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In Reply to: RE: player for windows computer posted by bertucciandy@yahoo.com on April 07, 2014 at 12:28:06
bertucciandy@yahoo.com:
I think as you can tell from the responses, it really depends. There is no universally agreed upon "best sounding player" for Windows (or Mac for that matter). In fact, some like myself fail to see how programs make any difference at all so long as they're functioning without buffer issues when used with proper drivers like ASIO, WASAPI, or Kernel Streaming. That is of course, if you're just interested in straight forward bit-perfect output and not aiming for DSP upsampling, etc.
I do of course have preferences based on esthetics and features. I mostly use foobar for basic playback and for the flexibility of plug-ins like DTS decoding, reading CUE sheets, even the occasional DSD decoding.
JRiver works well for other things like DSD playback either natively with ASIO or DoP, PCM to DSD "upsampling", and the Gizmo app for Android works fast for music selection.
I just wouldn't say either JRiver or foobar sound better when playing back with the same driver (like ASIO) though...
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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
Follow Ups:
... you would need to change in your approach, to give yourself a chance to hear and understand what others are talking about. That includes your system, of course, and in particular using quality speakers as an alternative to headphones.
The fact that you continue to ignore these explanations tells us that it's an agenda that's important to you, not the experience - and the least of all, the truth.
Haven't been around here for a while, but being stuck at home with a cold, I dropped by late last night, and stumbled upon this thread. It just so happens that I've spent the past couple weeks sorting out my own preferences with regards to software players. Between JRiver 19, Foobar 2000, and PlayPcmWin, my preferences fall in this order (with sound quality being, naturally, my primary concern):Favorite: PlayPcmWin
This doesn't have some of the interface conveniences I enjoyed with Foobar, but I do feel it sounds better, and I'll live, quite happily, with its little inconveniences.
Former favorite: Foobar 2000
Still not a terrible compromise, if greater convenience of interface features is someone's preference. Not only does it wipe the floor with JRiver in terms of sound quality, but I also much prefer the utility of its interface over the bloated, total "style before substance" of JRiver. Whenever I switched from JRiver to Foobar, the feeling was always one of relief. That says something. Something important. That feeling of relief was even a bit more pronounced when switching from JRiver to PlayPcmWin.
Least favorite: JRiver
I really dislike this one. With so many people using JRiver, I thought I'd give it another try, just to figure out why it seemed so popular (was even stupid enough to pay for it). With its under water, synthesizer-like sound (more on settings for the comparisons a bit later), I found it, always, very annoying (and no, as someone assumed during a private conversation about this, my JRiver is not malfunctioning -- it's just crap).
When it comes to choosing music to play, I don't care about album art, fancy graphics, links to commercial sites (I keep my dedicated music computer disconnected from the Internet while playing local music files), etc., and I don't want an all-in-one "media center" that wants to grab every sort of media file on the computer for itself (not really an issue with my dedicated music computer, as all it has is music files, but why have all that unnecessary bloat, anyway?). I also found JRiver's playlist creation quite clumsy compared to Foobar's. Of course, none of that was much of a concern of mine once I spent some time (too much time) listening to JRiver. It just doesn't sound good to me.
Honestly, it doesn't take much time at all to distinguish differences, and to form preferences. It's either doing something right, or it's not. Beyond that, it's matters of degree -- also easy to distinguish.
My comparisons here aren't just about three players "against each other". Instead, my reference is always live, acoustic music, which is convenient for me, as it's what I've spent my entire life doing -- both performing and listening to others. That said, while no stereo system has yet been able to fool me into believing that there are musicians playing in the room rather than a stereo system (and I don't expect to ever be fooled by this, so it's not my first concern), I also don't expect "perfection" from any software music players. Both Foobar and PlayPcmWin offer a distinct advantage over JRiver in terms of getting closer to instrumental, vocal, and acoustic venue timbral accuracy (at least on the stereo systems available to me at the moment -- see my profile for details). While comparing, I even used recordings of individual players/instruments, and vocalists with whom I'm intimately familiar (friends and colleagues, and even some of my own recordings -- with and without those particular friends and colleagues).
I don't know why so-called claimed "bit perfect" transmission of a digital signal from computer to external DAC can sound so different between various software players, but there it is -- distinct differences in final sound do exist. I'm not enough of a geek to spend much time wondering about the technical hows and whys. I just want to listen to music, and I'll choose the methods that sound best to me. I'm glad there are geeks working on these issues, as many of us certainly do benefit from their efforts (in some cases, anyway).
The basic settings in all three players were as similar as I could manage, according to the specific options offered by each...
WASAPI event style, no upsampling, no DSP, memory play.
Most of my music files are WAV, ripped from my CD collection, along with a few downloaded 24/96 recordings.
I'm of the opinion that if a stereo system can do a "decent enough" job of reproducing recorded acoustic instruments and/or voices in acoustic performance venues without eliciting too much annoyance, it will likely also do a decent enough job of reproducing music that is originally produced using electric instruments, sound reinforced instruments and vocals, etc.
I've tested all three of these software players on all my stereo systems (two complete amp/speaker systems, headphone system with variations, and three different external DACS -- again, see system details in my profile). Every time, the results were the same -- no question.
Now, a bit about how the free, open source PlayPcmWin became not only my favorite player, but also my most expensive one! :) ...
Until my recent discovery of PlayPcmWin, I was getting away with using a little 32 bit (Win 7) netbook computer as my music server. With PlayPcmWin's memory play method of putting the entire current playlist into memory before playing, I found that while the maximum allowed 2 GB of RAM on the little machine was enough to handle a full album of WAV files at once, when it came to albums of 24/96 files, I had to split them up into two playlists, with all the rather clumsy "changing of the guard" in-between, breaking up the performance. I couldn't have that, so I had to get a computer that could handle more RAM (I already have two other laptops that each have 8 GB RAM, but I still needed a dedicated music computer).
On the local Craigslist, I found a computer identical to the one I use for most traveling (12" ASUS 1215B-PU17), so I knew that with 8 GB RAM, it could handle my music server needs. Got it all set up (Windows 7 reasonably optimized, unnecessary programs removed, unneeded services stopped, etc.), and $250 later, it's working wonderfully, and sounding very good with PlayPcmWin.
Some basic conclusions:
I don't know why, but music players do make a clear difference.
I don't understand why anyone would prefer JRiver, if sound quality is the primary concern.
I will happily endure a bit of interface inconvenience if the sound quality is better (I prefer Foobar's interface, but PlayPcmWin sounds better).
I didn't mind spending an unexpected $250 to enjoy the benefits of the free, open source, and somewhat interface-convenience-challenged PlayPcmWin. Music is sounding quite good through my stereo systems with this setup, and I'm enjoying it.
Edits: 04/12/14 04/13/14
"In fact, some like myself fail to see how programs make any difference at all so long as they're functioning without buffer issues when used with proper drivers like ASIO, WASAPI, or Kernel Streaming."
This has been explained many times in this forum. I suggest that you read John Swenson's posts. If you are looking for a hard project that would be quite useful you might try figuring out how to cobble up some hardware and software that could measure these effects.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Yes Tony,
This has been discussed many times. And by John and others...That's all nice and good but just words and theoretical possibilities at best. So what?
Show us something to demonstrate that either there are plausible differences of some kind in the analogue output from a good DAC or controlled tests to show that people can pick out the differences among software players. Please also include description of the computer used (CPU, RAM, motherboard...), OS version, driver. Because I can't; and I've spent hours looking and listening to this. Until then, I advise the OP to try out a few players for himself and think of what his needs are.
Enjoy some music along the way of course. And I'd love to hear what the OP ultimately decides on.
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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
Edits: 04/12/14
I recall measurements made by cics at one point during the CMP/Cplay project that related jitter sideband spacing in an analog spectrum plot to player buffer size.
Many people have conducted experiments that they considered sufficiently "controlled" and thereby convinced themselves that player software can create audible differences. (I am one of these.)
No experiments or measurements can convince a die-hard skeptic to change his beliefs.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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