same same but different

I tried MoOde and found it’s better than other two. Additionally, I Installed MOC player. To me, this one sounded better than MPD. Both were in the same system. MOC sound most similar to Audirvana. MPD has a chance with MoOde, but its effect is like “changed paper in oil capacitors to polypropilene”, versus MOC. It is noticeable on violin, for example. Different musical contrast and dynamic reproduction and different “taste” of strings... Sad that MOC has such a old inconvinient UI... PS. Of course, volume change, up-down-sample were restricted. External USB (Amanero). Bluetooth, camera, gpio, and also airplay, upnp etc were switched off completely. Priorities to players were highest (nice -19 for MPD, highest for MOC in its config). I also set up MOC to proceed 24 bits when file is 24, instead if 16 by default... just to keep it from useless activity, just in case.

Hi folks, quick story here and three questions. I had a hope to setup such a nice small box (Raspberry Pi3B) near the sound system and play all the music remotely. First run was smooth and promising, but spending more and more time and doing some comparisons... I got sad feeling. Seems that Audirvana plays opera or jazz vocal more exciting, in an 'analogue style', with some kind of pleasant 'being right here' effect, while MPD (both Volumio and Rune) transmitting vocals with some (hard to explain) tension, and voices are getting a bit harsh. I did many attempts, listening to my favourite Jessye Norman, Doris Day... Every time I switched DAC back to Mac, I had... sigh of relief. Question one: am I alone? Question two: seems that both Linux-based systems plays a bit more loudly, but how is that damn possible? All three promised to be "bit-perfect"! Question three: shall I try Moode? It's the same MPD.... Maybe there are other distribs with some more interesting players? I used USB to I2S interface (Amanero, to be exact) with separate linear PSU (cut from USB power line, it's independent from USB power). And custom made PCM58 DAC in non-oversampling mode. Rasperry (I tried two, Pi3B and 3B+) feed by battery power, as original PSU push harsh effect a bit stronger. WiFi was ON. My files are very different formats, from 44 (CD in past) to 192 (LP recs). In all my tests any volume changes were restricted in any kind (software, hardware). Any kind of oversampling – off. All the players where following to the files formats. I even tested BCK from Amanero to make sure that it was switching in accordance to the files. Thanks for reading.

Hah, they do, many years. iPhones never supported that.

Good! Not about quality but convenience.

Got trouble with High Sierra. Audirvana's sys opt seem to relaunch spotlight to fully index your disks after player quit....

Lots lots lots HD tracks are actually just upsampled CDs. Open any and check the spectrum. Not really many people appreciate good sources as types and LPs, they rather pleasured by sterilised silence between the tracks and no noises inside. Therefore, profanation of "sterilised" sound caused that HD tracks has basically CD at the base, not many taken from really good remaster of the real sources. And even if they are, often remastering kills music with the noises, occasionally.

Light doesn't mean it is bit perfect. It is just 44/16 flow.

Use Mac's optical input then. It's OK to proceed, I'll explain later how exactly to use it. Have you got glass cable with AE?

dorkus: to check if it's bit perfect, you'll need sound card that has optical input and can be set to follow spdif flow as a clock source.

I was telling that I grabbed few sources - AE G, MBP and AE N. Using absolutely the same method for all. First two were correct, AE N was completely wrong. If I used only AE N for this test, there's might be a chance for mistake. This is not the case. You telling, however, that a led is a proof... I really don't get it. Anyway, it's your choise. I just awared that there's a problem with N that anybody can easily check. You can even use MBP optical input and record software that can force the input to follow external flow (like Audition). Well, if you prefer the led instead... Okay.

I'm curious - are you really testing it by the led on a DAC? Why don't you get the flow into the computer?

I'll play square signal to see what happen there. If all remain the same, I'll brake AE-N and get spdif via the cable. As for the samples: they need to be aligned manually, as long as recording software acts independently of iTunes that sends file to AE. That's not a problem, though, and there's simple check, that I did of course. One sample step left/right to make sure that difference getting worse. Even a single step to any side make it obvious. More, getting the first sample align is a very simple thing to do.

I didn't compare length exactly sample to sample (=sampes amount). As you may see from the starting image, the difference appears immediately... and never happened with AE-G or even with the MBP's optical out, tried few times. Note that the card's clock was set to follow the flow.

VandyMan: I did aligned all flows to the very first sample before subtract procedure. No mistake.

Version: My sound card may have jitter minimizer inside, that completely clear the flow from low jitter values. For example, let say AE-G has 258 ps jitter (stereophile), and guess it's been taken off by this minimizer. Then, MBP's optical out has jitter about 4 ns. It's per Realtek chip spdif specifications. Such values are harder for my card, there are some very small mistakers, but basically all goes well. AE-N... What if it got so high jitter that can't be avoided by the card, therefore I've got absolutely different file recorded in this case?