with its Audio Cast feature. (as mentioned by its developer @bubbleguuumin his post above). Note that this has nothing to do with the BubbleUPnP app's better known function as that of a (gapless supporting) UPnP/DLNA controller app, as @audiobomberis normally using it for. 

 

 

 

11 hours ago, Rexp said:

Unfortunately Bubble doesn't handle MQA so well so not ideal for me.

 

The BubbleUPnP app, when used in Audio Cast mode, 'handles MQA' (or more precisely, the TIDAL app's audio output when the TIDAL app is playing MQA file tracks), in the exact same way as the AirMusic app does.

[Cebolla]

Bit hard to tell what you already know, with imprecise phrases like "a upnp app", "I can use Tidal with", "that's gapless" and "handles MQA", not to mention "AirMusic is gapless".

 

My vast knowledge is telling me that it might be best to this time resist the temptation to second guess exactly what you are asking, so I can't really answer your question,

[Cebolla]

3 hours ago, bubbleguuum said:

 

I suppose you mean playing "Audio Cast" to AirReceiver ?

"Audio Cast" (ie Android audio capture) should be gapless if the playing app you are capturing from audio plays gaplessly.

 

Still not certain if the gapless indifference concept has been understood by the OP - I already said the same in my post above mentioning BubbleUPnP's Audio Cast being similar in that regard to the AirMusic app.