Linux or windows vista for music

Vijay_s

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I have 2 partition on my PC one is windows vista and other Opensuse 11.1. I am thankful expert in this forum who suggested me to use players like cplay, foobar 2000 on windows vista.

Can anyone suggest me which operating system is better for sound clarity, do linux have and advantage over windows on sound processing. I am using NORGE 1000 amp and wharfadele 9.1 speaker. Planning to buy separate sound card later due to budget constraints.

Onboard sound card is Intel HD audio with 95db SNR.
 
Both suck actually. Windows because it interferes and does too much and Linux because it does not do anything (as drivers are an issue).

For Vista get WASAPI plugin for Foobar. It will give the best SQ. I've not tried cPlay yet in Vista but if it works then great.

I recommending Vista here because its a better OS than the open source Linux which lacks in support for pretty much everything.
 
I have 2 partition on my PC one is windows vista and other Opensuse 11.1. I am thankful expert in this forum who suggested me to use players like cplay, foobar 2000 on windows vista.

Can anyone suggest me which operating system is better for sound clarity, do linux have and advantage over windows on sound processing. I am using NORGE 1000 amp and wharfadele 9.1 speaker. Planning to buy separate sound card later due to budget constraints.

Onboard sound card is Intel HD audio with 95db SNR.

+1 to moser.

BTW since vista is what you have try to couple cplay with CMP (also works with winamp or foobar but not tired on my system) - this will bypass everything close explorer, open and play the music in its own shell. You will notice the difference immediately. If you do not want to go that way - the wasapi plugin is another option (only for vista)

On my XP i use asio4all on my other system with creative soundcard - and this rocks. There is so much change in the music even with my old speakers and soundcard. The sound stage is increased by leaps and bound and bass tighter not/less boomy.

PS: Do not go by onboard sound card specs - they are all well on paper and suffer during the implementation part by manufacturers. Try getting a DX instead.
 
Both suck actually.

For Vista get WASAPI plugin for Foobar. It will give the best SQ. I've not tried cPlay yet in Vista but if it works then great.

I have installed foobar and copied WASAPI dll to component folder, is there any other configuration has to do to get it activated
 
I have installed foobar and copied WASAPI dll to component folder, is there any other configuration has to do to get it activated

In Foobar go to File > Preferences > Playback > Output Device. That will list all plugins, you need to select which plugin/output device you want to use.
 
In Foobar go to File > Preferences > Playback > Output Device. That will list all plugins, you need to select which plugin/output device you want to use.

Wow! I could experience a reasonable improvement in quality.
 
The last release of ALSA added support for the Xonar in Linux. With a dual boot you should check in your spare time what works and what doesn't and post on the forum for others to be updated.

The KDE media player amarok is the only single player across the board that really works well for audio. But if you find cplay version on Suse do try it and post an a/b comparison.

Cheers
 
Give cPlay a shot. The difference will be much better.

I have installed cPlay and but it asked for lot of initial parameters and asking for some cue file to start with, i couldn't make out so i left it at that stage. I may try it on this weekend. Is there any installation/configuration guide for new user.
 
I have installed cPlay and but it asked for lot of initial parameters and asking for some cue file to start with, i couldn't make out so i left it at that stage. I may try it on this weekend. Is there any installation/configuration guide for new user.

D/l it from here http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=226826. Its an installation file. It will only play WAV and FLAC files and cuesheet is a playlist for WAV and FLAC files. It will not play other formats like MP3 etc.

It's very easy to configure and will need ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver.

If any queries post here, I will be following this thread.
 
D/l it from here SourceForge.net: cPlay: Files. Its an installation file. It will only play WAV and FLAC files and cuesheet is a playlist for WAV and FLAC files. It will not play other formats like MP3 etc.

It's very easy to configure and will need ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver.

If any queries post here, I will be following this thread.

asio4all is good and can be configured like a audio playback driver like direct sound/wave in any of foobar or winamp. Personally I prefer winamp with asio4all but somehow cplay with cmp is getting me better and rich music with flac. For normal mp3 etc use foobar. For FLAC its cplay all the way bro.
 
D/l it from here SourceForge.net: cPlay: Files. Its an installation file. It will only play WAV and FLAC files and cuesheet is a playlist for WAV and FLAC files. It will not play other formats like MP3 etc.

It's very easy to configure and will need ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver.

If any queries post here, I will be following this thread.

99% of my music collection is in MP3 format and rest in wav format, I think there is no point of using cPlay as it can't play MP3. Btw how do we get FLAC format what is the advantage over wav, mp3.
 
99% of my music collection is in MP3 format and rest in wav format, I think there is no point of using cPlay as it can't play MP3. Btw how do we get FLAC format what is the advantage over wav, mp3.

FLAC and WAV are the same i.e. both are lossless formats just that FLAC is smaller in size when compared to WAV. MP3 is a compressed format with resultant loss in the quality of music. You can read up more about FLAC at FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec & Free Lossless Audio Codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. But you can let cPlay be for now since your content is mainly MP3. However do check out ASIO4ALL for Foobar too, it really gives great output. ASIO4ALL is very good and even works great with XMPlay too. XMPlay is another great player (just Google it). It has a very small footprint and takes very less in terms of system resources but gives great sound. I used to use both Foobar and XMPlay previously, but now after discovering cPlay its only cPlay all the way for me personally, but then most of my content is in FLAC format.
 
Hi All

Can we incorporate Album Art in Flac? How ? Can we attach multiple images? Which utility & Player is best for It?

While playing Such Flac files on WDTV can we see the album art?
Thanks ....
 
Hi All

Can we incorporate Album Art in Flac? How ? Can we attach multiple images? Which utility & Player is best for It?

While playing Such Flac files on WDTV can we see the album art?
Thanks ....

  1. yes.
  2. Not sure about multiple images.
  3. FLAC files can be played back bu winamp foobar etc (try an older version of foobar - thats somehow better - cannot remember the version number so please google). I always use and suggest foobar for music playback through asio4all though winamp is my personal favorite because it incorporates everything.
  4. Yes it works with WDTV and other NMTs
 
Hi All

Can we incorporate Album Art in Flac? How ? Can we attach multiple images? Which utility & Player is best for It?

While playing Such Flac files on WDTV can we see the album art?
Thanks ....

Yeah I'm incorporating album art into the FLAC files with Tag&Rename. Not sure about WDTV but I remember reading that it does show thumbnails so that should be fine too.
 
I have installed cPlay and but it asked for lot of initial parameters and asking for some cue file to start with, i couldn't make out so i left it at that stage. I may try it on this weekend. Is there any installation/configuration guide for new user.

While cPlay is pretty good for music quality, it is very pedantic when it comes to managing songs (can only play one song at a time) and also requires the cue file (which is sort of an index file for an album). Without this, it becomes pretty useless.

foobar2000 with wasapi is the best bet and it really provides lots of value through media mangement functionality, auto tagging from freedb, file conversions as well as album creations disk files and much more. I use mediamonkey for my digital media management and foobar with wasapi for playback.
 
Very true. The workaround to it is to create a cue file for the entire album which means cPlay will play one entire album and then stop. It's similar to a CDP and instead of inserting a new CD, it will need a new cue file loaded.

Still despite all its many limitations I'm still advocating cPlay because once you get used to the SQ from it nothing else will do. The clarity and soundstage is amazing and music sounds much cleaner (if that's the right word for it).

MediaMonkey is truly amazing. At one time it was the only s/w that could manage the 50,000 odd MP3 rips I had. As a media management s/w (among freewares) it is the best, but its SQ is a bit lacking though in comparison to Winamp, Foobar, XMPlay, etc.

While cPlay is pretty good for music quality, it is very pedantic when it comes to managing songs (can only play one song at a time) and also requires the cue file (which is sort of an index file for an album). Without this, it becomes pretty useless.

foobar2000 with wasapi is the best bet and it really provides lots of value through media mangement functionality, auto tagging from freedb, file conversions as well as album creations disk files and much more. I use mediamonkey for my digital media management and foobar with wasapi for playback.
 
Hi All

Can we incorporate Album Art in Flac? How ? Can we attach multiple images? Which utility & Player is best for It?

While playing Such Flac files on WDTV can we see the album art?
Thanks ....

Mediamonkey is the best one I have seen so far. It can do this automatically by selecting the specific group of tracks and clicking on update album info form web (Alt + L). It does on the fly
 
A beautiful, well-constructed speaker with class-leading soundstage, imaging and bass that is fast, deep, and precise.
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