Believe it or not, I enjoy reading your post. You write with clarity and eloquence. I contend that the bulk of the sound quality comes from the DAC, amplifier, cables, speakers, and headphones.
All the music player does is convert the recording data in digital format to the hardware to reproduce the music as close to the original sound as possible. So, I always strive to buy the best DAC, amplifier, and in-ear-monitor affordable to my budget. I will then work to upgrade the music player as technology in software improves.
If you spent a large sum on the hardware you could afford, I think it is an excellent way to start even though you did it to make the “famous music player” sounds good. Imagine if your hardware can make an inferior music player sounds good; how much better your system sounds if you upgrade the music player.
Perhaps, AS is the music player that makes your hardware sings much more beautiful according to your hearing ability. If that is the case, you probably see AS as reasonable despite being subscription-based.
In my case, AS sounds very good to my ear. But it is not a significant improvement over Audirvana v3.5 or even TuneBrowser, a music player produced in Japan which costs about $30 for a master license. I will pay for the full version of TuneBrowser if it comes with a mobile app and the ability to integrate Qobuz streaming. But it does not.
So, paying AS a subscription fee at this stage is not worthwhile for my hearing ability; but it is probably worth every penny in your case. And I suspect you won’t be the only ones who appreciate AS sound quality.
Saw that also. Changes appeared on the screen after update but did not make any screenshot. Could be great to have the change log somewhere from @Antoine
It’s so interesting to see the varied responses to AS and the comparisons with earlier iterations.
I, for one, find AS more engaging , especially with DSD but overall from 44up, transperant, spaced, full and where does that bass come from. I hear the lower end of piano like never before.
As I say, many responses.
Some small niggles which i will y with and wait for time (Damien et al) to manage.
You are right, Dude. 3.5 has another sound than Studio. It seems to me that in 3,5 the Izotope filter with for me specific settings is no longer there in Studio, which have Sox and a for me new filter variant, but no Izotope.
In 3.5 Izotope delivers a more analogue sound than Sox.
Syrinx
Thank you, I shall give it a second spin with DSD. But I am sceptical it could be better than 3.5, and I know from PCM that it could be worse. There is the possibility of upsampling to DSD, if you are on to something, but my Holo DAC is optimised for NOS PCM. I wish the people who once wrote BitPerfect for the Mac had come up with a better DSD solution.
I agree with you, the articulation between the two hands works well, without loss of coherence.
I have noticed it also worked well for groups in choirs which are more distinguishable and textured.
Shame all this is marred by so many rough edges…
Still, when it works, it sounds good!
My experience is that AS downloaded fast to my MacBook Air, set itself up and imported my local library faultlessly.
Playback via Raspberry Pi 3b with RopieeeXL on the micro SD card, through to the digital input of a Node 2i sounds not only different to version 3.5 but also more detailed, spacious and airy through my kit and ears with instruments sounding more natural.
I listened for hours last night to a complete mix of music types which represent my own library, and albums from Tidal and only stopped when I absolutely had to.
I will be subscribing although like many I’d prefer a one-off fee and I’m hoping that the new look and especially sound will not be changed and I also hope that difficulties being experienced by others of us will soon be overcome.
I am still struggling with this. With my CXN v2 NO files will stream over upnp. With my OPPO 205 only 24 bit files (44.1 and above) OR forced upsampled play fine. Over usb no problem with either machine. There was no problem with 3.5 so I guess a fix should be easy as they only need to replicate what is in the old player.
If I recall my rumors from years ago correctly, the person or people who once wrote Bit Perfect for the Mac ripped off Damien’s work on the old open source version of Audirvana, essentially forcing him to close the source.
2 tentatives de transfert de collection échouées.
Puis 4 jours d’importation et d’analyse des fichiers (qui ajoute un tag à chacun des fichiers audios à raison de 1000 fichiers par jour)
A ce jour j’ai encore rien pu lire, et mon ordinateur est monopolisé 24/7. A ce rythme il y en a encore pour plus d’une semaine pour importer ma collection …
That has the ring of truth. Or the pre-ring. No wonder BitPerfect sounded good. But Audirvana did the same thing and better with FLAC and DSD–on a Mac. I wish streaming didn’t exist, it is going to bankrupt musicians, especially now that with Apple not raising prices for lossless, they’ll all have to split $9.99/month, from the second-string rapper’s entourage to the symphony triangle player.
Yes. And it is adding those tags to your files without your permission or without even letting you know. Damien claimed in another post that the music tracks where NOT affected, but clearly they are, as is already established/proven in other posts.
This is how a virus or malware is expected to behave (altering your private files without permission), but Audirvana should not do this. AS is adding MusicBrainz Id’s to the files. A lot of those Id’s are incorrect as well. I have 4 TB of music files. Most of them are changed by Audirvana. My NAS backup program and my Cloud Backup program are running overtime now, to backup all the files Audirvana changed. And how do I correct 4 TB of music files? By hand? I can’t even restore a backup, because they are already affected by Audirvana too.
I agree that it was ill advised on Damien’s part to organise the analysis of files in this fashion, but it would help to keep things in perspective. I am sure you know that Audirvana is neither a malware or a virus.
May I remember all that when Replaygain became available on Audirvana, no one complained about information being written in our music files. We probably accepted it as we all understood the value of it.
MusicBrainz added value is, as has been well explained elsewhere, quite questionable.
The fact is, we know our music files much better than any of the tagging services I know off.
Like many, I have bought download music from a number of suppliers over the years, and I have been shocked by their cavalier attitude to tagging metadata, and always had to mend the mistakes and inconsistencies in albums they dared charging us good money for.
