First computer audio is the Wild West as there is little rules that govern what good bad or just ugly to use is.
Next there seems to be no attention from the makers of our beloved music reproduction chain devices namely our dacs.
Simplicity gets you part of the way and safe. Like foo bar or jriver.
But to attain to how good it can be beware of the rabbit while your about to dive into.
Wjat really kills me is power cords and all the other stuff power related to improve our products but none of it does a thing for our source
Lastly this is to all makers of our stuff Rarly do any makers even acknowledge that better can be had with servers and any kind of optimizing approach. Ok now I know why but hey we buy the stuff It’s perhaps make one. Paul did try this with the PWT. and he was way ahead of his time in making it.
ted no disrespect for your own personnel achievements but still there is so much better to be had. It’s maddening to me that most of all the dac makers do not make anything server related. Why not make us one a simple one after computers is your thing. Is os audio planning on such a server. ??
Al, I can post my longer (and more testy response) but your path isn’t everyone’s path and the optimizations that work for you are but one approach to getting a great system. I’ve chosen a different holistic systems approach based on my experience and most of the things you are talking about are irrelevant to getting better sound quality in my system.
I focus on the things I can do well for others and that matter to me (and I am not finished yet.) I have no reason to believe that working on something that I don’t need and don’t care about would be a better use of your time and money (or mine) or would lower your frustration (or mine.)
Don’t get me wrong - I know the DS isn’t perfect - but it unarguably does better than it’s competition in some ways that matter and as time goes by we’ll take stabs at some other common bugaboos.
my comments were not ment to offend you. Just state some facts as I see it. Weather anyone else sees it this way or not. I am not saying you should be the one to build a server but I am suggesting it. The ds dac is fine I still own it and have no plans to sell it either. I like that it rolls firmwares and there is always something new coming.
What mostly bothers me is there is little to any acknowledgment that our source maters as much as it does.
I know it should play fine with anything and it does. But any dac improves greatly from a better source period.
How ever I do truly see your point of masses not being able to play there music if things go a stray as they do at times.
Please do not take my ramblings as personnel it’s not. It’s for almost any dac maker period except for a few that do make server too. Perhaps a cheap sever that is basic would be a good thing from this company.
I truly appreciate being able to communicate directly with the designer of the product/system. As I try to glean from this thread what the optimal playback solutions may be, I think it will be more simple for me to ask Ted directly what his preferred approach is…
…I am running JRiver on a dedicated netbook (its only purpose is run the server), I stream to the Bridge via my network from an external hard drive. Originally I read through the posts and configured the JRiver settings as recommended. Are there additional / alternative settings in JRiver that I should select for optimal compatibility with the DS?
…Better yet, Ted, what server setup do you use to stream to the DS/Bridge?
Sorry Al, I didn’t intend to come off as testily as I did. I often take things too personally. Computer music isn’t that different than any other domain served by computers - they are all too complicated and twitchy. There’s the Sony HAPZ1ES - we’ll see how it does. It’s missing a critical feature for me so I’d never use one and I’m sure that would be true for many potential users of an all in one box player…
timequest said
I truly appreciate being able to communicate directly with the designer of the product/system. As I try to glean from this thread what the optimal playback solutions may be, I think it will be more simple for me to ask Ted directly what his preferred approach is...
I appreciate that and tho I'm happy to answer I need to equivocate: some of the purposes of any set of separates in an audio system are to allow people to optimize their systems for their preferred usage and to allow them to change their minds about part of a system without replacing everything. That implies that there will always be features of each component that any given user isn't using at one time or another. Also I'm not a typical user and I only use some DS features long enough to verify that they function so I don't think my opinion about them is as useful as the opinions of the people that use them regularly.
...I am running JRiver on a dedicated netbook (its only purpose is run the server), I stream to the Bridge via my network from an external hard drive. Originally I read through the posts and configured the JRiver settings as recommended. Are there additional / alternative settings in JRiver that I should select for optimal compatibility with the DS?
With regard to compatibility of getting the bits to the DS, the DS is pretty standard/agnostic about the typical inputs, S/PDIF, TOSLink and AES/EBU and arguably USB. Sometimes people have trouble getting DoP configured in JRiver so they can get DSD - it has to be done separately for direct connection vs. streaming. For the non-streaming modes I use huge buffers (say 10 or 20 seconds) to allow USB drives to spin up on track transitions, etc. and to get around other similar system hic-ups.
To get optimum sound quality there are as many approaches as systems. Personally I run the bit perfect test (http://www.psaudio.com/ps_how/how-to-run-a-bit-perfect-test-with-directstream/) every once in a while to make sure that I didn’t accidentally change something in my play back software or the OS’s settings which “mangles” the bits. IMO be careful with DSP processing. Other more complicated things like JPlay, etc. depend on your whole system setup for optimum setup - they are relatively ineffectual here, but as you see there are people that get quite a bit of enjoyment with them (after they are configured that is.)
In the non-streaming world some people report differing results from the different possible output modes (ASIO, WASAPI, DS, etc.) In my system they are essentially identical, but there’s no harm in trying different selections - you may need to play with the buffer sizes when you change the output modes.
...Better yet, Ted, what server setup do you use to stream to the DS/Bridge?
I'm not a streaming fan - I don't like any of the user interfaces out there (tho Roon does look interesting.) and doing DSD and double rate DSD seamlessly is important for me. USB and a simple foobar2000 configuration is my preferred setup, but it's certainly not optimal (or even usable) for many people.
PS Audio has made quite substantial efforts on the server side. They just didn’t work out as hoped. The Bridge was part of that. It has its problems but they are being addressed with Bridge 2. It won’t do everything everybody would like (no double rate DSD, for example) but that’s hardly surprising. PSA poured a ton of time and money into developing the eLyric server and control point software. The software had some very nice features but it proved to be just too much to take on. PSA’s strength is not in software. If the external Bridge is ever released, it may be close to an all -in-one solution on the source/server side (e.g., with the ability to plug in a USB drive and avoid the networking issues, like an Aries). I know nothing about it other than what Paul has hinted at and it may be no more than a concept at this point. Who knows what software it would run (probably third party given prior experiences). In the meantime there are many alternatives out there for people. None are ideal (at least none of the ones I’ve tried). I’d like to see an external Bridge but I think PSA should concentrate on what it does best, which is building hardware.
Thank you very much Ted. I appreciate you taking the time to provide such detailed responses to my questions.
I just - literally just - hooked my new Direct Stream up, so now it’s time to listen. I am very curious though, perhaps Steve and/or some others may be able to provide answers…
…what (when) is the estimated arrival of the 'Bridge2" and is there an ‘estimated cost’ yet? Also, what exactly is ‘double DSD’ and, regardless of the Bridge2’s inability to play it, will we be able do so via USB…how?
There are plenty of posts around the forum that talk about the Bridge II. It’s in beta right now and is close to release. Does that mean next week, probably not. Does it mean in a year? No. But a release in few months is very likely. (Remember I’m not a direct representative of PS Audio.)
In this context DSD (or single rate DSD) is the common name of the DSD bits as they exist on SACDs. The sample rate is 64 times the 44.1k of CDs. Double rate DSD is DSD with a sample rate twice that. Most DSD out there is single rate DSD (e.g. rips of SACDs and most commercially available DSD right now.) Double rate DSD is available for purchase and is getting more and more common. Quad rate DSD is just becoming available and just like “32 bit DACS” I’m sure we’ll see 8 x DSD rate out there too. But 32 bit DACs aren’t really possible (i.e. technology is barely able to do 24 bit dacs and 24 bits more than covers the range of loudness that our bodies can physically deal with.) 8 x DSD is silly because after a point the additional noise from the additional jitter of doubling the sample rate is greater than the noise that’s gained with doubling the sample rate.
Anyway, back to your question: All of the DS’s digital inputs support single rate DSD (well TOSLink does for some people) In addition USB supports PCM at 352.8k and double rate DSD. Compared to single rate DSD there are no additional options to set in foobar2000 or JRiver MC to play double rate DSD.
Ted Smith said
All of the DS's digital inputs support single rate DSD (well TOSLink does for some people) In addition USB supports PCM at 352.8k and double rate DSD. Compared to single rate DSD there are no additional options to set in foobar2000 or JRiver MC to play double rate DSD.
So I2S inputs also do not support DSD128 or 352.8k?
I knew someone would bring that up The I2S inputs support double rate DSD and therefor should support 352.8k PCM, but I honestly don’t remember for sure about 352.8k at the moment.
The only thing that keeps me from migrating from the Bridge to an “external box” is the absence of Linux drivers for the Pink Faun I2S PCI card. I prefer to keep away from two devils: USB and Windows…
Ted Smith said
There are plenty of posts around the forum that talk about the Bridge II. It's in beta right now and is close to release. Does that mean next week, probably not. Does it mean in a year? No. But a release in few months is very likely. (Remember I'm not a direct representative of PS Audio.)
I was walking by and saw this.For those who don't mind the fact that the Bridge II doesn't do DSD128, IMO there should be a very positive response with the card when it's out.
The only thing that keeps me from migrating from the Bridge to an “external box” is the absence of Linux drivers for the Pink Faun I2S PCI card. I prefer to keep away from two devils: USB and Windows…
I’m Fidelizer developer and I can say confidently that it can’t harm your computer. All changes are made temporary and default configuration doesn’t affect anything significantly but better sound. Of course some people who want better sound making changes without studying its consequences may panic like getting slow PC suddenly or network is not working anymore because he make changes of what he doesn’t know.
I attached User Guide.pdf current version of Fidelizer so please take your time to read and optimize for better sound without getting hurt from www.fidelizer-audio.com
Anyone tried Process Lasso? Has been around for quite some time, now being discovered for high-end audio. Very interesting piece of software, I installed it on my AudioPC to start with and find it a significant improvement. Works quite well with W2012 / AO / JPLAY. See Bitsum.com and the discussions on the JPLAY forums. The developer created a guide for audiophile tuning. Enjoy!
To pick up this thread, with Bug Head’s developer calling it quits, having achieved all he felt he could, which is very good quality, other player names have come up at the JPlay forum thread. In particular, some people discovered Album Player, a Russian invention, which they find of more or less similar quality (I haven’t really compared). On the way to finding that, I came across aPlayer, a 2008 model that at least with some music has the quietest background, sense of details, clarity, PRAT and soundstage width I’ve come across. Function aside - understandably it has problems with certain file formats - the one very big defect is that the low end seems to roll off relatively high and quickly, such that the undertones that give instruments, orchestras and voices their body are largely missing, so it can sound thin. I thought maybe I could compensate a bit with its built in equalizer, but no luck. Nonetheless, well worth a listen IMO: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aplayer/
The Album player is quiet good and far better than other players I have tried but Bughead is a just a superior player in my setup. The good part of the Album player is very lightweight, unlike BHE no wait time for playback and can play iso files directly. The BHE interface is a bit non-intuitive but once you figure out and willing to wait 2mins for playback, its the player of choice. Too bad that its development cycle ended. I haven’t tried the aplayer but folks on other forums say that it doesn’t work with Win Server core mode which I use extensively. So that’s a no go for me
Bug seems to be the new best player but the most crazy to set up. I have a server ready for it. I have an audio buddy who makes dacs and servers who will help me set it up. It’s sound on his dac and server rivals open reel master copy sound. Meaning first copy of master. It was demoed at the polish audio show last week along with my head DAC
I will try and report but be aware as ted claims all of these players are tweeks that make things very unstable
AO on win 2012 with jpaly really is great but so many things t tweek it’s too complex.
Hq does not sound good to me or no better than jriver unless you up sample and for me I leave formats alone
bug head up samples to dsd256 to achieve its sound quality but can be up sampled to dsd128
Also we need to keep in mind Hdplex as a supply is good but better psu or batteries that are regulated are a worthwhile tweek.
No regen was used for bug head AO core mode usb was interface
it’s nice to read of others who try things and take the time to post of it.
So many people use a simple laptop and that’s is by far the worst first choice but without posts who would know.
The I2S inputs support double rate DSD and therefor should support 352.8k PCM, but I honestly don’t remember for sure about 352.8k at the moment.