New to this forum, signed up after lurking and reading hoping for some input that might help in confirming and addressing the following observation:
For the streaming of music from my NAS I'm a long time user of MPD pointing to a CIFS share. In pursuit of a Multi-Room audio solution, for the living room I have installed Squeezelite on my HTPC fed from LMS from the same NAS, same files as I used with MPD.
On the same playback system however, there is an audible difference between the Squeezelite and MPD chains. So much that, after having rebuilt my stack just running Squeezelite, without A-B comparison I noticed the sound being more fatiguing. After having installed MPD to A-B I was able to verify the difference quite noticeably. Compared to MPD (on my system), Squeezelite honors the 'squeeze' by sounding more compressed, less instrument separation, less transparency (apologies for any audiophile gibberish here, no other way of phrasing it).
While I'm aware of the risk of confirmation bias, a blind test with a friend (occupation: audio-engineer) has confirmed the audible difference. Not that to say that Squeezelite sounds bad, just different (and for me subjectively worse) than using MPD which basically eliminates Squeezelite for any critical listening (good enough for day-to-day casual use though).
Questions:
1. Is anyone able to confirm this experience? I wasn't really able to find reliable direct comparisons while researching the topic.
2. Is it just a fact that I have to accept due to the nature of the software being different, or is it worth hunting down the underlying cause because 'it shouldn't be like this'? I could imagine it's just down to different decoding libraries.
3. Given the fact that 'from ALSA down' the chains are identical, as well as up to the source material, I'm guessing it's somewhere between the files and ALSA, i.e. LMS and Squeezelite. But where should I be looking? There's no bitrate limiting or anything enabled in LMS for any of the players. File formats also untouched (i.e. set to native').
Full specs:
Server: Synology DS1815+, DSM 5.2, LMS 7.9.0 1433513811
Playback: Intel NUC D34010WYK + Ciúnas USB DAC, connected wifi
Amp + Speakers: Arcam AV8 + P7 to Quadral Amun VI Phonologue Gold
Softwarestack:
Linux distro: Ubuntu 15.10 64-bit (from mini install)
Kernel: 4.2.0-25-lowlatency
ALSA version: 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu5
Squeezelite version: 1.8-1build1
Squeezelite audio config:
# ALSA output device:
SL_SOUNDCARD="hw:CARD=Amanero,DEV=0"
MPD version: 0.19.10-1build1
MPD audio config:
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "Ciunas DAC"
device "hw:CARD=Amanero,DEV=0"
auto_resample "no"
}
Other software installed: Kodi 15.2, X11, Lirc
cat /proc/asound/Amanero/pcmp0/sub0/hw_params doens't produce difference while playing back on the players (i.e. sample rate matches nicely).
Other Squeezebox hardware in the house: Squeezebox Radio (kitchen).
Many thanks in advance.
