Computer Audio Asylum

• RE: Just to clarify - cookymonster 13:18:19 07/11/12 (2)
  In Reply to: RE: Just to clarify posted by Charles Hansen on July 11, 2012 at 02:45:39

  Hello Charles,
  My QB 9 has arrived.
  I think I studied the instructions well but I may have made some wrong judgements. Before installing the Thesycon driver I uninstalled the asio4all driver. But I don't know about the other drivers.
  Like the windows driver for the QB 9; the driver for my old Cambridge Audio Dacmagic ? Do they conflict with the Thesycon driver ?
  Then something I may have misunderstood: I use the Album Player for playback. In the instruction page Ayre "recommends" J River and Foobar, but I was not aware that I should choose one of both (and forget about the album player - so wasting a lot of time invested in album art, tags, album and track information).
  Thanks again for the answers and concern.
  
  
  

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  • RE: Just to clarify - Charles Hansen 23:17:38 07/11/12 (1)
    In Reply to: RE: Just to clarify posted by cookymonster on July 11, 2012 at 13:18:19

    Again, I may be giving some less-than-perfect advice. I have actually heard a lot of good things about Album Player software and it may be fine for your needs. I doubt that it will cause any conflicts with the Thesycon driver, while I know that the ASIO4ALL driver will.
    
    The problem with Album Player is that its capabilities are relatively limited. As the name suggests, it plays albums, which is great. What is not so great is that most users also want to rip albums, transfer the files to iPods, compress to MP3 if necessary, possibly convert between formats and so forth. I looked at Album Player a while ago, and while I know that it will do some of these things, it wouldn't do all of the things that I wanted from a music player.
    
    The problem is that there are literally hundreds of music player programs out there. We can't possibly provide setup instructions for all of them. Many of them have flaws that limit their performance. For example Window Media Player will only output Direct Sound. iTunes on a Mac is fine, but is no fun at all one a Windows machine (in my opinion). It takes a huge amount of installation space on your hard drive as it automatically installs many other auxiliary programs. (To get an understanding of this, look on the Support section of the Apple website for the instructions to uninstall iTunes on a Windows machine. There are at least four separate steps that have to be performed in a specific order.) In my opinion, it simply clogs a Windows machine up with a lot of unnecessary software.
    
    So it's not really a case of "there are only two music player software programs that will work with the QB-9". Instead, we spent a lot of time looking at different programs and trying to find the best ones on an overall basis. For Windows, the two that we thought stood out above the crowd were J.River and Foobar, although for different reasons, and therefore best for different users.
    
    J.River has a *very* complete feature set, and everything comes with the player. It will even play (and I believe even rip) Blu-ray discs. They are constantly improving the program and adding new features also. I thought it was much better than the competition back with version 14. Now they are at version 17 and there is an even greater advantage. There are only two real problems with J.River:
    
    1) It costs $50, instead of being free like most playback software. (There is a free version with no video and some limitations to the audio playback, however.)
    
    2) The program is so complete with so many features that it can be confusing to configure everything for the best performance. However, they have an online forum that is monitored by many J.River experts, including the lead developer.
    
    I have never heard of anybody who purchased J.River and then later regretted it. They also offer a 30-day free trial so that you can make sure that this is the best software for you. Overall it is simply outstanding.
    
    As far as Foobar goes, it doesn't have nearly the ease of setup of J.River. It will require a fair amount of time to set things up the way you want them. The online forum is through Hydrogen Audio, and they strictly forbid any discussion of sound quality. HA's philosophy is "bits are bits" and there is no way that a music player can affect the sound. But Foobar is quite customizable, and many third party developers have created many interesting add-ons. Finally Foobar is a totally free download, which is nice for many people.
    
    I'm not saying that these are the only two Windows music players worth using. But I am saying that these are the only two fully-featured Windows music players that we felt offered enough merits that compelled us to include setup instructions for on our website.
    
    At this point the main thing to do is to get the machine working. Now that the unit has been repaired (Audiac had an outstanding service department, and Michael is a extremely competent technician), I am confident that uninstalling the ASIO4ALL driver will solve your problems. At that point you can try many different music player software to find the one that is right for your.
    
    Best regards,
    Charles Hansen
    

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    • RE: Just to clarify - cookymonster 16:08:38 07/15/12 (0)
      In Reply to: RE: Just to clarify posted by 1191 on July 11, 2012 at 23:17:38

      Hello Charles,
      
      I downloaded J River trial version, using wasapi event style.
      Just like you mentioned, it is very complete.
      Too in my opinion. A lot of features. Nice, like the theatre display.
      But for playback, the Album Player is much more easy, "productive".
      I alreay spent a lot of time in customising the interface>
      But for the cover art in combination with the actual running paylist, I still prefer the Album player. But sill more than 20 days to go with the trial version of J River. I might change opinion.
      
      I remarked that I did not do one of the instructions on the Ayre setup page. I didn't make my player take exlusive use of the DAC.
      Could that make the Thesycon driver instability ???
      

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