Which sounds better: River, Ammarra, etc. vs. Windows Explorer / Apple Finder?

caesar said:

Sorry for the naive question: What are the advantages of playing a file off of River, Ammarra, etc. vs. from Windows Explorer or Apple finder. Does one or the other do a better job of sending the information to the DAC? Does the format (high res. download or vinyl rip vs. regular ripped cd) matter? What sounds better and why?

Thank you!

Click to expand...

Apple's core audio converts files to whatever resolution you've set in preferences, so to play a rebook file followed by a hi-res file, you would have to stop, change the setting in software, then play the hi-res. Programs like Amarra automatically play the file in its native format. From a practical standpoint, that's the only advantage. What you hear is another question altogether.

Tim

In Windows by default everything goes through the same audio path. So playing a file with Media Player, the Explorer or even foobar in its default mode will act the same way.

The reason you may want to not use these facilities is to bypass the Windows audio system. Windows will resample everything to a fixed rate. By default it is 48 KHz so even your CDs will resample to that. There is conversion to and from floating point which means there is dither added. By using speciality media players, you can use other interfaces such as ASIO and WASAPI which bypass the entire audio pipeline in the OS, allowing the DAC to play at the native sample rate of the file.

As Tim mentions, the same is true of Mac OS.

I use Roon software which takes care of this for me in addition to having a very nice interface and remote control on tablets. If you are going to use PC/Mac as your playback software, you will have to use a third-party solution or you won't get full fidelity/convenience. iRiver seems to be the most popular choice.

caesar said:

Gentlemen,

Thank you Kindly. If you are not using the 3rd party software, how do Windows and Apple OSs know to send something out the USB port to your DAC (and out the headphone jack)?

Also, DACs like some Meridians come with Windows drivers, while Apple doesn't need drivers. What do those drivers do?

Click to expand...

In Apple when your dac is connected via usb, you can select it from the Audio MIDI Setup application located in your utilities folder. You select the same dac in the setup of whatever software player you use also with the exception of Pure Music 3, with this software, they have to be different.

caesar said:

Gentlemen,

Thank you Kindly. If you are not using the 3rd party software, how do Windows and Apple OSs know to send something out the USB port to your DAC (and out the headphone jack)?

Click to expand...

They all act as far as the operating system is concerned as "another sound card." In Windows Sound Control panel for example, you will see your existing built-in audio interface but also the new one. Then in your playback software, you tell it to use the new USB "sound card" (which is your USB DAC) as the output and everything works!

Also, DACs like some Meridians come with Windows drivers, while Apple doesn't need drivers. What do those drivers do?

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Windows has standard support up to 96 Khz for USB audio. Mac goes up to 192 Khz (or higher?). For that reason you often need a driver for Windows. Some manufacturers also have custom hardware interfaces that Windows has no driver for so you need a driver for it to work at all. In such cases you would need drivers for both platforms.

Stepping back, a driver takes known commands from the operating system and translates them to the interface that the hardware has. Without it you won't be able to use a new device. Exception is a class of devices for which the operating system has built-in drivers, should the hardware act exactly the way it expects. Such is a keyboard and mouse for example. And per above, a number of audio devices.

See this article I wrote on drivers in the context of audio: http://www.madronadigital.com/Library/DeviceDrivers.html
And any discussion in this thread where I post it back in 2011: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?3649-What-is-a-Driver

caesar said:

Gentlemen,

Thank you Kindly. If you are not using the 3rd party software, how do Windows and Apple OSs know to send something out the USB port to your DAC (and out the headphone jack)?

Also, DACs like some Meridians come with Windows drivers, while Apple doesn't need drivers. What do those drivers do?

Click to expand...

It pays to use 3rd party software as both a library system for browsing and selection as well as playback of the albums/tracks you wish. I use JRiver for a number of important reasons, primarily because it handles all the media types I want: CD, SACD, downloads, BD-A, BD-V, etc. all in multichannel. It even handles cable TV watching/recording with an external cable card tuner, eliminating my cable box. And, JRiver is cheap. But, it is so comprehensive, it also now acts as my control preamp for audio and video. My old Mch prepro and disk player are no longer used at all.

But, JRiver is not so easy to learn at first, due simply to the huge feature set. I use only a fraction of its features. It also supports custom tagging of your media files for excellent search capabilities, though that is a lot of manual work, necessary because the tags embedded in the media by the producers is lousy and inconsistent, especially for the classical music I primarily listen to. It needs a lot of editing. I have something well over 20 TB of media on my NAS, most of it comprehensively tagged, although chapter tagging within BD audio or video albums still remains far too clumsy and manual in JRiver. I keep hoping they will improve it before diving in manually. But, tagging CD and SACD down to the track level is quite good. And, I can select albums/tracks beautifully for playback using JRiver's excellent JRemote iPad application via Wifi.

Some people swear there are huge sonic differences among various software players. I can see that in some cases, like up sampling with various dither algorithms, etc. My library is almost entirely hi Rez Mch, though, so I do not play with that. JRiver sounds pretty good to me and it does about 85% of what I need and want.

I use Windows. Parameters in JRiver instruct it to send audio to my Dirac Live software for room EQ. Parameters in Dirac instruct it to then send the audio to the driver for my Exasound e28 Dac, which was supplied by Exasound. That links directly and automatically to the DAC via a USB connection from the PC, regardless of which physical USB port it is connected to. The Exasound driver finds that automatically.

So, this daisy chained connection of software "virtual sound cards" plus the USB connection makes up the audio signal path, and it is quite easy to set it up. There is usually little need to interact with Windows Sound Properties directly. The software does that and presents you with a list of what is available and connected on your system. The video signal uses HDMI directly to my TV monitor from the computer HDMI port. There are no lip synch problems. JRiver controls that in audio-video playback.

If CD stereo is all you want, then Roon might be an easier to learn and use choice, or others, as well. None of them do nearly enough of what I need, though.