You know the way all digital sounds the same? A story of Max2Play and some others

uglymusicuglymusic
edited October 2020 in Digital
You know the way all digital sounds the same?
Especially streamers. You know they do, don't you?
I shouldn't have been surprised at this one. But I was. And am, by the scale of this one.
So, broadly, for the Raspberry Pi, there are MPD-based (music player daemon) apps and Squeezelite-based ones. I don't like this idea of calling the contents of our Raspberry Pi microSD cards operating systems. There are OSs, but that's not all.
My experience has been, in the MPD world, MoOde sounds better than Volumio, by quite a bit (I'm a measurement fiend at heart) and that MoOde sounds better than piCorePlayer, that is based on Squeezelite. But not a lot more.
So why did I try Max2Play? Madness, that's why!
Long story short, with Squeezelite installed (I can apparently install MDP, too (more fun to come)) I get the best sound of all.
Some of the directness and detail of MoOde, with the acoustic realism of piCorePlayer. And it's a big step up.
That's as far as I've got, but Max2Play with Squeezelite is currently at the top of the pile.

Comments

  • 29mile29mile
    Sounds logical but my computer knowledge is a bit limited unfortunately. However must revisit using Moode on my Allo Katana again.
    I believe you can use Volumio on a Pc/laptop. By removing Windows you can install Volumio to good effect as the server only has Volumio to look after. 
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    I increasingly believe 'everything matters' in hi-fi.

    Which means Volumio may be the best on your setup.
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    It would be interesting to hear Volumio on a quiet PC, for sure.
  • ianian
    Forgive my ignorance but I’m confused by the references to Squeezelite AND Max2play.   Do you have to install both on a SD card that then lives in your Pi?  ( I currently run MoOde BTW)
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    MPD is the innards of MoOde, the piece of software that usually handles playback in a DLNA/UPnP setup (I may not be 100% technically correct here because my knowledge peters out not far from here). Squeezelite is a Squeezebox emulator, so it handles playback in a Logitech Media Server-based setup.
    What makes Max2Play different is that you can install either Squeezelite or MPD (or perhaps both) withing Max2Play effectively as plugins.
    Does that answer your question?
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    edited October 2020
    Another witness for the prosecution: An exhausted SO, just back from work, heard the difference last night.
    She also heard the transitions to MoOde from piCorePlayer and from Volumio in the past; these differences aren't small in our experience. Everything matters.
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    I've just noticed why Max2Play may sound better than piCorePlayer, both running Squeezelite. M2P appears to be running an older version of Squeezelite:

    Update current version Squeezelite Max2Play v1.0.3 based on v1.8.7-999, Copyright 2012-2015 Adrian Smith, 2015-2017 Ralph Irving. to newest available.

    I guess there may be a reason ;)

  • 29mile29mile
    Max2play could allow me to switch from Volumio Dave. Allo supports Max2play which has a Tidal plugin so my Katana dac should be good to go ! Is M2P a free download or subscription? 
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    It's a free download, but there's a Euros9.95 annual subscription for technical support and some of the more specialised plugins. I'll probably cough up for the subscription because I'm using it on two of my systems now.
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    29mile said:
    Max2play could allow me to switch from Volumio Dave. Allo supports Max2play which has a Tidal plugin so my Katana dac should be good to go ! Is M2P a free download or subscription? 

    I can't find a Tidal plugin in Max2Play https://www.max2play.com/en/addons/.

  • 29mile29mile
    edited December 2020
    Whoops - they must have removed it recently as there are references to it in the forum. 
    Also checked the Allo support list which excludes the Katana so could be back to the drawing board.  
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    Maybe it'll pop up again. I know Tidal Connect has been launched, so it could be the plugin needs some work.
  • AntiCrapAntiCrap
    010010010010
  • cj66cj66
    Very restrained Colin, I expected 01001100 01001001 01000101 01010011  ;)

  • uglymusicuglymusic
    Am I supposed to convert binary into ASCII or something?
  • AntiCrapAntiCrap
    No I was going to use Octal, but that was in the day a 10K memory core and ferrite to boot was massive in a Singer Computer but code written like this 01110P01 looks odd.
    Singer was taken over by ICL.
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    Were they taken over for their digital sewing machine technology?
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