Bit Perfect

[nbaptista]

Is it important use an audio player that has support to bit perfect?I´m asking this because I like iTunes inetrface but is not bit perfect on Win 7,so should I look another audio players like Foobar that are bit perfect?Will I get improvement on the sound?

[jantheman]

Bit perfect or not bit perfect, I would like to see someone that is able to prove either way. 'Bit Perfect' is a fairly flexible definition as well. Although bits may be recieved in the correct order, there may be slight variations in timing (Jitter) or amplitude of the digital signal. Some, it seems would still call this 'Bit Perfect', personally I think if the recieved data stream isn't EXACTLY the same as the sent data stream than its not perfect. Others say different.......:sofa: Are these variations audible....thats a whole new topic....
To my knowledge, the only ways to check are with some serious test equipment which few if any will have access to. If you are lucky and have a weiss dac (maybe very few others as well) that have a test mode that will show if a special audio file if being recieved as , what they call bit perfect (bits recieved in the correct order etc) but as far as I know it doesnt show if there are timing errors or variations in amplitude of the data stream.
While it is something to aspire to, I would guess that its almost impossible to check for the average user and on that basis I would say DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT.

My best advice for what its worth, is to try different audio players until you find one that suits, sounds the best and has an interface that you like. While iTunes is popular, I have found that I get best results with J River Media Centre using WASAPI Event Style playback mode. I have tried others including Foobar and MonkeyTunes but on W7, J River seems to work best for me. It's available on 30 day trial so it wont cost you to give it a go. HTH.

[WAD62]

I'm happy with winamp, as I've now mastered (or think I have) it's myriad of configuration settings.

I've tried Foobar, and that also seems very good, it's out of the box settings are a little better than winamp's, and it's a little more straightforward to use.

But bit perfect in windows terms is all about bypassing the Kmixer etc.

There's some good stuff on this thread...

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10674

[Vincent Kars]

True bit perfect playback is that the audio file is send unaltered to the audio device.
Bit depth, sample rate, number of channels and the format should remain unaltered.
This of course requires that the hardware matches the properties of the audio source exactly.

By design DS (win default) resamples everything to what is set in the audio panel.
It also applies dither to the signal.
As you are running Win7 an alternative is using WASAPI.
WASAPI talks straight to the sound card bypassing the mixer.
You need a media player supporting this interface.
My personal preference is J River Media Center

A bit more on bit perfect playback: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Intro/SQ/BitPerfectPlayback.htm

My experience with JRMC:
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Players/MC14/MC14_intro.htm