Fidelizer

[Thad E Ginathom]

Thanks Sid... do you have a link to that review? [EDIT: got it ] I'm not sure that I'm up to it, but I'd like to have a go at understanding it in context. Doesn't a USB cable have two ends? And isn't there a USB Interface at both of them? Hope to read the whole article for better information.

If electrical isolation is your aim, you can have that easily --- but the optical interface is currently unfashionable with audiophiles.

It is good to be paranoid. From the audiogon forum

It's not so much that I think that the guy might be up to anything dodgy (and no, in case anybody is asking, I don't analyse every program I install on my system!) but there is stuff there that I don't approve of.

There used to be a document wandering around the internet (not sure that it ever had a continuing permanent link. don't know why) that described customising an XP (or possibly even earlier) system for audio. I have no idea (no experience) how much Windows services (and the management interface) have changed in the, err, 3[?] versions since XP, but it might still be a good starting point. Document changes carefully and make only a very few at a time. There are weird and unobvious dependencies, and having to back out changes is perfectly possible, or even re-installation if one makes the system unbootable.

Fiddling with process priorities and hardware is, obviously, somewhat esoteric, and mostly beyond the means of most of us.

Wouldn't it be nice (well, for Windows users...) to have a tick-list disable the following services etc etc interface to a program to handle a subset of known-to-besafe-without services. They could be grouped into elementary/mid/advanced/dodgy groups.

Not an idea that looks like it would appeal to the Fidelizer author, it seems.

Anyway, word from the opposite side of the Windows seems to be that MS audio handling has improved greatly in recent editions.

And we're all stuck with the fact that the PC is not a real-time machine...

 

[hemantwaghe]

Thad/ Members any linux based music player better than this? musi player with flac playbality and album art support?
also I do not understand linux - so any LIVE player ? ie my idea is that to reseve an old laptop for music - only for music - not for movies..

so minimum linux distro - and music player - or music player which is part of distro...

is there something like this?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Linux audio can get a bit complex, which is at the root of some of the criticisms, which may well be just criticisms. There are parts with names like alsa and pulseaudio which fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, and there are lots of people to tell everyone what's wrong with it all! I don't use Pulseaudio, as it happens, but nor do I hate it with the passion that seems to inspire some to tear it out of their systems :lol:.

As far as I know, all Linux desktop distros will come ready and able to play music. Bear in mind that something like a Squeezebox Touch is a Linux machine --- and there's an example of a stripped down music-playing system.

Some of the popular software, like VLC, is available for Linux. I use a rather minimal-gui player called Aqualung: it's available for Windows, Linux ...and maybe Mac too. FLAC, yes; album art, postage-stamp, maybe configurable, but it isn't one of my requirements.

We have other members who know better than I do. As a one-time Unix admin, I wish I hadn't wasted my memory on lazy years sat in front of an XP machine.

The biggest potential problem you might meet is the lack of drivers provided by manufacturers. You might find that their device works when you plug it in, but not at, say 192 for very high-res files. Of course, Windows doesn't either, which is why the manufacturers write the drivers --- but they do it for the mass-market OS, which is Windows, not often for Linux.

Which operating system sounds better?

Honestly, I have no idea. Numerous factors combined to make my chosen desktop a Linux one, and I really hope I never have to pay any more money to Microsoft ever. It'll probably creep in the house on a new laptop, or something, though. A good few musicians and studio people use Linux (Linux Musicians etc) and, while I've heard people go back to Windows/Mac for their favourite Digital Audio Workstation software that they can't live without, I don't recall anyone ever saying that Linux sounds bad.

I did have huge problems when I first used my Firewire audio interface with Linux (my suffering was related on another thread here), but that is mostly over now, and Firewire is an option unlikely to be chosen by most.

 

[sidvee]

Thanks Sid... do you have a link to that review? [EDIT: got it ] I'm not sure that I'm up to it, but I'd like to have a go at understanding it in context. Doesn't a USB cable have two ends? And isn't there a USB Interface at both of them? Hope to read the whole article for better information.

Yes but the end that connects to the DAC seems to be at question here. Anyways like I said earlier I will have 1 or 2 of these units to test against my m2 tech hiface evo eventually and will report back. All I can say is when I run my evo in the chain vs usb direct, I prefer the sound of the evo every time.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Sid, sorry, complete understanding failure here. I was thinking something like synchronous/asynchronous dacs, and even thought you were, in fact, talking about digital converters, I somehow just missed the point that the quote was about them. I looked again at the review today, and my mistake was obvious.

Colour me stupid

Looking forward to your results...

 

[longshanks]

Longshanks, would be great to hear what you think about Fidelizer...Made a tremendous amount of difference to my PC sound....

I set it up in a pc which i use for headphone listening and i keep changing things in my headphone setup so really did not observe the changes this made, all i can say is it did not have any negative effect, if that were the case then i would have been removed it form my PC the next minute.

Its been a while since i listened to my headphone setup so will do a comparison in my current PC setup with Fidelizer & without Fidelizer and report back.

 

[panditji]

Look forward to it....just wanted a validation from more people if what I heard was correct....

 

[malvai]

I have been using the fidelizer in "Extreme" mode. It certainly makes a difference.

 

[square_wave]

Here is an excerpt on the BADA Alpha USB review from computer audiophile:
"There are a couple competing schools of thought when it comes to the best place for a USB interface. Just as in everyday life, there is no free lunch with either design approach. One school advocates for the USB interface to exist within the digital to analog converter. This allows the DAC chip to receive data using its native I2S protocol. In theory this design is capable of lower jitter if implemented without an intermediate conversion to S/PDIF before I2S. This USB implementation can also incorporate such methods as opto-isolators and grounding to isolate an internal USB interface from the sensitive DAC circuitry. The other school of thought insists USB interfaces must be completely separate from the chassis of the DAC. Physical separation allows for an otherwise unobtainable level of isolation between the noisy computing environment and the delicate digital audio environment. This isolation eliminates any direct electrical connection to the DAC's chassis and is required to reach the highest levels of USB audio performance according to proponents of the separate chassis design. In addition these proponents believe the benefits of a direct I2S data path are not worth the tradeoffs of reduced isolation and increased noise from a single chassis design. Needless to say Berkeley Audio Design believes strongly in separating the USB interface from the chassis of the DAC."

Given a choice, I personally would like to have the usb input as part of a single chassis in the DAC itself, but as you can see there is also a compelling argument for the opposing school of thought and I plan to test this out down the road.

Cheers,
Sid

Reflects a recent discussion with a competent DAC designer. He advocates the first school of thought. To avoid the additional intermediate conversion to S/PDIF before I2S. Hence prefers to have the usb in the DAC chassis.

Question to the technical minds is there a technical block to output i2S in these external converters ? Best of both worlds

 

[jls001]

2) pkshan's foobar2000 mod version XA

3) Jie Extreme Player (JEP) - out of the world sound. Just do not ask me how the author does it.

Thanks for the heads up on JEP. I just installed ver 2.4.8 and did an A/B with foobar2000 1.9 on a laptop, listening with an IEM from the headphone out.

The JEP consistently beat the foobar in resolution (by a good margin) and soundstaging (need to try this on music PC with proper music setup).

JPlay and JRiver users may like to install JEP and compare

Disclaimer: the UI is nothing to write home about, though. And I guess it is strictly .wav only.

 

[reignofchaos]

Reflects a recent discussion with a competent DAC designer. He advocates the first school of thought. To avoid the additional intermediate conversion to S/PDIF before I2S. Hence prefers to have the usb in the DAC chassis.

Question to the technical minds is there a technical block to output i2S in these external converters ? Best of both worlds

I2S is a standard for inter chip communication. It was a protocol designed for extremely short distances akin to trace lengths between two chips in a PCB. It was never designed to be an external communication standard between devices and as a result has no standardized interface.

Some manufacturers do allow i2s interfaces but the i2s out from one make may not match that of another device's i2s input. Some use RJ45, others use BNC while others use an XLR connector. Even if the connector is the same, the pins for signalling might be different!

 

[thevortex]

Thad/ Members any linux based music player better than this? musi player with flac playbality and album art support?
also I do not understand linux - so any LIVE player ? ie my idea is that to reseve an old laptop for music - only for music - not for movies..

so minimum linux distro - and music player - or music player which is part of distro...

is there something like this?

The lighter the distro the better your experience is. I would suggest going for one of the many Openbox based distros - Crunchbang, Manjaro etc. Or Lubuntu if you want to stick with the Ubuntu family.

Deadbeef with Alsa out will ensure you get bit perfect output. It is critical to bypass default PulseAudio (which resamples everything to 48Khz) and go for Alsa. Yes, you can also go for OSS (another sound server option) but it is known to be quite complex and therefore require a tad more troubleshooting.

Of course Deadbeef is only an option. You have many options including the plain old AlsaPlayer, Audacious, Banshee. There is also Aqualung which can do some software resampling to 192 Khz if you so desire.

If you want paid players, HQPlayer is an option. There is a whole lot of bells and whistles provided - if you are into upsampling your audio.

 

[thevortex]

Thanks for the heads up on JEP. I just installed ver 2.4.8 and did an A/B with foobar2000 1.9 on a laptop, listening with an IEM from the headphone out.

The JEP consistently beat the foobar in resolution (by a good margin) and soundstaging (need to try this on music PC with proper music setup).

JPlay and JRiver users may like to install JEP and compare

Disclaimer: the UI is nothing to write home about, though. And I guess it is strictly .wav only.

Glad you enjoyed it. And yes, it is consistently better sounding than foobar with ASIO out.

You might also want to try out Signalyst HQPlayer (offers a free trial) and PurePlayer (check diyaudio). The latter is by far the best player I have come across. It combines the sonic beauties of JEP and marries it with the comfort of playing almost any format of file. MP3 included

Time to celebrate, right?

Yes, the UI is still no great shakes.

 

[thevortex]

Mods - if the audio player posts are deemed to be unrelated to the use of Fidelizer, could you please move them to a new thread for this purpose? Thanks in advance.

 

[sidvee]

In my second system I am using a sony laptop running windows 7 and jriver mc19. However I got tired of moving the laptop back and forth, between work and music. So I pulled out my crappy old hp netbook which I had thrown in my old electronics pile after the battery died and decided to put it to service as a fully dedicated music player. It is still running xp. I downloaded jriver mc19 set the output mode to kernel streaming and hooked up to my arcam irdac. Fired up Freddie Hubbard's a 24/192 file of "Sidewinder" and sat back to enjoy. The sound was bad, especially compared to my previous sony. Freddie's trumpet sounded strident, there was some distortion in the background, on the whole sounded like a bad mp3. Toggling between output modes didn't help. Finally I downloaded Fidelizer and set it to audiophile mode. Wow! what a difference. The strident high frequencies were smoothened, no distortion and the music was just like what I was accustomed to with the sony. I listened to the whole album and 2 other Hubbard's albums in one setting. In this situation Fidelizer really helped.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[sidvee]

Past week or so I have been using the extreme setting on fidelizer. I feel this sounds better than the audiophile setting, I am perceiving better overall musicality specifically in the midrange. Only drawback, on my pc the setting takes a good 4-5min to initialize.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[sidvee]

I downloaded Fidelizer on my main music pc and ran it in extreme setting for the past week or so. To be honest on this machine which is solely dedicated to music playback with J river mc19 and nothing else, I am unable to discern any meaningful difference.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[reignofchaos]

You are not alone sidvee. I could not decipher any meaningful difference either on a dedicated music PC. I stopped using it after a few tries.

 

[sidvee]

Yes I guess it is safe to say that it will be potentially helpful only in cases where one is using a multipurpose pc for audio duties as well or perhaps an older machine.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[keith_correa]

These are interesting results!!!!

Archimago's Musings: MEASUREMENTS: Audiophile Sound and Operating Systems. (Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Fidelizer & JPLAY again!)