Bad Guy Good Audio Rankings and stuff (under construction) (Part 1)

Great set. I just rec’d em to a commenter on YT yesterday. Sound,fit…nice.

1 Like

4 Likes

What are your thoughts on the TRI StarLight V4? Just ordered, will be comparing with my FiiO Fh7’s

4 Likes
3 Likes

What application does BBGAR use for music playback

I like it’s UI

An RME ADI-2FS :+1: oops just reread your question lol…I think he covered that in one of his videos a while back?

I believe he mentioned Jriver in some videos so might be that.

3 Likes

Yup it’s JRiver :call_me_hand:

2 Likes

On the topic of music players - i have tried most of the popular ones. These include JRiver, Roon, Audirvana and Amarra Luxe. They differ in sound signature believe it or not. Hearing is believing!

JRiver and Roon are very neutral players and sound very similar to the point of it being very difficult to tell them apart. I give a slight edge to Roon and its impeccable UI and seamlessness does not hurt at all. Factor in price though and Roon quickly falls down a step.

Audirvana is the cleanest player. It is energetic, tight and slightly bright. It gives extra sheen and sense of clarity which is not my preference, but it does have the cleanest sound output, almost artificially so. All in all it sounds very “solid state”. Has a quite simple but very functional UI and Is a pleasure to use most of the time.

Best to use with slow or warm sets to wake them up.

My favorite music player though, hands down, is Amarra Luxe. This player sounds like it’s running music through tubes!! The UI is pretty horrid though. But the sound quality is nuts!

Here are some adjectives I’d use to describe the sound:

Warm, delicate, big, atmospheric, cohesive, airy, vinyl, analogue, liquid, smooth, free of digititus, holographic, reach-out-and-touch quality.

If you have treble sensitivity, Amarra Luxe will calm all that down.
Best to use with energetic and bright sets.

1 Like

The “music player” is there just to send a bit-to-bit perfect digital information to your DAC…
(with a provided UI)
I highly doubt any humanly differentiable errors the software can make.

The only difference could be DSP, but if we are talking about Hi-Fi, there shouldnt be ideally any corrections…

2 Likes

Try it for yourself with an open mind and don’t let yourself get bogged down in the science of it all. Your personal experience of perception trumps whatever science or measurements says about what is and should be possible.

I know Roon, Audirvana and Amarra all offer trial periods. I did extensive, and I do mean extensive listening and comparison last year, and my conclusion was:

Roon - Neutral sound, best UI. Offer good SQ.

Audirvana - Bright sound, good UI. Offer very good SQ.

Amarra Luxe - Warm sound, horrible UI. Offers best SQ. Amarra allows my speakers to perform the disappearing act.

No EQ and all forms of signal processing were turned off of course.

All three offer cleaner output than pure Tidal.

I use and put up with Amarra despite the UI all because of its glorious sound. Highly recommended if sound is highest priority.

1 Like

Tbh I actually believe this because audirvana does some kind of electrical decrapifying to make the power supply better

I’d probably use audirvana as my player as amarra is more of a Mac app and roon is meant for a whole house setup with multiple zones (it’s hard to even stop the music to go watch a video or something)

J river looks great but I do like the tidal integration which is the only reason I’d probably move away from foobar (how would you say foobar sounds) besides better UI

Foobar with WASAPI plugin did not make a strong impression on me. Neutral. Does not possess the layering and stage size of Amarra so it’s a no-go for me personally.

Amarra is certainly better behaved in terms of UI, on Mac machines.

Sorry, I have not had the Starlight V4

Is JRiver better than Foobar?

For me, yes. I do reviews. on a 55" monitor it is perfect. Has a great active community, can play all my DSD andany file. Love it

2 Likes

Did you also test with local lossless files, or are your impressions primarily based on Tidal running through the apps? I’m shopping for a good app to interact with my local library on my Mac.