July 20th, 2017, 3:24 pm
ratbagp wrote:If you can come up with $5 a month, you can stream from the quite large collection of British and some Aussie shows at acorn.tv
https://signup.acorn.tv/
Currently I'm laughing my way through the totally outrageous Rake series. No sub-titles however and the accents are definitely 'strine'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rake_(Australian_TV_series)
On a separate note, I am now listening to Christiane Karg - Parfum on Qobuz which is reputedly one of the better streaming services for classical music but not available in the US. I was in England recently and signed up for their free trial using Paypal which does not indicate which country you come from. I am still able to stream here now that I am back in the US. I only got the CD quality version but may do the upgrade later. Sound quality is fine, but I get occasional stuttering on my Comcast connection, but it might be my laptop that is the problem.
The classical music selection is wonderful and there are so many great recordings coming out these days.
ray
July 20th, 2017, 3:41 pm
Cogito wrote:Last night while doing research on the music players came across a neat little software called jPlay. It is developed by a polish and dutch guys. It got glorious review on the net including mainstream audiophile gigs like 6 Moons, Positive Feedback, TAS, Enjoy the Music, TNT etc. See the reviews at http://www.jplay.eu/reviews/
Core difference between jPlay and other computer music players (except may audiophile linux) is the "real-time" streaming. All sources and DACs process the data in real time so the timing of the bit stream is maintained. Computer CPUs are built for multi-tasking (task switching) and almost all OSs are multi-tasking also. When it is time for the music player to process the next group of bits, it might be swapped out of the CPU causing the delay in the bit stream. Add to that the multi-tasking OSs like Windows and Linux where several hundreds of processes are running and competing for resources, those delays could be substantial.
According to jPlay developers, their main focus is on "time perfect" streaming in addition to "bit perfect" streaming. To achieve this, jPlay takes over the computer stopping/hibernating all the processes and gives itself highest Priority. In "Hibertating" mode (recommended) even the mouse and keyboard are disabled. Computer looks as if it is struck, it will not respond to any thing until the jPlay finishes the playing. And it loads the entire music file into memory before starting to play to avoid any delays.
jPlay developers created plug-ins for jRiver, foobar, iTunes etc, ie jRiver etc are used as the front-end (UI) and jPlay takes over the entire back-end (music playing) operating. jRiver did to like it and issued a statement calling jPlay "Hoax" and recommended removing it completely. https://jriver.com/jplay.html . That convinced me to try jPlay
Last night, installed jPlay trial version on my laptop. It comes with bare minimal user interface. It opens up a terminal window. To play music, select the files from windows explorers and copy. Go back to jPlay terminal window (Jplay Mini) and press space bar. JPlay takes a few seconds to load the files into memory and hibernates all other processes. You will see screen flicker and music starts playing.
I did a quick comparison of two songs between jPlay and foobar2000. I did not immediately notice the huge difference the reviews claimed but it felt like jPlay created deeper soundstage and it was little smoother.
Going to reinstall windows on my laptop and try out jPlay and Audiophile Linux (since both are trying to process the music in realtime) for the next couple of weeks.
Anyone using windows for music playing, give it a try and share your observations.
BTW, trial version of jPlay creates random gaps in the music. Full version is 99 Euros with lifetime support.
July 20th, 2017, 3:52 pm
July 23rd, 2017, 9:30 pm
July 24th, 2017, 12:48 pm
Cogito wrote:Audiophile Linux:
Using AP-Linux for the last couple of days. It uses MPD (Music Player Daemon) as the music player, sound quality is very very good. It plays all formats without any hitch. MPD is definitely at the top of my list now.
But AP-Linux's user interface sucks. The developer is working on it part time, it took him 2 years for a release. AP-Linux is light weight on purpose, but the choice of fluxbox as the window manager is a bad decision. Installation is completely manual, like in the 80s/90s Unix systems.
Snakeoil-os developer seems to be very active and involved. He is using ubuntu and stripping it down. It comes with MPD, Squeezebox like and another music server. It is a headless machine, perfect for audio rooms. Today I installed it but could not get it to work. Communicating with the developer.
If snakeoil-os sound quality is anywhere near Ap-Linux, it will be a winner.
July 24th, 2017, 1:51 pm
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