Am I deaf or what...Music Players.... [Archive]

jantheman

10-02-2011, 09:43

Ok...I have been trying different audio players on my mac mini, Audirvana, Pure Music and Amarra Junior. You know what, I can't tell the difference between any of them and plain old iTunes.
So far auditioning was through headphones...time of day and all that. I'll give it a go through speakers today but I really dont hold out any hope that I'll be able to tell which is which.
If I still can't tell the difference, I dont know what to think...are my ears really that bad. Are these music players just some more audiophoolery.....I don't know.
I'll have a better idea by the end of the day...till then....i'll annoy the neighbours.

WAD62

10-02-2011, 09:48

Ok...I have been trying different audio players on my mac mini, Audirvana, Pure Music and Amarra Junior. You know what, I can't tell the difference between any of them and plain old iTunes.
So far auditioning was through headphones...time of day and all that. I'll give it a go through speakers today but I really dont hold out any hope that I'll be able to tell which is which.
If I still can't tell the difference, I dont know what to think...are my ears really that bad. Are these music players just some more audiophoolery.....I don't know.
I'll have a better idea by the end of the day...till then....i'll annoy the neighbours.

On windows different players can vary due to the codec, and or drivers being used for the output device, not sure about macs though.

What are you playing in through, a headphone DAC/amplifier?

jantheman

10-02-2011, 10:03

Will, I was playing through Mac > Dac > headphone amp >phones

WAD62

10-02-2011, 10:46

Will, I was playing through Mac > Dac > headphone amp >phones

Perhaps I should leave this for an apple expert...

If this were a PC and I was using a USB out, it would be better to bypass the generic Windows USB audio codec (it always upsamples to 48k), and install one specific to the device, or ASIO4ALL etc. Then you can select that as your preferred output in your music player, thus bypassing the central default.

I presume one can do something like this with a mac, best wait for someone who knows what they're talking about with apples. ;)

Edit; From your signature it looks like your MAC has an optical out, I spotted a thread on the subject a couple of days ago...time for my coat I think

jantheman

10-02-2011, 11:45

I was expecting this to take all day but it was obvious from the start...Nothing, Nada, Zilch.
As much as I wanted to hear differences, I couldnt, neither could SWMBO and shes got a good ear. (deaf as a post in the other though.:lol:)
So what have I achieved...well I've saved a few quid and also kept the system less complicated, iTunes is still bog standard.
Oh well...back to the drawing board...

That may sound like I think I have a problem....

No, theres nothing wrong, I was just trying to wring out and extra 0.00001% of performance but FAILED MISERABLY :lol:

Steve H

10-02-2011, 19:41

Ray, what's your view of Asynchronous USB? I hear a difference between that and toslink or RCA outputs using iTunes and, sadly, I do hear a difference between Pure Music and iTunes. The other reason I have for bypassing iTunes is the sampling rate issue.

Steve

Mr Pig

10-02-2011, 19:49

My son uses something called... something monkey, I can't remember, and it sounds better than iTunes.

Jonboy

10-02-2011, 19:57

My son uses something called... something monkey, I can't remember, and it sounds better than iTunes.

MediaMonkey? (http://www.mediamonkey.com/)

Mr Pig

10-02-2011, 21:29

MediaMonkey?

That's it. Faster, slicker than iTunes and sounds better.

jantheman

11-02-2011, 08:44

Async USB...no real views either way. I haven't heard an async USB DAC. The nearest I have got to it was with a HiFace (on Windows and Mac). I sold it........On Windows it was not as good as the S/PDIF output of my Xonar soundcard and on Mac not as good as Toslink. Sounded harsh / too 'in your face' to me. There is a school of thought that attenuators on the HiFace do a lot for the sound due to its high O/P ...I couldnt be bothered...as far as I'm concerned it should be right straight out of the box
The spec for S/PDIF is 0.5V PP not the 1.75 PP as on the HIFace. Seems strange as the Evo is 0.5V PP.

Being that Media Monkey is a Windows application, I CAN hear the difference on Windows. I find iTunes is rubbish, MediaMonkey a lot better but Jriver better still. I CAN hear differences in Windows but for the life of me, I couldnt hear any difference in OSX with the apps I tried.