Pure Player

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stelakis1

Member
Joined 2009
Hello Nikos!

Nice job! I compared the pure player with foobar in the study PC (the only one with a Win partition at home) and it sounds very good.
I understand that it's still an alpha release but keep up the good work!!!

I guess, the next thing to do, after debugging any music reproduction bugs, is to improve the UI.

Well done!
 
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npetralias

Member
Joined 2011
ttan98 said:
Hi,

The best sound I get so far includes the following:

1. Pure Player Version 1.1
2. Fidelizer Version 1.1
3. Set window 7 to no virtual memory, I use 2 core cpu running at 2.0Ghz
4. I have 2 G of memory no harm of having more memory.
5. Turn off Screen after 2-3 min helps.
6. I use a laptop, run on battery if necessary.
7. Remove all unnecessary background programs.
8. Disable all unnecessary ports e.g. Sound card(I am using ext. DAC), modem, etc

I get very low system latency, below 100ms most of the time averaging around 40-60ms, the cpu utilization is below 4% most of the time.

The sound is very clean and balance. Try it.
Click to expand...

Totally agree. The next step is to make a good DIY regulated Power Supply.
I made my own for my netbook using LM 338K as a regulator, but for Laptops it will need more effort due to the higher consumption... The best result is achieved together with M2tech Hiface USB2SPDIF which has Kernel Streaming embedded.

jkeny said:
Well done Nikos,
It sounds really good - need to do some long term listening.
I'm using Win 7 SP1 & when I changed Foobar from KS output to Wasapi there was a distinct & large improvement in sound (Foobar under XP using KS output has exclusive control over the soundcard i.e no windows mixer, in Win 7 that's not the case)

Does Pure Player use Wasapi drivers? I see that the windows mixer is operational!

Also, are you converting 24bit to 16bit using SOX for playback?
Click to expand...

No, it uses the default windows wave out (which i trust more), so it depends from the sampling rate you specify in Windows. For Windows7: Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Sound\Playback device\Properties\Advanced. Wasapi is included in future plans, but i'm not sure it will make things better. It will bypass the Windows mixer (resampling etc) but this is not the only factor for a good sound. Pure player is not converting anything, sox is just used to decode mp3 etc to wav, not for FLACs. 8,16 and 24bit FLACs are being played "as is" (decode-load to ram-playback) using an optimised engine written in C.

jkeny said:
One thing that's also noticeable (with all the top quality players, I think) is the difference in sound between FLAC & WAV. Try it Fran & see if you agree. I use dbpoweramp to convert from FLAC to WAV - it seems to do a nice job.

In the short time I have used it, I haven't noticed any difference with Fidelizer. I use Win 7 SP1 (only on beta release) which is said to be th ebest sounding Win version so far - anybody else using this & tried Fidelizer?
Click to expand...

I believe there is no sound difference between wav and flac because the flacs are first decoded and then played...


ttan98 said:
Nikos,

I like your Pure Player version 1.1 and even J. Keny praises it. I hope you don't mind if you can accept my constructive criticisms,

Pure Player as it is not really a Prototype but rather an Engineering Model. My suggestions are as follows will make it a Prototype:

1. Retain the sound engine as it is and improves on the USER Interface, with the following features:

a. No more DOS cmd display
b. Able to add tracks while player is playing
c. Play next track
d. Pause and Start

and many more, I am sure you can think of. A good starting point is from Foobar. Thanks for listening.
Click to expand...


Added to the list



Thank you all for your feedback and comments :)
 
J

jkeny

Banned
Joined 2007
npetralias said:
........... Pure player is not converting anything, sox is just used to decode mp3 etc to wav, not for FLACs. 8,16 and 24bit FLACs are being played "as is" (decode-load to ram-playback) using an optimised engine written in C.


I believe there is no sound difference between wav and flac because the flacs are first decoded and then played...
Click to expand...


I get the following when I play a 24/96KHz WAV file:
"ERROR: Unsupported/invalid WAVE file, only 16bps stereo WAVE in canonical form allowed
Playing with SOX....."

I don't know if this goes a way to explain the difference in sound between WAV & Flac but WAV sounds more relaxed to me with less of an edge (this is very slight but noticeable, to me)
 
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phofman

Member
Joined 2005
jkeny said:
No, I get this error message from Purplayer when I try to play a 24bit WAVE file, not a FLAC file. It doesn't show this message when playing 16bit WAVE files or 24bit FLAC files.
Click to expand...

That is why I am asking, sorry the post was aimed at the player developer. This rather specific message is located in flac encoder source code, so it is either a coincidence, or encoding to flac is being run.
 
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jkeny

Banned
Joined 2007
Ah, I see. Yes I would be interested in the answer too.

It says playing with SOX & displays real-time values of IN, OUT, Clip, etc. It is also sensitive to other processes that are operating & drops out momentarily (I presume based on other processing tasks). So I'm presuming this is not being run from a memory copy of the file.

BTW, I still notice a sonic difference between 16/44KHz Flac Vs Wav
 
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npetralias

Member
Joined 2011
I will try to make it clear.

MP3, ape, etc: Sox or monkey's Audio is used for decoding to wav and then my engine to play the wav with full file buffering

wav > 16 bit: use sox for playback, since this is 1% of the cases and i have not developed the engine fully yet (in this case sox is not buffering all of the file).

16 bit wav and all FLACs: use my decoding and playback engine which of course uses the flac source library to decode the files (full file buffering again).
 
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phofman

Member
Joined 2005
npetralias said:
16 bit wav and all FLACs: use my decoding and playback engine which of course uses the flac source library to decode the files (full file buffering again).
Click to expand...

I do not want to discourage your effort, but libmad.dll is covered by GPL Underbit: MAD (MPEG Audio Decoder) As a result, the same license applies to any work using this library, unless another license is negotiated with authors of the library. Therefore, I assume that GPL is the license you are using for your player. I could not find the information in your zip file.
 
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jkeny

Banned
Joined 2007
phofman said:
Fantastic, thanks a lot for your contribution to the world of open source.
Click to expand...

Yes, +1
I also have to congratulate & admire your philanthropic sensibilities!
I see that you are using a M2tech Hiface. I have posted in this forum the modifications that bring this device to a higher level of sonic operation. If you want to tackle this & need any help, don't hesitate to PM me.
 
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npetralias

Member
Joined 2011
Really?
I 'll read your mods right away...

I 've tried batteries, external power supplies, USB extensions etc.
The best result is achieved by using a very good diy external regulated power supply for the whole netbook and M2tech hiface directly plugged to a (tightened, cleaned and purified :D) USB plug on it. An Elna Starget or a MKP on it's +5V may also help a bit...
 
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jkeny

Banned
Joined 2007
Sure, dispensing with the USB Vbus supplying power & substituting a clean 5V external PS instead (don't cut the USB ground, just splice in the external ground) will bring noticeable improvement but the real jump in sonics comes from separating out the clock supply & powering this with a really clean, low noise 3.3V supply. I use A123 battery for this purpose & have found nothing to better it so far. This along with changing the on-board DC-DC switched regulators for low noise linear regulators makes this device soar.

See this post http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...sb-spdif-24-192khz-asynch-13.html#post2040520
 
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