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Posts: 144
Location: Hollister, CA
Joined: November 20, 2005
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Posted by jaydacus (A) on April 16, 2017 at 19:51:19
In Reply to: RE: Got a lot of music on a 128GB USB Stick.... posted by Skip Pack on April 16, 2017 at 11:21:28:
"I don't understand the mentality that the more you "tweak" something, the better is will sound."
Since a system is made of many parts, I feel a need to optimize my whole system when I hear what I perceive to be a sound quality flaw. I do believe that no system is perfect, and that virtually no system cannot be improved through systematic investigation of setup, even if the hardware is unchanged. My amps and speakers may sound better with a certain adjustment where yours may sound worse. In a complex system there are no absolutes.
As I can only change one component or aspect of one component at at time, I try to understand where within the system I might make a change that might yield an improvement. Currently, since digital audio is still evolving fairly quickly, parameters such as players, player settings, power supplys, and digital communication (USB, SPDIF, ethernet, etc.) offer handles for optimization not just of that part of the system, but the whole system.
I usually to do not expect to hear and improvment with most changes. But, every once and a while, I get an incremental improvement.
"Would is not be reasonable to assume that the developers of these audio apps, especially one can only be had with forced donation, would put their best foot forward and make the default settings and least reasonably good?"
Reasonabley good? Yes! But not as good as it might be when tailored to my whole system, and my ears (old but still OK, not great).
"I have swapped out the kernel, disabled unused outputs, etc. and heard only minimal, probably psychosomatic, differences."
True of most changes for me as well. I leave those that I believe make sense, such as decreasing CPU load, as long as I, at least, hear no degradation, and I keep the few changes that seem to help sonically.
"I don't understand what the differences are between Volumio, Moode, Rune, and Piss Poor(Pi Core) are, but they each sound different from one another in ways that no amount of settings changes will produce."
I suspect that Volumio, Moode, and Rune, all using MPD, can be tweaked to sound almost alike. Many differences arise from differences in the kernal version, the MPD version, and ALSA differences. The three players are probably never on the same versions or default installation configuration. PcP and Moode using Squeezelite are probably subject to the same versional issues.
Plus, I enjoy playing with things occasionally (and am happy to stop for months at a time). Sounds like you find this fiddling less rewarding overall. I think it comes down to personal differences.
Skip
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