ReClock chitchat

[leeperry]

not playing in bit exact mode with the stock version of VLC (for audiophilic needs).

bypassing KS on XP is not idiophilic, it's common sense...anyway, if foobar can play it you're saved!

 

[VPhile jr.]

That was a sick joke, right?
I don't need [Foo]L[bars] and KMP-stolenware sort of products, these quality FLAC streams can be played on VLC, which could be tweaked to (near) bit exact perfomance (I'm still experimenting with that PortAudio output in VLC). As a last restort Winamp-ASIO4ALL-Otachan's plugin setup plays these streams as well, but it pops up some german written error codes and can't be controlled anymore (sort of semi-crash), but the music continues to stream in the backgroud, oh well

 

[leeperry]

yes, PotPlayer and KMP are stealing code from MPC and ffdshow...but it should only matter to the ppl who coded them IMHO.

MPC-HC is such a failure on so many levels...the damn thing can't even close properly for many ppl(including me), it remains as a system process and needs a hard kill to vanish for good.

KMP plain works, its genius coder decided to translate MPC's C++ code to Delphi for many components(there's even some buggy HSLS code from Haali in KMP...buggy code is where Haali shines anyway )....but why should an end-user care? nothing comes close to these 2 players....besides, many ppl watch rips downloaded from the internet(I don't of course!), so how is that a big deal that KMP uses some stolen GPL code but perfectly fine to watch movies for free?

so you want full bitrate FLAC internet radios, but are willing to play them through KMixer? I must be missing something here

besides winamp should be fine, german is such a beautiful language in its own right.

 

[VPhile jr.]

?As mentioned, for these FLAC streams I use Winamp/Asio4all-Otachan and it's bit exact (although I'm not fan of the audio renderer inside), there might be a way how to enable it in VLC as well, still exploring the PortAudio output modul, +recompile with ASIO SDK library. And in case, I'm bored anyway, you know the score with players and Kmixer (all sliders up, theme sounds off, background processes off, volume controlled only via master slider/<10%, external amp) you get the least damage from these extra layers of code dealing with sound inside winmachine..

Sometimes I just hate this stuff:

-players/renderers with different sound even when claiming native/bit exact output
-each player supporting haphazzardly completely different set of codecs
-no frontends at all or bloated frontends instead
-no web server - remote interface or halfbaked implementation
-all that above chaos multiplied by different cross platform functionality (Winmachine XP/7, MacOS, Linux)
..

=> this business is one giant mess, and I wonder we ever get the ultimate "knows it all" kind of player,
I'm certainly not for uniformity, but the current state is ridiculous. Perhaps sometimes $10k plunked down for your
PS Audio PW (DAC + Transport) + Power Plant Premier AC Regenerator => finally reaching the state of (relative) tranquility, hah

 

[leeperry]

they should just licence Reclock in popcorn's and we'd all call it a day w/ the pesky HTPC's

and BTW, even TMT was caught stealing MPC HC's splitters I think...they forgot to change the GUID

I don't believe in bit-perfect DS...I know some ppl say it can be done, good for them.

 

[VPhile jr.]

Speaking about audio frontends, what we didn't touched upon yet is the viability of Squeezbox Server (formely Center), which is a free streaming server (based on linux audio player daemon) with remote interface over the web/LAN, so remote control via the same kind of internet tablet/java enabled browser described previously. The server itself works on Linux, Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, BSD. So, you need 3parts: Server + Slave (headless client player) + SqueezOS/Play (GUI frontend).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_Server http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Old_Man's_Index
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezeSlave#Linux_build_instructions also Windows build instructions incl. *ASIO
http://sourceforge.net/projects/softsqueeze/files/squeezeslave/squeezeslave-0.9.95/ looks as already compiled, hah?

Also Minimalist shell player (Wasapi/Asio) now called StealthAudioPlayer
http://andy-audioplayer.blogspot.com/2008/12/minimalist-wasapi-memory-player_23.html
usefull audio format convertor utility SoX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoX

3rd party hardware (NAS storage, like Buffalo LinkStation or other FreeNAS capable):
http://forums.slimdevices.com/forumdisplay.php?f=18

(*?Now, the issue is the 3rd part hw audio player, clearly HTPC would be the best option, but that's the same trap as before, it must be bit perfect with majority of codecs and audio output/drivers)

Logitech's $300 remote ported as freeware to windows already in 2008, so theoretically also doable for PPC handhelds platform
(didn't check that yet): http://www.itwriting.com/blog/471-trying-out-squeezecenter-and-jive.html
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Old_Man's_Index (Jive) and other links
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezePlay_Applets btw. Jive has become part of SqueezeOS/Play
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezeOS
--
E.g. this guy is feeding Emu 0404 USB from the Squeez Center @ 24bit/192kHz..
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-based/93315-linux-audio-way-go-145.html#post2038476
Hm, I've got a free partion on my ATOM 330 for experimental OS install, may give it a try eventually..

 

[leeperry]

ah yes! I forgot about this one: http://andy-audioplayer.blogspot.com/2008/12/minimalist-wasapi-memory-player_23.html
none of my soundcards were doing ASIO up to now, so I didn't try it...but the Musiland 02 does(god knows if they pay the fee to Steinberg ), so I'll definitely give it a shot!
I like when he says: "The main feature of this player is that it does not have a GUI interface. I intentionally do not do any gui for this player. I strongly believe that any interaction with any part of the OS influences the sound."

playing an audio file on windows is far more complicated that it would appear...there's a PDF where the cPlay coder says that you want to underclock your CPU, unplug your ODD, use a SSD or NAS to avoid increasing EMI/RFI/PSU jitter(a HDD makes it go up the roof, it's been measured by ppl I know).

quite honestly, I very much like how Reclock sounds...and many ppl on head-fi do too! it definitely doesn't feel like placebo to me, the difference against foobar is way too big.

indeed Linux would save you from the windows audio stack bloat.

 

[VPhile jr.]

ah yes! I forgot about this one: http://andy-audioplayer.blogspot.com/2008/12/minimalist-wasapi-memory-player_23.html

Glad, you noticed this hidden treasure, StealthAudioPlayer. It all started as Vista/W7, now works with XP as well, you can try ASIO4ALL v2 driver then! Put this strange un-GUI into simple preliminary test, it even plays well with my set of vintage PCs with onboard audio (+ quality headphones), going to try source better audio hardware for weekend..

?SQ? You ask me? Hm, ehm, well simply fell of the chair on Susanna and the Magical Orchestra (CD 2004), they just suddenly came to visit me in person from Norway. Later tried also some Bach classic, the sound of spinet was like drilling into your hypothalamus. I'm looking forward to some FLAC spinets from that little guy, Amadeus of Salzburg, that's gonna rock!

CPU utilization during playback almost zero, mem usage toll was according to source quality of audio file (and its duration), usually FLACs didn't take more than 60Megs per track.. I got the feeling why PS Audio and other big honchos play only from memmory buffer/lense instead of noisy&vibrating&chipinfested hdd, hah

This player is definately not placebo and it should be reportedly sounding even better on W7 machines..
The install and controls are easy but totaly batch crazy. Not saying it's better than ReClock yet,
but definately better than most of the top players out there, this should be way above foo_L_barism

PS according to blog's comment section - SqueezSlave client /port could be eventually done with this player..

 

[leeperry]

well, memory playback is not the be all/end all of windows audio music IMO...quite frankly, you can set foobar to cache the files in RAM...and it sounds even worse than from HDD, hah!

I've compared many times, it's just WORSE.

 

[el Filou]

they should just licence Reclock in popcorn's and we'd all call it a day w/ the pesky HTPC's

Huh ?
Somehow I don't see why a PCH would need ReClock in the first place as ReClock has been created to fix problems specific to the PC platform.
If I'm not mislead, PCH and the like use a single chip that does everything from decoding to output, except the UI for which they have a small CPU on the side.
Do you think standalone media players like PCH have clock problems as bad as PCs ?

 

[VPhile jr.]

Performed head to head comparison between headless players, that's right.
As described and promised in #408 & #406 posts, installed over home network and winXP machines:

Squeeze Server + Slave (headless client player) + SqueezePlay (GUI frontend).

All worked nicely with ASIO4ALL ver2 support out of the box, didn't need to recompile anything (as feared). Overall performance was very smooth, in terms of SQ output from their stock headless player (Slave), the outcome was certainly above my anticipation, so very good, comparatively speaking all major players blown away. And I haven't had time for any recommended standard or even "aftermarket" tweaks yet.

Now comes the kicker, after some A-B sessions, it's apparent from the first seconds of each track and could be safely concluded that Andy's StealthAudioPlayer adds another SQ layer way above that, simply chilling experience (with quality audio masters), it will be very impressive if he finishes the upgrades to offer it as alt. headless player within the Squeeze Universe. Although as he fears adding any new threads needed for the client-server communication might adversely affect the excellent sound performance.

In any case, we can be happy campers just right now, as we can have this top sound via ordinary batch/drar&drop/cue methods without any GUIs, media libraries, frotends..

-
The only negative experience with Squeeze so far? The Slave player (ASIO ver) posted decoding errorss over some normal/low bit rate/128mp3 streams, so switching between music libray FLAC playback and internet radios needed restart of the Slave. But I was running nightly builds of all these applications, so this could be a non issue later on.. And if not you can always run the radio streams outside this frontend anyway..

[edit]
This is known cross-platform bug in server version 7.4, since 7.3 has no probs while rapidly changing local flacs and internet streams. Some even suggest 7.4 server was deliberately nocked by the Logitech devs as to supress potential 3rd party hardware players, which could easily use with headless SqueezeSlave any generic hardware..
!links and development in this bug:> https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14740

[edit] Also, the issue is complicated by the fact that SqueezeSlave is currently limited to *44.1kHz max, you go above that and it just hangs, SqueezePlay seems working though (?!), the server protocol should go uto 96kHz ..
* http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@lists.slimdevices.com/msg131519.html

=> so as expected it's several bugs/limitations conspiring at once
--

Interactive:
The screen shot is an 80x4 command prompt running squeezeslave-0.9-119.exe -r15 -D -w78 ///spikes on CPU - don't likeey
Key mappings are listed in the --help/-h information.
Display not for asio ver. as of now?

 

[leeperry]

Do you think standalone media players like PCH have clock problems as bad as PCs ?

why wouldn't they? do they use a hard masterclock like Reclock?

Squeeze Server + Slave (headless client player) + SqueezePlay (GUI frontend).

not on windows I guess? anyway, yesterday I found a link where the guy said that audio on windows was tough because the stupid OS is not meant for realtime AT ALL.

I remember BeOS, they said it'd be a fully realtime oriented OS...supposedly fantastic for multimedia, m$ is trying to catch up w/ HPET on Vista/7...maybe W8 mid-2011 will nail it down.

someday I will have to switch from XP, but if there's a new OS every 18 months...I might just take my time

 

[VPhile jr.]

not on windows I guess?

?Sorry don't grasp what you mean by that at all? Btw. you should definately try (and compare/contrast to my findings) that headless StealthAudioPlayer, it's completely non-intrusive, simple batch operation..

 

[leeperry]

oh, it's on windows...I'll look into it.

hah, looks so cool: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f70/ortofon-headphone-amp-hd-q7-471850/

but grossly overpriced! my griffin makes a lot more sense

 

[sam2]

why wouldn't they? do they use a hard masterclock like Reclock?

I think standalone media players use media decoding chip with single hardware clock driving both video and audio, similar to what standalone DVD and Blue Ray players use.

That's why a $30 DVD player outputs perfectly smooth video while $1000 HTPC outputs jerky video (without reclock).

 

[VPhile jr.]

http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/HD_players.html

Meridian - Sooloos Source:One

Picture shows interesting "flat style" implementation of riser PCI card inside this htpc:
- big/airy custom rack case as opposed to small and cable cramped Travlas - even the big ones
(looks to me like sourced machined heatsink profiles from Fischer, plus few cut cover panels)
- RME Hammerfall DSP 9632 PCI
- Mini-ITX board (Via Epia)
- power source (should make into separate box)
- Linux
=> final price is 5x or even more than parts used

PS the website has got some info on Linux players and also lot of the other topics (and audioph theory) we mentioned here

 

[leeperry]

I think standalone media players use media decoding chip with single hardware clock driving both video and audio, similar to what standalone DVD and Blue Ray players use.

That's why a $30 DVD player outputs perfectly smooth video while $1000 HTPC outputs jerky video (without reclock).

ok, but they output 23.976/24fps at a perfect multiple? because 60Hz is no good.

http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/HD_players.html

you like LCD screens w/ the name of the song playing, don't cha?

ah well, I'm torn....tubes get hot as hell, are very ineffecient energy-wise and painful to roll(need to adjust the bias yada yada)....opamps are madness to roll as well, as the best ones are very unstable and clearly can't be rolled blindly

I think I'll go back to Burson, they make good stuff! it's discrete, so it's a perfect in-between crappy IC's and annoying tubes :agree:

this said, I'm gonna put back the 8738...the 8768 might measure better on the line-out, but the trebles are just plain annoying.

 

[VPhile jr.]

you like LCD screens w/ the name of the song playing, don't cha?

/Was refering to this pic: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Pictures/Hardware/MusicServer/Sooloos-SourceOne.jpg

That's correct, but not necessarily on front face of the player, remote control with display is even better as talked about in abundant detail in previous posts, new finding: SqueezeSlave (Interactive edition) is capable of driving those usb-LCDs like VFD, 2x16 etc.

Btw. the trebles on your CMI Terratec, is it also digital output issue? If I recall it correctly you didn't care much for analogs on them similarly to Dogbert, right? Perhaps you should have tried some non "+" chip CMI cards like Sweex, these old Terratecs are known to be crazy.. What about Andy's headless player, did you try it?
Edit: give it a whirl even on "POS soundcard" now, that's how you gauge the difference/improvment..

 

[leeperry]

8768/8768+/8770 are the same chip AFAIK(only 70 has DDL, or the opposite?):



well I got a POS soundcard atm(my 32Ω cd3k directly connected to it), lemme get the Musiland 02US + a Burson HA-160 and I'll be glad to try any super neato media player

EDIT: oh yes, 8738 sounds so much more musical than 8768 on headphones :agree:

 

[VPhile jr.]

Perhaps there is a way how to play those quality oggflac internet radio streams afterall, and now even with Squeeze (on winmachine). [edit] _e-hehe_ it just works, finally CD quality radio via kernel in my home!

Firstly, it's necessary to get mplayer binary into your Squeeze server directory, obviously it can't be standard linux mplayer version, but only the one compiled for the winmachine. Lets try quick and dirty method, no compiling, sourcing it elsewhere..

This is originaly a plugin for real audio playback which should install mplayer into your server bin directory, it should even include testing batch, which plays online bbc tunes. The install appears to be rather old (7.3version), so perhaps we should also look for another way.
Package: http://www.x2systems.com/AlienBBC/installation.html bin only http://www.x2systems.com/AlienBBC/MPlayer-v1.0rc2.exe
C:\Program Files\SqueezeCenter\server\Bin\MSWin32-x86-multi-thread <- put it here
-
[edit] or even easier, just copy that mplayer.exe from SMPlayer-portable for windows package install (it's ~2yrs younger binary)
-
Next step involves changing/adding settings for the oggflacs (and some server tweaks), so create/copy custom-convert.conf and put inside new lines for it as per this example, follow further instructions bellow: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-based/93315-linux-audio-way-go-148.html#post2075925
-
[edit] as always there wouldn't be fun without some prior sour grapes, so the earlier described bug when switching between FLAC library and favorite net radio streams still applies, which ought to be expected, as it is likely related to a different problem.