Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby Gino » Tue Sep 10, 2013 7:21 pm

Tested JRiver MC19 (wasapi) and Foobar2000 (default audio). Foobar2000 was more holographic, images are better defined, Plucks and percussion has more attack/bite, bass taught. There is more top sparkle and air. JRiver was less holographic, a bit dry on the metals, overall sound is fuller, bass has more low end punch.

Cosmetics and ease of use go to JRiver. The Gizmo remote for Android works the way I want it. JRiver settings are easy to understand, the interface is polished. Things like searching for album art is too easy. I can understand why people like this app.

That was a quick audition. I'll see how the two compare in the next few days.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby timber715 » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:01 pm

Gino wrote:Tested JRiver MC19 (wasapi) and Foobar2000 (default audio). Foobar2000 was more holographic, images are better defined, Plucks and percussion has more attack/bite, bass taught. There is more top sparkle and air. JRiver was less holographic, a bit dry on the metals, overall sound is fuller, bass has more low end punch.

Cosmetics and ease of use go to JRiver. The Gizmo remote for Android works the way I want it. JRiver settings are easy to understand, the interface is polished. Things like searching for album art is too easy. I can understand why people like this app.

That was a quick audition. I'll see how the two compare in the next few days.

Baka pwede brader pareho yung driver na magamit... Say asio or wasapi or even kernel streaming para pareho comparison.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby Gino » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:07 pm

Installed was api on Foobar. Compared Foobar was api and JRiver was api. Same result. My initial impression are the same. Focused imaging, top sparkle, defined bass for Foobar. Fuller sound for Jriver, punchier low end, less too sparkle for JRiver.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby timber715 » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:23 pm

Nice. Keep it coming lang....
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby TheAnalogSource » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:48 pm

Thanks Gino, timber. Please keep them coming...that's what I'm looking for- comparison between players
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby Gino » Wed Sep 11, 2013 8:06 pm

Installed Foobar2000 (wasapi) and JRiver MC19 on my Mac Air Windows 7 boot. It must be said that I am hooked up to the headphone jacks for all my tests. Here and with the HP.

Foobar had deeper more focused images. Very defined and viceral percussive impact and plucks. voices are very lifelike and intimate. Very airy and immediate. The shards of highs on metals and snare drums were palpably real. Best I've heard on my Mac. Beats Amarra OS X.

JRiver had nearly the same imaging. It had very intimate and organic vocals as well. Bass had more low end thump but was much more diffused. Attack was obviously weaker. This was very obvious playing a drum improvisation track. The metals were shy and just present.

Foobar2000 is sonically my favorite. But it is a bit crude to use. Jriver will make a good everyday player. It has a cleaner and easy to use front end.

These are my initial impressions.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby JackD201 » Thu Sep 12, 2013 12:55 am

I use Bitperfect only for convenience when listening to HR albums. Sonically it gets beat up by Pure Music. The latter being more refined, nuanced and dynamic resulting in being more expressive. The only downside of Pure Music is that it is not as responsive to control inputs even with memory play disabled. Both display zero xo distortion if you click between tracks abruptly, something that very rarely happens playing plain old iTunes. As stated before I am reliant on iTunes because to date I have about 10,000 songs from 128kbps in my early days to more recent 24/192. The thought of reordering all the metadata is something that is not what I want or will do not to mention recreating the playlists that have been compiled over the last decade.

I run both from a MAC via USB to two asynch DACs, the TechDAS D7 and the Light Harmonic Da Vinci. The former is a small unit that is very analog sounding from the smoothed camp revealing it's S-D architecture. The latter is a ladder type NOS DAC with analog filters that has more of analog's subtler textures and ambience but also top flight digital Macro dynamics. Choosing between the two can boil down to a matter of taste or system synergy. It is the latter in my opinion that is more flexible in terms of emotional delivery because of its dynamic envelope and greater portrayal of scale differences even if it is less forgiving of poor recordings. The latter ironically is closer to the TechDAS AirForce One table with a Graham Arm, Atlas Cart and Lamm PS. That said the D7 is a third of the price of the Da Vinci and one fourth of the Twin Engine Da Vinci Dual which has dedicated converters for PCM upto 32/384 and DSD. The D7 does "only" up to 24/192 and does DSD via DoP. The Da Vinci is also more sensitive to choice of USB cables. It will glitch with poor cables that don't strictly adhere to the 90ohm standard and fail bandwith tests while the D7 is neigh impreganable. Out of the box the D7 did great with very little improvement within the first 24 hours or so. The Da Vinci took almost 500 hours of break-in. I had no idea that the silk dielectric caps used in them would take longer than teflons. I always thought teflons took the longest time. Guess not.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby timber715 » Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:26 am

Hehehe, break in is a pain... But improvements are often drastic once they settle.
Would love to hear your digital system... Maybe someday.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby JackD201 » Thu Sep 12, 2013 8:51 am

It sure is a HUGE pain Timber. LH has begun to break in the boards en masse before they are fitted into the outgoing chassis to ease the suffering by cutting down the break in time.

Come over when the renovation is done in a few months. You are most welcome. :)
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby TheAnalogSource » Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:33 am

checking out bitperfect and pure music....Jack, does this mean you still use the itunes interface and those 2 are data processing and stream codes that you can plug in to itunes? that's even better because atleast you do not get lost with relearning the interface shifting from one player to another.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby JackD201 » Thu Sep 12, 2013 12:18 pm

Hi Birthday Boy :)

They both run in the background and use the transport and database navigation controls of iTunes. Bitperfect is pretty spartan. Easy to set up, easy to use. Just enable it and you are good to go. Pure Music has metering and more customization options. It's a good thing but not necessarily convenient. I do think the latter sounds better but there is a big price difference, sadly.

I think my bottleneck is my Macbook which is so loaded with junk after 12 years of migration going back to OS 9. :(
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby timber715 » Fri Sep 13, 2013 2:43 am

Can this be included in this thread?
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... ID=M:IFA:t
:?: :tmi: :)
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby Gino » Fri Sep 13, 2013 5:24 am

Looks good. Hope it sounds even better.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby donunus » Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:55 am

Gino wrote:Tested JRiver MC19 (wasapi) and Foobar2000 (default audio). Foobar2000 was more holographic, images are better defined, Plucks and percussion has more attack/bite, bass taught. There is more top sparkle and air. JRiver was less holographic, a bit dry on the metals, overall sound is fuller, bass has more low end punch.

Cosmetics and ease of use go to JRiver. The Gizmo remote for Android works the way I want it. JRiver settings are easy to understand, the interface is polished. Things like searching for album art is too easy. I can understand why people like this app.

That was a quick audition. I'll see how the two compare in the next few days.


I agree with this for the most part. Due to our ears adjusting to different signatures though, foobar seems to be the one that sounds thin and a little harsh after long term listening of JRMC(18). But yah, in a relative sense everything you said is exactly how I hear it because coming from foobar instead of the other way around, JRMC sounds dark and blurry. The only thing I don't know is which one is more correct. The headphones we use would have to be perfect in order for us to know which one is really true and correct.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby timber715 » Sun Sep 15, 2013 1:32 pm

That is a nice view donunus on " depending what you listen to first". But there really shouldn't be a right or wrong in the choices, bottomline is we all get to the same end which is enjoying music...
It really boils down to ones choice and preference. Just like gear choices...
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby donunus » Sun Sep 15, 2013 7:15 pm

When I say "correct", I mean transparent(the most unadulterated signal). Not right as in which one we should prefer.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby hi-fidelity-4-all » Mon Sep 16, 2013 9:50 pm

Hi Jack,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Light Harmonic has just released the 'DaVinci killer'.

The sub-$300 GEEKdac! :o :D

A very successful kickstarter project that closed over the weekend.

Maybe you will be "trading up"?

Regards,
Mark

JackD201 wrote:I use Bitperfect only for convenience when listening to HR albums. Sonically it gets beat up by Pure Music. The latter being more refined, nuanced and dynamic resulting in being more expressive. The only downside of Pure Music is that it is not as responsive to control inputs even with memory play disabled. Both display zero xo distortion if you click between tracks abruptly, something that very rarely happens playing plain old iTunes. As stated before I am reliant on iTunes because to date I have about 10,000 songs from 128kbps in my early days to more recent 24/192. The thought of reordering all the metadata is something that is not what I want or will do not to mention recreating the playlists that have been compiled over the last decade.

I run both from a MAC via USB to two asynch DACs, the TechDAS D7 and the Light Harmonic Da Vinci. The former is a small unit that is very analog sounding from the smoothed camp revealing it's S-D architecture. The latter is a ladder type NOS DAC with analog filters that has more of analog's subtler textures and ambience but also top flight digital Macro dynamics. Choosing between the two can boil down to a matter of taste or system synergy. It is the latter in my opinion that is more flexible in terms of emotional delivery because of its dynamic envelope and greater portrayal of scale differences even if it is less forgiving of poor recordings. The latter ironically is closer to the TechDAS AirForce One table with a Graham Arm, Atlas Cart and Lamm PS. That said the D7 is a third of the price of the Da Vinci and one fourth of the Twin Engine Da Vinci Dual which has dedicated converters for PCM upto 32/384 and DSD. The D7 does "only" up to 24/192 and does DSD via DoP. The Da Vinci is also more sensitive to choice of USB cables. It will glitch with poor cables that don't strictly adhere to the 90ohm standard and fail bandwith tests while the D7 is neigh impreganable. Out of the box the D7 did great with very little improvement within the first 24 hours or so. The Da Vinci took almost 500 hours of break-in. I had no idea that the silk dielectric caps used in them would take longer than teflons. I always thought teflons took the longest time. Guess not.
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby timber715 » Tue Sep 17, 2013 1:21 am

hi-fidelity-4-all wrote:Hi Jack,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Light Harmonic has just released the 'DaVinci killer'.

The sub-$300 GEEKdac! :o :D

A very successful kickstarter project that closed over the weekend.

Maybe you will be "trading up"?

Regards,
Mark


Been following that dac too. An over achieving headphone dac as others would call it.... :D

I don't even think it would come close to the real thing though, but it should be good news to the masses who want to try hi resolution music at a budget... For headphone use of course :rock:

And another dac that does dsd for $150 would be the one from schiit named loki..... :o
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby JackD201 » Tue Sep 17, 2013 1:27 am

I rather think it is good news Mark. We distribute Light Harmonic ;) :) :) :)

My personal unit being built now is the Da Vinci Dual with discreet digital sections for PCM and DSD. 8)

Definitely my Geek will kill my Dual, anywhere away from home that is. :D :D :D
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Re: Which PC based digital player sounds best ?

Postby gheetar » Thu Sep 19, 2013 1:27 am

For me it's Media monkey, best for huge music library, mobile syncing and also has built-in wasapi (exclusive mode). I will never go back to foobar,jriver and itunes anymore :D
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