All the focus have been on ease-of-use but at last there are new local (and global) streamers on the horizon giving improved sound quality. Here is one:
The digital playback process is at the heart of Audirvāna’s proprietary technology. It prioritizes the music on your computer by minimizing processor activity during playback and always following the shortest possible software path to the audio output.
The Audirvana Core Player is a headless version of Audirvana that is just becoming available for daredevils :-). Right now it is Linux test only but runs from Raspberry, NAS and on upwards. It is small enough so manufacturers can include the core in products - users probably must purchase the extended Remote-app to use it. They are extending the Remote app with the missing functions and there you have the UI. This will show up during 2025.
Also wondering are most using it to directly output to a DAC or via UPNP? In other words woudl an RPi HAT of some kind be required for best performance?
I guess most are using it directly with a DAC. Alphaaudio tested Raspberry vs. better compute boxes and more compute power sound definitely better.
I am running JPLAY Femto on one box with stripped down Windows 10 v1903 (best sounding version!) with KERNEL_STREAMING/hibernate modes directly to DAC and it is hard to beat. Will try Audirvana Core when they release Windows version.
Both Audirvana and JPLAY Femto sounds very much better reading tracks into memory, then shutting down most processor tasks so just copying bits directly from memory to DAC is going on. Really an extra dimension.
Interesting. Presumably they require a pretty big buffer if not reading into memory track by track, as otherwise I’d imagine there’s be degradation towards the end of the track when the next one is loaded into memory.
The DAC is my sticking point currently unless I could use the Oppo UDP-205 as a USB DAC.
You also need a good USB card or a good DDC (digital to digital converter) to cleanup the USB. On the other hand you dont need those funny expensive routers they are selling to everyone right now.
It all remind me of my first digital system with HDX-SSD, nDAC, XPS2, that system had great feeling of body, loved it. Needed more compact system and then went first with 272 and then Linn Klimax DSM which both had more typical digital sound. So I use a modified computer with linear PS in place of the HDX. Hi-end USB and Hi-end Ethernet adapters help, preferrably with their own linear PS. I am also adding a Masterclock. Its expensive (this is stuff used in recording studios, I do a lot of DIY with only the most important parts) but try to listen sometime, there are some hifi products like Taiko and JCAT but they make even Naim look like budget gear :-).
When it comes to loading tracks I use M2 PCIe/NVMe SSD:s (Samsung 990PRO) to load music into memory, many, many times faster than SATA SSDs. Around 6000Mb/sec on a good gaming motherboard.