Audirvana vs. Pine Player for Hi-Res Music

Music Talk
1

Hello

It seems a little crazy to pit a $75US ‘audiophile’ application against a free Music player, but this is the situation i’m finding myself in.

I am sitting on the edge between purchasing Audirvana and sticking to Pine Player (used in combination with Rogue Amoeba’s Sound Source 5). I get that Pine Player has no official support for MQA, but it does support up to 768kHz audio output, it supports up sampling audio, it supports many file formats, etc.

I also get that it doesn’t have Qobuz, TIDAL, etc integration that Audirvana has, but given when i’ve used that integration with Audirvana it only streams 96kHz files at 44kHz, I end up playing files using the local versions anyhow.

I understand that Audirvana has its own audio processor, but interestingly, when comparing it to Pine with the same audio files, i’m getting a slightly warmer / more rounded sound with Audirvana but the frequency response feels narrower to me than when compared to playback with Pine, which has a wider more spacious sound to me and feels as a result like I have better clarity.

It is entirely possible that the performance of Pine Player is in part due to SoundSource’s ‘Magic Boost’ feature, but either way, it’s left me comparing again and again the same music via both players and not feeling like either is a ‘clear winner’ (as sound quality goes).

I am using these applications on a MacBook Pro Retina 16" w/ Mac OS 10.15.6 and an ifi iDSD BL.

I don’t actually mind purchasing Audirvana, but I am conscious that a license will only buy me the current version (3.5) and Pine Player may retain free upgrades (+ no initial cost) for the life of the product by comparison.

So I was wondering if I am alone here with my experience, or if others have had similar experiences when comparing the two.

2

I used to use Pine player but switched over to Audirvana simply because of just how much easier it was to use. Not only did it look nicer, with album art being displayed and a more thought out UI, but I could use my phone as a remote as well. As soon as you have more than about 5 or 6 albums pine player, for me, was just not fun to use and it distracted from the listening experience

edit Also, if you buy Audirvana 3.5 like I did, and there is nothing you’d change, you never need to upgrade and pay. Audirvana is fine as is for me so I see the purchase as a one time thing

3

Thanks Felix. I get what you mean about album management and the UI. Pine Player has list views by comparison and no remote app as Audirvana has.

Would agree re no need to worry about new versions if the current one has all that you require, the one catch becomes OS upgrades. Unfortunately, OS upgrades can break applications and at that point you may be forced to pay for an upgrade just to keep using what you already own.

4

true say, I guess that won’t be for a few years at least, my Mac is also from 2012 so no more OS upgrades for me either.

The one issue I have with audirvana is, when scrolling through the albums, it sometimes lags out. Pine is so basic that it can’t really lag at all.

I, however, would happily pay $75 for audirvana as, although the sound difference is minimal, audirvana is so much easier to use

5

Ive been using Audirvana Plus for the last 4 years, Im very happy with it. 95% of my files are Flac, and 5% are DSDs.