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Different Mac player audibility... Here's a test...

Well, just got to installing the latest Audirvana Plus last night and had a listen. I already have Decibel on my machine. Here's the setup:

The listener (me):
- 40 year old, professional working generally in quiet environment
- Been to (only) <10 loud rock concerts in lifetime
- Last time I tested, can hear high frequencies up to ~16kHz
- Wife says my hearing acuity as good as hers FWIW
- Music lover > 30 years of life
- Do after 10:00PM so all's quiet and the kids weren't bothering me :-)

Hardware:
- MacBook Pro 17" 2009 version, 6GB RAM, using mini-TosLink, OS X "Lion"
- Default "Audio MIDI Setup" set at 24/44
- Benchmark DAC1 Pre
- Generic TosLink cable - admittedly the "weakest" part, but it's only 3ft and has built-in mini-TosLink end so no adapter, no issues at 24/96
- Sennheiser HD-800 headphones (with Anaxilus mod)
- Corsair 240GB SSD SATA-III (6G/s) to hold all music & OS

Music (all in lossless FLAC format):
- Gladiator soundtrack - "Now We Are Free" with Lisa Gerrard - 16/44
- West End Girls - "Goes Petshopping" album, love my technopop :-) 16/44
- Rebecca Pidgeon - "Spanish Harlem" off hi-res version of The Raven - 24/88
- Diana Krall - "Stop This World" from DVD-A rip of The Girl in The Other Room - 24/96
- Carol Kidd - "It Never Entered My Mind" off Dreamsville hi-res Linn Studio Master - 24/96

There's the test:
Since I cannot run both Decibel and Audirvana at the same time, my comparison was between those programs and the free SqueezePlay to stream the songs off my Squeezebox Server!

** Note what I'm doing here, it's a comparison between a locally stored FLAC file on an SSD with the same song being streamed off WiFi through Squeezebox Server (Logitech Media Server) into SqueezePlay (100% volume) and using the Mac's default CoreAudio layer. **

Both Audirvana and Decibel were set to the best settings I could find:
Audirvana - exclusive access, integer mode, 3GB buffer for memory playback, iZope 64-bit SRC "best"
Decibel - exclusive access, load files to memory, SRC "maximum" quality

For about 2 hours last night, I cued up each song on both SqueezePlay and either Audirvana/Decibel. I will play about 10-20 seconds and then switch to the other playback method. The switching only takes 1-2 seconds as there's no fiddling around with any hardware, just a few mouse clicks.

Result:
Bottom line, NO DIFFERENCE as far as I can tell between either program and SqueezePlay! I can't really do a blind test unless I get my wife involved (I'm sure she'll say "no thanks") but I can say that even knowing what I'm playing, I do not hear any defect in the SqueezePlay playback. For about 30 minutes I decided to just let the programs play, switching between them every few minutes and "trying to forget" which was which as I surf the net, asking myself if I thought there was any problem... Nope, could not really tell one from the other.

Note that not only is SqueezePlay streaming the audio off WiFi, but the hi-res stuff is being down-converted by SOX off the server to 24-bit 44kHz since SqueezePlay cannot play > 48kHz (as far as I know) at best, and the sound is being routed to CoreAudio set at 24/44.

My conclusion: IMO, I can enjoy music just as well off SqueezePlay as one of the fancy commercial offerings on my MacBook / Benchmark DAC / Senn HD800 combo which I believe to be extremely resolving. The 1-2 second switch is the best I can do to minimize the effect of a short auditory memory. Although this isn't blinded, I can honestly say that if it were, I do not believe I heard anything that would allow me to distinguish the sounds.

I am reminded yet again that what is so often written as 'big' differences by the audio press has to be taken with lots of grains of salt. Also, although I do enjoy collecting hi-res music, this is yet again another test that tells me there's really not much (if anything) I'm missing from standard 16/44 in the real world.

Anyhow, I'd love to hear what others are listening for when comparing the various Mac players. Also, if anyone has tried experiments like this, please post! I'd love to try replicating if I can...


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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.


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Topic - Different Mac player audibility... Here's a test... - Archimago 09:27:16 04/20/12 (20)

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