Just started using Audirvana which is a software company founded in 2011 and located in France which has become the reference solution for professionals and enthusiasts who expect uncompromised digital music playback. If you use an external DAC like the iFi ZEN, this software will talk to it directly and program it to sense the difference between WAV, FLAC, Mp3, and DSD files as noted by the change in the sensor color that surrounds the volume control. The digital-to-analog converter, or DAC, transforms the signal from digital to analog before transmitting it to the speakers. It is a critical element of your system that plays a major role in overall audio quality and optimizing the interaction between the source and DAC is also crucial. Audirvana always transmits a “ready-to-play” audio stream, i.e. a PCM (or DSD) stream already decoded, that takes into account the characteristics of your DAC and reduces the tasks to be performed at speaker level. Today most DACs internally work at very high frequencies and low bit depth, and this conversion implies upsampling. Since the processing power of your computer is much higher than the built-in capability of the DAC, it can run more sophisticated and demanding upsampling algorithms (SoX) within Audirvana, and feed your DAC with a signal containing more accurate data thus facilitating the interpolation calculation.
After I got it set up and had it catalog all of my Hi-Resolution files, I plugged in the HiFiMan HE-400i Planar headphones - what an amazing sound!!! Pure and clean would be the best way to summarize it. Herbie Hancock’s “Headhunters” as a DSD album was simply AMAZING! Check out Weather Report’s “Heavy Weather” and Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” for a test later today.
Audirvana is great, but I still don’t hear any sound difference from Foobar with ASIO and bit-perfect playback (have HE400s, LCD2, and stereo system with Focal speakers). Also, I prefer my DAC (have Chord and Schiit) does the upsampling. Tried HQPlayer with some fancy upsampling algorithm (read that hqplayer is the best for that), but still didn’t hear the difference.
In my experience, as long the source file is good (properly ripped CD into FLAC, or Qobuz/Tidal), and bit-perfect playback is used (ASIO or WASAPI), you shouldn’t worry too much about the actual player, even though i encourage people to test as hear for themself.
Audirvaba and Roon are actually whole music library solutions, not just a players, so thats what you actually pay.
We must be twins! I just installed Audirvana Friday to use my Mac Mini as my server and player. I have struggled to find software that does this and allows me to use my iPhone as a remote.
Previously, I was using Plex. The sound difference between the two is clearly distinct and I far prefer Audirvana.
My only gripe is that using the iPhone as a remote, the physical volume buttons can’t control the audio levels.
I would also love if I could do parametric EQ.
Audirvana ,so far, has been the best solution I’ve tried for my specific needs.
From my days as a session drummer, I prefer no EQ on a track and in this case, I’ve used Audirvana’s ability to internally analyze an albums “Replay Gain” to restore internal dynamics to a file. It’s just feeding an iFi ZEN DAC via a USB 3.0 connection through an iFi iPurifier3 for re-clocking and digital jitter removal. Also, I’m not using Audirvana to playback any Mp3 files and I’m not doing any software upsampling. For Mp3 playback, I can easily use Microsoft Groove and playback through my Bose Companion 3 for room filling sound. Since the Hi-Resolution files are all stored on a Buffalo Box 4TB NAS file server, I can stream to a Sony UBP-X800M2 4K UHD Blu-ray Player that hard wired (Ethernet) into the AT&T Gateway. The Sony outputs via Coax to a Yamaha A-S801 integrated amp to the stereo in the listening space. It’s all very simple and straightforward.
I’ve been wanting a way to make Tidal sound better. So far I guess that I am in the minority and do not use it except to search for new music. I’ll have to try that conversion. Thanks for the idea!