Thank you very much Antoine! I want to congratulate you for the excellent work you have done with Audirvāna Origin!!!
I have been using Audirvāna for years and I was happy with Audirvāna 3.5 (A3.5), especially with its sound quality. It certainly has a number of problems with library handling, but nothing that is so problematic that it is not more than made up for by its sound quality.
Until a few days ago I hadn’t decided to try Audirvāna Origin (AO), as I had read that it had several problems, where the main concern was the metadata handling of the files. The last thing I wanted was to have any problems that would jeopardise the integrity of my library and its metadata, which I have built up carefully over several years.
Well, I finally decided that I could set up an isolated environment and do a test, thus avoiding risks of any kind with my files. For that I downloaded AO on a different computer than the one I use for listening to music and for testing, I copied about 1/3 of the files I normally use to a new external hard disk. This way, in a totally isolated environment I could see what was going on with the metadata of my files. After a few days of testing, I was able to verify that I had not had any problems, as the files had not been modified in any way. After these days of testing I downloaded AO on the Mac mini that I have connected to my audio system and that I use exclusively for listening to music. I must say that the migration from A3.5 to AO for me was absolutely problem-free, where even the huge number of smartlists I had were migrated perfectly to AO. The whole migration, about 12TB of music files (approx. 8.500 albums with 130.000 tracks, where more than half of them are PCM files in Hi-Res and DSD), took some hours, but as I said, it was totally smooth, without any problem.
When choosing a player I have always privileged the sound, which for me is the most important thing and is the reason why I have been using Audirvāna for so many years. For this reason, the sound quality was the first thing I compared after installing AO on my Mac mini. I must say that, at least on my audio system, I can clearly distinguish that the sound of A3.5 is noticeably different from that of AO and I like AO much better. I know that the definition of better sound is always controversial, so in order not to get into discussions of any kind, I will just say that for ME and in MY audio system I consider the sound of AO to be MUCH better than A3.5. I am very sorry for having taken 1 year to decide to try AO, as I lost 1 full year without enjoying the excellent sound of AO.
Regarding the handling of the library and Remote App, I consider that they certainly still have several things to improve, but I imagine and hope that it will get better and better as the days go by.
In short, I’ve been using AO for 1 week now and so far I’m more than happy! Thank you very much!
