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astronaut75

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  1. It does both 2.8/5.6Mhz. I use it as master recorder direct to hardware processors as it does accept inputs from balanced, unbalanced, SDIF-3 and Raw DSD. It plays back from USB stick but it is limited to 2GB chunks. It is an all round great machine.
  2. I love DSD.. A nice DA3000 is my DSD baby but most of the music I want is simply not there - Foobar also has DSD decoding through ASIO. I am looking with interest to what Teac is doing as well with the UD-501 and their dedicated software player ( same engine as Esoteric). DoP is great convenience these days but PCM is not the pure DSD experience and the 501 can decode natively as well. The shame with DSD these days is that there is no multichannel dacs out there that you can buy ( with the exception of Exa$ound ) which are by far the programs that I enjoy the most. Have quite few SACDs in my collection, the way they're mixed is fantastic. I am a lucky owner of a good old Denon 2910 which has real DSD converter and multichannel analogue outputs. But to be quite frank, I personally think that the lossless music distribution should point to DTS-MA. It is also backcompatible using the same file. Whoever is interested in multichannel audio or lossless archival could use this worldwide spread decoder ( despite of social class ) to enjoy CD quality and Studio Quality recordings with a lot of enjoyment. Any AVR or bluray player can already do the job beautifully. Hardware is already in people homes and the logo perception is already well established in people minds worldwide. Laptops, PCs and Macs have HDMI connectors waiting to be used and nobody does it. Even some smartphones can decode DTS. Not surprised how dumb the marketing campaigns can be historically. But this is another story.
  3. Yes, that could be possible. My babies are: - Weiss DAC202 - MOTU 828MKIII - HRT MusicStreamer II+ They are all connected to a Furman power stabilizer and cleaner, except for the HRT which is USB powered. No physical connection is present for the Airport Express when used in WiFi mode. I made yes A/Bs using the mac on battery only but it does not make a great difference when staying on the same iTunes mode ( iTunes with BitPerfect vs iTunes without BitPerfect). My reference system runs on a dedicated windows system with ASIO instead.
  4. That was coming from your unexpected findings with the experiments with Airport XPress under WiFi. Chiarissimo - I get it big times: in principle it doesn't. You must admit it is somewhat difficult to follow when the bitperfect effect is heard in environments totally disconnected from the physical Mac (AE). You mention specifically the Mac's USB port. - I tried the following connections and they all seem to receive the subtle same effect in different measures. - FireWire cabled DAC - HDMI cabled AVR - TosLinked DAC - Ethernet cabled Airport Express - WiFi connected Airport Express I dont't know that to say except that 1) yes, BitPerfect is one of my favourite apps on the Mac - it just sounds better 2) I am sticking to my hardware gear to play sd based music files. EuroDriver, my two cents on what you illustrated is that yes, some may find the effort exciting technically. In the end computers are not born to be dedicated audio players. Maybe a Raspberry could make a difference. But, these days from a consumer-end perspective, you don't need to do all that effort to have people listening to the music they love. They could simply swap the mac with a windows machine. There are highly regarded high-res mediaplayers on windows which are totally free and just do the job ( Foobar: Buffering + RAM playback ). Apple should embed something like BitPerfect in their iTunes player + FLAC support. iTunes as we know it really is really a shameful player, especially for sitting on a Mac. Otherwise, people could be better off spending their money for a good portable/desk hires player and keep listening their favourite songs/albums without losing sleep on RF Noise!
  5. Thanks Eurodriver but do not mix dBm with dBu/dBFS. Decibel is a ratio not a measure. dBm is used for radio/microwave power. dBu/dBFS are used for analogue/digital sound respectively. dBSPL is used for sound pressure ( acoustic).
  6. I was expecting almost the same over toslink as well but I can hear the BitPerfect difference on the mac toslink indeed even though it appears not so evident like from USB and it is slightly louder. My current reference is a CG-1000 Ext Clock, a firewired Motu 828 MKIII toslinked to same Weiss DAC202, ASIO Foobar, 5secs Buffer Lenght, max 512MB RAM playback. Matched toslink cables type and length between the two systems ( foobar vs iTunes ). Tried to use BitPerfect over Airplay with a 3rd gen AppleTV and no sound is played back instead. Did not try it on another Airport Express I have though. This enforces my conclusion that the audio data processed by BP and transmitted over USB or over the network would include the BitPerfect sonic "signature" then - would that mean altered audio data at the mac end ? I guess it would be interesting to capture the analogue signal at the output of the dac with and without BP, align it and compare it with the original audio file for A-B-C comp. Sure you have seen this already. Archimago's Musings: MEASUREMENTS: Bit-Perfect Audiophile Music Players (Mac OS X). BitPerfect is not quoted and I'm not sure how arguable the method illustrated in the article might be either - for the way BitPerfect and similars work under the hood - which is unknown to users instead - I can definitely listen to a difference in sound but you may not like this guy conclusions.
  7. Agree. Weiss DAC202 has the same reference files in various SRs and BDs as well which I use. The DAC will show on its display if the received stream is authentic. iTunes toslinked with the dac passes the tests ( of course changing the coreaudio SR in advance when BP is not in use). A simple airport express toslinked to the dac passes the 44.1/16 test file as well.
  8. Thank you and I apologize for my oversimplification - Here are my thoughts: I always understood that this is why Asynchronous-USB implementation makes the difference here as supported by acclaimed High-end DAC manufacturers of the calibre of Benchmark, Apogee, Weiss and others with a precision master clock inside the dac rather than via USB PC sync. Same thing applies to the WASAPI Event vs Push driver implementation on Windows OS. That's my point as well. BitPerfect produces a difference in sound from same audio file on same monitors and same amplifier and same cables. My bottom line in this is : Should BitPerfect be trusted as a ** Reference ** when reviewing/monitoring mixes or masters ? Should I take that +/-0.3dB or +/-0.5dB or clarity difference I may hear here and there - oversimplification again - when A/Bing bit-perfect vs non-bitperfect playback as a reason for real-world correction on a final music product ? Is everyone else (me included) doing it wrong ? One has to choose his own lens through which looking at his world. And some value electric/software correction as much as acoustic correction for a well-done job. For this conversation as well as your technical insights I thank you again. For now I am happy to utilize BitPerfect and similars as any of these other lens - a choice. For now there is no clear evidence to me - beside an objective cleaner and more enjoyable sound - that it should replace the playback **Reference** chain as is (hardware+software). I am very well aware that various media players sound different and some are valued more precise than others in the quest for correct reproduction of sound from a computer ( Foobar, JRiver etc..). CoreAudio sounds different even when I play the same audio file swapping my MacBook with my PPC MacMini. Should the audio be transmitted purely to the DAC from different computers ? Yes it should - But it doesn't ! On the other hand none of these software houses from Apple to Microsoft, VLC, etcc.. have linked differences in sound to RF Noise which points to different choices in the compilers by software engineers. So, to this date I am still very cautious to replace completely the music playback system with a computer even though it is convenient and that's what the whole world is doing. Maybe with time I can capture playback bitsreams directly from my DAC playing same audio file from DAW audio engine ( win and mac ), bitperfect and iTunes and match them for a more precise analysis. I assume this has already been done by many but I could not find any result online.
  9. I really appreciate the sonic difference in the app. But - I need to catch up with what I am supposed to be doing to my data streams. :-) So, the audio-file bitperfect data stream is taken from a very noisy environment ( the computer ), it gets processed by using the Bit-Perfect black-box, it is stripped off the RF noise which leaves the pure originally intended bit-perfect version of the same stream, which in turn has to go back to that same RF noisy environment again anyway ( USB/Fw connector ) to get its way out through the dac. So the DAC is receiving noisy streams all the time all the way - does it ? I must be silly. No to speak of wifi connected DACs ( Airplay ). Would the RF intermodulation noise impact sound when the transport medium is a wifi network card as well ( no direct-attached DAC ) ? I understand that digital is analogue in real-world. This is very true indeed. I also understand RF noise is in wires and buildings in general - Yet, why RF is not that strong that even JPG images or other files dont get corrupted then ? I am so surprised that the app objective effect on sound is too distinctive to be just the effect of removed RF noise. Is it ? Why are Apple iTunes and the Mac in general the only beneficiaries of such a great solution to computers RF noise for audio playback ? Are not all other platforms/players subject to the same RF potential problem ? Are JRiver or Foobar not paying attention at all to this problem in their players? I must be very silly. But thank you all for helping out so far.
  10. Thanks BitPerfect Support, thats clear. No buffalobill, to me an explanation on how exactly it works internally is not necessarily required. I'm not a programmer. Understanding the **Context** of what it does as any other audio component ( more like of a DSP using convolution to recreate the intened data without the measured RF noise) is another story. Audio components are black boxes: Sound in-Sound out. My only question then is how about the rest of all other mediaplayers out there beside iTunes as well as OSs outside of OSX. IS it safe to "trust" ASIO ? PCI DACs vs USB/FW DACs? How do they compare. Is foobar which is stated as an audiophile opensource player doing that as well ? I guess controlling random PC/mac builds CPU or disks IO or USB bus I/O activity is mission impossible to accomplish. They are continuous and almost totally independed by the audio player only, unless you think of RF "noise cancellation" algorithm which almost explains that black/depht fingerprint distinctive of Bit-Perfect. Similar to the good old XLR balanced cancellation technology in the analogue world - applied to a software audio-engine. That's great idea as it also would be independent of noise level in random PC/mac builds. I dont care. The software does a great difference for the good, no doubt about it. Another lens to watch our favourite music through - **among many others** - I guess you all helped me understand that this more of a DSP for mac based audio playback. Thank you. About my age: I have been passionately doing comparisons for 30 years now ( class '75). It's not a whole lot. It's not bad either
  11. Thanks Axiom05, that makes sense. This is good learning for me. Does it mean that depending on the number of apps running on a mac while using BitPerfect, the sound quality will also be negatively impacted as well ? It would be a good reference if various media players or PC boards induced noise was measured or documented, even though I understand random external factors are at play depending on PC builds. In the studio where I work the problem of References is a constant. It is handy having a playback system as high-quality consumer reference. Personally after many-many years of passionate tests ( I started during the ages of the SoundBlaster 16 ISA - that's ancient !! ), I still do not buy 100% the convenience vs quality of computer based playback for the prices out there. Too many variables. The fact that a piece of a fantastic software like BP can make iTunes sound objectively "better" with no effects on both apps - leaving all the rest of the hardware chain as is - makes decisions even harder. It also makes me wonder about any other mediaplayer under any other OS, driver type, etc.. - In the end, I came to prefer hardware gears as playback reference like the Tascam DA-3000 or Naim systems where you can load your libray on SD cards or Hard Drives and let the hardware do the rest. Thanks again.
  12. If the software uses its proprietary audio-engine to trick a DAC input to sound more pleasant is one thing. If it does what iTunes is not capable of doing in order to transfer audio files correctly to a dac instead is another. That's my doubt. Thank you -
  13. Thanks for taking the time to respond directly so quickly, BP Support. Of course my point is not to stress on the fooling side of things otherwise we would not be here having this pleasant conversation. I totally trust the technical expertise and passion of the developers as much as I enjoy using the BitPerfect app myself. But I guess it is still unclear to me the context of the term Bit-Perfect when implying the transmission of bits at the ** software level only ** between an audio file, its player and the audio drivers/DAC. Especially considering that almost all these similar apps turn around specifically to the iTunes Player only, which suggests that iTunes player is badly written for the purpose of sending the correct sequence of bits coming from an audio file to any DAC. I follow perfectly the explanation of the induced RF noise coming from a PC/mac, softwares CPU loads, etc.. - and I thank you for reminding that so clearly. On the other hand I still feel confused by the way the term bit-perfect is sponsored to imply the transmission of audio bits to the DAC at the software level , which is a critical subject for mediaplayer programmers. I'll try to explain myself better. I made A/B comparison from same source files played between: A) mac mini -> iTunes + BP -> USB Weiss DAC202 B) mac mini -> iTunes -> USB Weiss DAC202 C) PC -> Foobar -> Toslink Weiss202 As a result the sonic signature between B) and C) was objectively more similar if compared to A) instead - even though A) was sounding in a more pleasant way, perceiving more black/silence between sonic textures, increasing the perception of a more rounded, better definition in general. This said, more pleasant does not necessarily mean "as-is" on file. I don't want a software player that sounds "better" ( great to have that **choice** with BP though ) . I want a player that plays the file content guaranteed 100%. That's why I still feel somewhat confused around the term Bit-Perfect as sponsored with BP app and other similar apps as well. In few words, given the same DAC, Cabling, Speakers, Ampli, matched sample rate in CoreAudio settings with file, No iTunes EQ, No iTunes Norm, No Oversampling in BP etc.. - I still do not understand why there is an objective sonic difference **at the software level of the chain** between iTunes vs iTunes + BP. What should be taken as the "as-is" **Reference** between the two ? ( issue is isolated to software only here ). Thanks again. Big Fan, Astronaut75
  14. Hello everybody - I have been using BitPerfect for almost six months now and it is quite an amazing peace of software. I read the last article you posted on convolution with great interest and a serious question has been bugging me since then. Save that you use a player with all effects turned off, no eq, no normalization, no upsampling, via an ASIO or Coreaudio driver with an asyncronous USB dac - why software players utilizing BP are supposed to sound different ( as they do ! ) ? The most evident example of bit-perfect transmission that I have personally tested is with an Airport Express connected via Toslink to a Weiss DAC202. The device is supposed to stream audio files content "as-is" via the audio interface skipping all the coreaudio/OS tricks. Tested with Weiss Authentic test-tones files played directly from iTunes, the DAC recognized the audio stream as an identical bit-perfect copy as on file showing it on the display as well. I am now using BitPerfect with a HRT II+ USB DAC. No upsampling, No effects. And yet when I do A/B between simple iTunes vs iTunes with BP there is an objective more pleasant sound difference. WHY is That ? Does the BP audio engine work as a an "effect" on the the audio file "as-is" ? And by term effect I do not mean EQ, but playing with pre-ring filtering as decribed in your article or like some NAD CD players do ie. 545BEE ? Where is the point where from a hard drive to a USB connected DAC the transport of audio files bits does require the "adjustment" from BitPerfect agent ? Does it imply that the same does happen for all other files on a computer like JPEGs, MOV as well ? Reason why I am asking this is that various apps like BP, Audirvana and the likes produce a **different** sonic signature at very different price-ranges and they are all claiming bit-perfection. So, **where** really is the bit-perfection "as on file" ? Are programmers fooling us and our pockets ? This may not be an issue for people with large pockets - anyone is free to play with their money as they wish. But as a consumer who honestly wants to **understand** what needs to be done technically to transmit the music we love to our favourite dac "as-is" on files and not be fooled - I guess it is very important to determine. Thank you-
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