[IDEA] Audiophile audio play

1

Last April i’d attended to an audiophiles meeting where computers were used as transport (high quality player).
The best sounding one was a cMP²-configured i3 (XP qith almost NO services running @ 256 colors !!!), one core disabled and underclocked to optimize the jitter…
The owner of the machine explained us that less workload the computer has, the better able to provide bit-perfect output.

Now he has switched to Voyage Linux which - he claims - sound even better (again, less weight = more quality).

Another interesting link that may inspire: http://jplay.eu/

They sells their “optimized” Windows player for 99€ !

In other words this means that “a market” exist…

So here’s the idea: why Haiku can’t be used to easy turn “any” PC into an high quality audio player ? We “just” need an audiophile player ! (a CICS port shouldn’t be so difficoult, for example)

2

Isn’t jitter determined by the audio hardware, specifically the AD/DA converters, not so much the OS? Or do you mean drop-outs i.e. the playback stuttering? This is where Haiku could shine.

I’m also under the impression that assuming no sample rate conversion takes place the playback of a losslessly ( wav, flac, etc ) encoded file is always “bit perfect” (as implied by the term ‘lossless’).

I’m not so much an audiophile but interested in music production tools. Sadly high quality audio usually requires dedicated hardware which is usually supported only on windows (as the drivers are supplied by the hardware vendor). A superior sound API would still enable recreational music production using just consumer equipment, and could possibly entice hw vendors to provide drivers.

3

I have done commercial support for audio production in the past and this description does not correspond with my understanding of how things work. I agree with the previous comments.

High end audio is full of claims that can not be substantiated. I would wait for someone more knowledgeable to substantiate those claims before we jumped in with Haiku support. I read the High Fidelity article and I don’t consider this a substantiation. There needs to be a blind test to prove quality.

Personally, the first step to ‘audiophile’ quality audio on Haiku would be for someone
to test and write drivers for commercial quality audio cards. This would get us 98% of the way there.

Thanks,
Andrew

4

Well, according to CMP author audio latency also depends from the OS (at least on Windows):

http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/index.php?n=CMP.07Optimisations

As you can see he suggest to disable almost anything, so the idea is: why don’t use an OS that already hasn’t a so complex structure to disable ?

Am I wrong ?

note: we tested computer vs. High-End Marantz CD player with the same DAC at that meeting… no way, PC sounded MUTCH better (10 audiophiles’ opinion) !