We have finally seen the release of wtfplay http://wtfplay-project.org from the developer (I first heard it in basic form over 2 years ago) which is a minimalist Linux based player which for me beats all previous software for real serious audiophile listening that I have tried and lived with in recent years, including JRiver, JPlay, BHE and more.
It took a little while to get used to typing text to get to the music but well worth the effort once you get there and it has retired my heavily modified Dual PC setup down to a single Audio PC with no on board SSD for OS.
There is no going back to any other software after hearing PCM from wtfplay through my Big7 and I have been happy to listen only to PCM for several months now such is the quality of playback from this basic little player.
I have converted DSF tracks to DOP which I have listened to on wtfplay but still keep coming back to the PCM versions as it is that good.
Bear in mind the developer has not supported DSD yet but from what some of the early beta testers have found including myself is that it will pass DSD in DOP to your DAC if it is capable of playing DSD in DOP.
You can tweak settings from the command line but I have been happy using the basic file player utility wtfcui as I see no need to do any further tweaking of buffers and such.
It will be interesting what others find but all I can do is alert anyone who puts sound quality reproduction ahead of functionality to try it out for free.
For reference I had no idea about Linux OS before I tried this so as a windows stalwart it was a bit of a challenge but once I got my head around it after a few days it is so easy now.
Once you write the little player to a USB stick and plug it into your PC, boot the PC and wtfplay loads, check that your DAC is seen and its address, type in the command line to get to wtfcui and from there it is like an explorer window where you should see all your music files ready for playback.
Cheers and happy listening, Pearse.
It took a little while to get used to typing text to get to the music but well worth the effort once you get there and it has retired my heavily modified Dual PC setup down to a single Audio PC with no on board SSD for OS.
There is no going back to any other software after hearing PCM from wtfplay through my Big7 and I have been happy to listen only to PCM for several months now such is the quality of playback from this basic little player.
I have converted DSF tracks to DOP which I have listened to on wtfplay but still keep coming back to the PCM versions as it is that good.
Bear in mind the developer has not supported DSD yet but from what some of the early beta testers have found including myself is that it will pass DSD in DOP to your DAC if it is capable of playing DSD in DOP.
You can tweak settings from the command line but I have been happy using the basic file player utility wtfcui as I see no need to do any further tweaking of buffers and such.
It will be interesting what others find but all I can do is alert anyone who puts sound quality reproduction ahead of functionality to try it out for free.
For reference I had no idea about Linux OS before I tried this so as a windows stalwart it was a bit of a challenge but once I got my head around it after a few days it is so easy now.
Once you write the little player to a USB stick and plug it into your PC, boot the PC and wtfplay loads, check that your DAC is seen and its address, type in the command line to get to wtfcui and from there it is like an explorer window where you should see all your music files ready for playback.
Cheers and happy listening, Pearse.