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Dear fellow audio enthusiast, Today I published a first draft of mpd-monitor, a minimal load and realtime monitor of an audiostream as handled by mpd. A screencast says it all: Details and documentation are available at the gitlab repository: https://gitlab.com/ronalde/mpd-monitor/. When you experience bugs or issues, which will be the case, please submit those in the gitlab project. I would like to hear your thoughts. Happy listening and monitoring, Ronald

I would like to continue using iTunes. And I'm undecided between using A+ in iTunes-integrated mode (but how bad is the skin? Is it possible change it?) Or BitPerfect .. what do you recommend? My setup is Macbook Pro, Dragonfly Red and He-400i. I'm testing A+ and I noticed that the sound is already much clearer and fuller, with more fat volumes, even without using the DAC.

I have a Mac Mini (mid 2010 model) with 8GB of RAM, running OSX 10.9.2 and the latest iTunes 11.1.5. I send audio out to a Wyred4Sound DAC-2 via USB; it then goes through my amp and into my headphones. I also use either BitPerfect or Audirvana Plus (in iTunes integrated mode). No problems at all, until installing Mavericks (1o.9.1 and 10.9.2) and the newest versions of iTunes. (probably the last two updates). What I'm hearing is right at the beginning of each new track as it starts to play. There are crackling, popping noises; not loud, but certainly audible. It sounds a bit like dropping the needle between tracks on a noisy vinyl record. Sometimes, the first couple of seconds of the tracks will stutter and repeat, as well. Once the track gets going, it's usually fine. Occasionally, I'll hear a glitch somewhere in the middle of the track as well. I've been through the manuals for both BitPerfect and Audirvana, and tried all of the different pref settings that are suggested to stop this sort of thing (i.e. stopping gapless playback,integer mode on/off, iTunes interaction, etc.) No combination of settings that I've found will eliminate these crackling noises completely. BitPerfect support has been excellent; they've even sent me an experimental version to try, which seemed to help somewhat, but the noises still appear now and then. The only way I can eliminate the glitches completely is to run iTunes directly without using either BitPerfect or Audirvana Plus. I don't hear a huge difference in audio quality with either program, but I enjoy the automatic sample rate switching. To get around that, I've just set my W4S DAC-2 to upsample everything to 192kHz, since iTunes alone can't do it. I would love to get either or both of these players back in the chain again, but right now the only noise-free listening I can get is when I am bypassing them. I know that a lot of people had many diverse audio problems with iTunes and other software when Mavericks first came out, but most people reported them solved with 10.9.2, or with the newest iTunes. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

After having surrendered to the fact that I am the only one in the family who likes my customized Foobar and MonkeyMote solution I have done some testing of the Sonos Connect, the Heos Link and finally the Bluesound Node, and to my surprise I have at last found peace :-) Both Sonos and Heos apparently resamples everything internally regardless of settings (fixed output, Volume and tone controls of, no compression and so forth...) but the Bluesound not only plays the few 24/96 and 24/192 recordings I own but also plays my more numerous 5.1. DTS recordings absolutelse flawlessly. Finally I can let everybody play anything without risking my precious tweeters being killed by the white noise made by corrupted DTS. I have a lot of DTS music demuxed to .dts, then wrapped in a Wav container and finally compressed and stored for convenience and adding of metadata as lossless FLAC. All made with the python script available at the old SlimDevices forum. The sound when it plays ordinary stereo, btw, is noticeably superior to not only Sonos and Heos, but also to my Win 8.1 with Foobar2000 and WASAPI output via HDMI. Both Heos and Bluesound streams the local library without any glitches, whereas Sonos quite frequently made small cutouts when my 60/20 Mbps line was busy. Why Sonos requires internet connection to the outside world to play content on my LAN is beyond me... Not sure about the perceived differences in sound either as i.e. Foobar is playing bitperfect at fixed 100% volume, so it is not due to resampling. But perhaps the HDMI output is plaqued with jitter. Was it not for two people unaware of the switch between the sources commenting on the difference I would perhaps attribute it to "placebo effect" but the calmness in the space on some old recordings does feel quite differently - though I must admit that I have not yet made any blind a/b testing. If anybody has any experiences with Bluesound or has made a successful attempt to make Heos stream bitperfect please let me know. BR/Jens

All: I have finally found the right community to share my latest project: Designing and Building an Audiophile grade Music Server. This is my first post on Computer Audiophile so I will give a brief introduction of myself and my audio equipment: I was in Information Technology/Computer Science for most of my working career, and about 4 years ago switched over to Research Science. I have since been published as a co-author on a paper in the field of Neuroscience, but my main specialty is Computational Finance. I also have a strong background in Electrical Engineering I learned at the University of Pittsburgh. It is with my Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and appreciation of music that I hope to add value here to this forum as well as learn a lot from other people sharing this interest in computer audio. My audio system consists of: Integrated Amplifier: Creek Evolution 50A Digital Front End: Custom Designed Linux Music Server Digital Front End: NAD 516 CD Player SPDIF Converter: USB to COAX M2TECH HiFACE TWO DAC: Bryston BDA-1 Speakers: Epos Epic 2 with Epos stands Cabling & Interconnects: AudioQuest mid-range for speaker cables and XLR from DAC to Integrated, OEM or "generic" power cables and other interconnects. I very recently sold off my analogue front end as I found my new Linux server to exceed it sonically. It consisted of a Rega P1 turntable with Ortofon Red 2M cartridge, and a Vincent PHO-8 Phono Stage. As for the main reason I joined this forum........ I originally posted this thread on Stereophile, but now will re-post here as I think this is a much better forum for this topic.... please reference the thread below... I hope my experiences will help a few and I also hope to learn a lot here as well! Respectfully, Ron

I bought BitPerfect, but my OSX is not capelble to play integers. This is info when using BP. Is there any sense using BP in my situation? Name: Built-in Output UID:AppleHDAEngineOutput:1B,0,1,2:0 Device Id: 50 Default: NO Selected: NO Complex DAC: NO Integer Mode Capable: N/A Frame Buffer Sizes: 14 - 4608 Current Frame Buffer Size: 512 Left Channel: 1 Right Channel: 2 Sample Rates: 44.1 48.0 96.0

DAC: Peachtree DAC*IT. Hi all. I looked through the threads and couldn't find an answer to this. Why would BitPerfect be telling me my DAC isn't integer mode capable but Audirvana is, or at least I assume it is, because with USB the green "INT" light goes on in the display? Not a huge deal since both sound great, but if I'm missing a tweak or twock in BitPerfect, I'd like to know. Thanks, David

Hi Based on what I have found on this site, I have adjusted the settings of the software I am running on my Macbook Pro 13' model summer 2012. I am planning on using XLD to rip CD's and playback via Bit Perfect / iTunes. For now, all music will be stored on the local hard drive of my Macbook. I am using an optical toslink/SPDIF connection between my MacBook and my BelCanto DAC (C5i). I am looking for feedback on the settings I made in XLD and what settings I should change in iTunes, although I guess that the iTunes settings do not really matter anymore since I am using Bit Perfect. For Bit Perfect, I simply followed the recommended settings highlighted in the manual. You can find the manual on :BitPerfect: Manual You can find screenshots of my XLD settings below. As per the RIP strategy published on this site, I am ripping to FLAC for archiving and AIIF for playback. I am looking forward to your feedback and suggestions. Once I have your feedback, I will start ripping my CD's TrappistMonk