Nowadays, computers began to replace people with many familiar things. For example, before the design bureau used huge professional culmans to draw. With their help, technicians and engineers created assembly drawings using large paper formats – A3, A2, A1 and T.p. Now the culmans are almost not used, they were replaced by computers and automated design systems (CAD). The same thing, in fact, is happening with music centers, DVD players and many other multimedia systems and devices-they slowly began to replace computers.
Another 8-10 years ago, computers could not be compared in sound quality with good musical centers, since then there were practically no individual sound cards with good DACs, ADC and other elements of audio tracks. But now the situation has changed dramatically.
Nowadays, more and more firms begin to establish production and produce sound devices with high-quality modern components, the capabilities of which in processing and output of sound, as well as many technical characteristics, often surpassed in many musical centers and individual multimedia systems.
But even if you have a sound card of a professional class and good acoustics or headphones, this does not give you a guarantee that the sound of this ligament will be comparable to the sound of a good musical center. And the point here is that many people given the hardware component forget about the software. Just about the software component and we will talk in this article.
Audio format
The first thing that is worth it is determined – in which audio format you will store your collection of music.
Now among the Internet community, the mp3 format is very popular. The reason for this lies in the fact that the MP3 is one of the oldest compression audio formats with a loss of quality.
Unfortunately, most users do not even suspect that in our time there are many new ones more advanced than MP3, compression of the loss with losses. Such formats include Musepack, OGG Vorbis, AAC and several more less well -known.
All of them have better than mp3 by a psychoacoustic compression algorithm. But even despite this, the sound quality when playing an audio format of compression with losses will be worse in any case than the quality of reproduction of the original entry with AudioCD or DVD-Audio.
It is therefore that music lovers and just lovers of pure and high-quality sound prefer to use records in their music library audio format of compression without loss, t.e. Lossless audio format.
Several logos of popular Lossless audio format:
Lossless Data Compression – a compression method without loss in the quality and integrity of information.
Accordingly, Lossless Audio refers to all the many audio formats, with which audio data will be compressed without loss as a relatively original record on the same Audio-CD or DVD-Audio. On the principle of operation, these formats resemble compressed archives, despite the fact that they have different compression algorithms.
The main advantage of these formats is that the information restores (decodes) with the accuracy of the bit is the bit as it was in the original, t.e. to compression. And this gives an almost one hundred percent guarantee that the sound quality when one of the Lossless audio formats will be exactly the same as when listening to the original Audio-CD or DVD-Audio.
But Lossless audio formats and one significant drawback – the size of the final files.
For comparison, one of the songs of the Creed group-“Hide” in the OGG Vorbis format, with the best bit, will occupy approximately 15-20MB on your HDD, while in FLAC format it will occupy about 30MB or even 40MB. The difference in the size of the files is very significant, is it so?
This is precisely the main dilemma for many users – to sacrifice the quality of sound for the sake of place on HDD, or sacrifice a place on HDD for the sake of sound quality.
About 2 years ago, I also encountered this dilemma and made a choice in favor of the quality of sound, since I could not measure with the thought that I could not hear the whole phonogram that was brought in in the studio and recorded on the disk.
Naturally, for the owners of plastic “household” columns for 300 rubles and a built -in sound card on a cheap maternal board, the difference in the sound between these two types of audio -dedicated ones will be almost invisible, because the equipment itself will simply “not let it hear”. But if you are the owner of at least high-quality headphones and a more or less decent built-in sound card on a good motherboard, then you will be quite likely to hear the difference.
Something Akhov, of course, should not be expected, but personally I immediately drew attention to the detail and "purity" of the sound. All tools, voices, effects are clearly audible and distinguishable, unlike the same mp3, where some frequencies are generally mercilessly cut out.
Ultimately, the choice is yours. If you do not have a hard large disk, but still want music notes in your audio biblioteum to be of good quality, then I would recommend you to take a closer look at OGG Vorbis, or AAC. These formats provide markedly better sound quality during reproduction than mp3, while they are supported by most modern players on the PC, as well as most portable audio devices.
Vorbis logo:
If you do not want to sacrifice the quality of sound for the sake of place on a hard drive, then your choice is Lossless audio format.
Cue Sheet
If you still decide to use Lossless Audio to store your musical records, then it is advisable for you to know what Cue Sheet is.
Cue Sheet, or Cue file is used when an Kwiff Casino review album of any group on your PC is not “cut” by songs, but entirely with one phala, t.e. The image of a disk/a single archive. Naturally, the file can be lost without Cue Sheet, provided that this format is supported by the player. But then the navigation on the album will only be carried out “to the touch”, since it will lose the whole album as one long track.
This is where the Cue file comes to help us, because of which the player sees the album not with one tram, but separately by songs, but also knows a lot of interesting things about the album itself. After all, just in the Cue file and the data is stored on what second/fraction of the second the track begins and when it ends, who is its performer, to which genre he belongs, from which album, in which year it is recorded, etc.D.
Cue itself is a regular text file that can be calmly opened with the same notebook and edit. Also, information from Cue can be stored in the tags of the Lossless Audio file by the APE standard, but not all Lossless formats support this option.
You can read more about Cue Sheet on Wikipedia, in the same place you will find a description of its syntax.
Alternate Output (Features of Windows Vista and Windows 7)
This topic is relevant for Windows OS users, in particular Windows Vista and Windows 7. In these systems, even when developing Microsoft, for an incomprehensible reason for me, I decided to close all the programs and applications to close access to the drivers of sound devices through Dircetsound. On the usual Waveout there was no full access to drivers before.
T.e. In these systems, in general, all programs are deprived of the possibility of hardware for the sound device to process the sound, thereby unloading the central processor and riding it from this task. Now all this is done by the system itself using the KMIXER software mixer kernel, which produces all the calculations of the central processor forces.
This means that there is practically no sense from individual sound cards with their processors when using standard sound conclusions in these systems.
It is also worth mentioning that the quality of software processing, mixing, and reinforcement in Kmixer leaves much to be desired and is in no way comparison with the hardware.
But the situation is not as bad as it might seem at first glance. In addition to Directsound and Waveout, alternative sound conclusions, such as Asio and Wasapi Exclusive, hence the name of this section can be used on these systems.
Asio (Audio Stream Input/Output) – this is the input/output of streaming audio data – a protocol of data transmission with a low delay. Low-Latency), developed by Steinberg (copied from an article on Wikipedia).
And in simple terms, this is the conclusion (in our case) of sound directly to the hardware of the sound card (through the driver of the sound card), those are hardware mixing of sounds, which gives undeniable higher, close to ideal/“transparent”, sound quality.
ASIO logo:
But there is one catch – Asio is supported at the hardware level not all sound cards. You can even say the opposite, not so many sound cards that support at the level of the Asio driver-almost the entire line of Creative Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster X-Fi can boast of this, unlike built-in sound cards.
Here can come to the rescue Wasapi Exclusive (Windows Audio Session API) is, in fact, the same conclusion of the sound “bypassing” of all kinds of systemic software mixers and resemliers, directly to the hardware mixer and resempler in the sound card driver, T.e. This is an analogue of ALSA on Linux, if you allow you. Wasapi Exclusive also provides a more or less pure sound, and on almost all sound cards, as it works directly with the driver bypassing all this “software husk” in Windows, as I wrote above.
But there is one reservation about the Wasapi Exclusive – when the sound is displayed through it, the sound card goes into the “monopoly mode”. You probably met a similar option if you digged in the settings of audio devices in Windows Vista or Windows 7. So, when moving to this “monopoly mode”, the sound device (sound card) is completely in the power of the program that initialized this mode, t.e. Activated. The rest of the programs and even the system itself at this time, the sound through this sound device does not lead, I can not, all these sounds will simply be ignored. T.e. Using in an audio player when listening to music to output the sound of Wasapi Exclusive you will hear only this very music and nothing more.
Choosing an audio player for Windows OS
There are a great many different audio in the World Wide Web-/*and not only*/players. All of them are distinguished by design and capabilities, payment and free, etc.D.
Personally, when choosing an audio player, I pushed, firstly, from the question of supporting reading (decoding) Lossless Audio formats, such as FLAC, APE, WV.
Then the question arose about the free player.
And already finally the decision was made by the Windows 7 operating system and its features (I described these features in the section “Technical side of the question” – “Alternative Output (Features of Windows Vista and Windows 7)”), since there is no question of systems based on Linux now. By the way, on Linux, my choice fell on Deadbeep + the sound of sound through ALSA, the sound of which I consider almost perfect, but here is the merit of not only it, but also ALSA. But about everything in order.
Winamp
The description of this player can be found in almost any corner of the Internet, and on Wikipedia too, so I will not bring it here, but I will simply express all my “pros” and “against”.
Program interface:
Pros Winamp
+ The abundance of the plugins with which the official site "splashes".
+ Simple and understandable interface.
+ An extensive number of settings, both the main components and modules of the player itself, and various hot keys, associations with idiomas, etc.D.
+ Support for the standard layout of Lossless audio format .FLAC.
+ Supporting sound output through Open Al, Asio and Wasapi Exclusive using Output plugins.
Cons of Winamp
– Lack of support in the standard layout of Lossless APE and WV audio formats.
– lack of normal support Cue Sheet, reading information from them, etc.D. (Read more in the section "Technical side of the issue")
Result
I had to refuse the use of WinAMP, since two significant disadvantages I have listed above significantly outweighed all the advantages.
The first minus turned out to be significant because at least to reproduce the APE format to our aid and can come to the abundance of the plugins to the player, but the situation with WV is very sad – there is no plugin officially to play it officially.
The second drawback of Winamp speaks for itself. And given even that there are a couple of plugins for reading Cue on the official website, it still failed to make Winamp work normally with Cue. This was expressed by the fact that the information was read both from the file itself, displaying the image of the disk in the APE with a single track, and from Cue Sheet, displaying the exactly the same album nearby, but already broken into tracks. From some disks images in APE, data were not read at all. Naturally normally navigate in such a mess does not work.
AIMP2
You can read the description of the player on Wikipedia.
Program interface:
Pros AIMP2
+ Very convenient and functional interface
+ Support in the standard layout of most Lossless audio formats, such as FLAC, APE, WV, etc.D.
+ Correct work with Cue. All information from Cue was read without problems and there was no duplication.
+ Not demanding on the resources of the system
The disadvantages are AIMP2
– Lack of support for sound output through Open Al, Asio or Wasapi Exclusive using Output plugins. Output plugins as such under AIMP2 does not exist at all.
-a small number of plugins expanding the functionality of the audio player.
– Bass game engine, used in the player to decode and reproduce music, soundly shaks the sound and too strongly enhances low frequencies.
Result
In the case of AIMP2, a decisive and fundamental factor in the refusal of its use was the inability to display the sound through Open Al, Asio or Wasapi Exclusive. The developer himself promised that the new version, more precisely, the new generation of this audio player-AIMP3 will maintain the conclusion of sound through Asio and Wasapi Exclusive, but its release will take place at best in half a year.
Foobar2000
You can read the description of the player on Wikipedia.
So now I have the Foobar2000 interface, after some simple changes in design settings:
The pluses of Foobar2000
+ Support in the standard layout of almost all the most popular audio formats (MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WAVPACK, WAV, AIFF, MUSEPACK, SPEEX, AU, SND)
+ A large number of plugins, with the help of which, for example, you can expand and replenish the list of formats supported by the player, such as APE, AC3, ALAC, etc.D.
+ Supporting sound output through Asio and Wasapi Exclusive using Output plugins.
+ Not demanding on the resources of the system
+ There is a built -in audio format converter. Allows you to indicate which tracks need to be transcoded directly from the sheet play, in which format and where to save them.
+ Extensive capabilities for setting up almost all elements and components of the audio player.
+ The ability to fully configure the program interface as you want.
+ Support for changing the topics directly on the fly, as well as their conservation and exports to external files.
+ High-quality algorithms for reproducing and processing an audio flow. The audio player really gives out a very high-quality and pure sound.
+ The ability to exchange information with external portable musical devices such as iPod and t.D.
Cons of Foobar2000
– some difficulty in mastering all the settings and opportunities that can occur in inexperienced users.
Result
Foobar2000 seems to me an almost perfect audio player for Windows. It is not for nothing that there are projects for the same Linux that are trying to resemble it, just Deadbeaf, which I mentioned above, is one of them.
In Foobar2000, almost everything arranged for me, and with some difficulty in mastering, I got out quickly enough. But the abundance of settings and all that in Foobar2000 you can “dig” me very pleased, since being a user of systems on the Linux base, I really like to start my “playful hands” in settings and redo everything as I like. =)
Several examples of use for Foobar2000 alternative design style Panels UI:
Jetaudio (Cowon Mediacenter) Basic
The full version of the player Jetaudio – Plus VX is paid, with the possibility of testing within 30 days. But since one of the views of the review is to choose a free audio player for permanent use, the choice fell on a free and in some way a destroyed version of Basic. More about Jetaudio can be forgiven on Wikipedia.
An example of one of the options for a standard design topic (skin):
Pros Jetaudio
+ Rich functionality of the player. Allows you to listen to music and view the video, fly in converting tracks or record CD discs.
+ A pleasant design, as well as the worked out logical menu of the player does not cause any inconvenience or difficulties in mastering.
+ Convenient organization and management of the Library of Multimedia.
+ The player is a real multimedia center. In a standard package, he supports almost all modern compression audio formats, both with a loss of quality and without (Lossless), and also allows you to lose most modern video formats and even view DVD-Video.
+ A large number of different audio filters that enhance the volume of the recording, filters of the effects of effects, etc.D.
+ The player menu are translated into most languages of the world.
Cons Jetaudio
– Sound processing by the KMIXER system software mixer, as well as the lack of support for sound output through Asio, or Wasapi Exclusive using Output plugins.
– a noticeable load on the system compared to other players who participated in this review.
– the player does not support Cue Sheet (more in the section "Technical side of the issue").
– Full version and cut functionality of the free version.
– In the standard Jetaudio package there is localization only in English, localization in other languages must be downloaded from the official site.
Result
As an audio player of Jetaudio, he left a double impression of himself and could not lure me on the “dark side”, forcing me to refuse to use Foobar2000. In view of this, I will describe my impressions of Jetaudio in more detail than the impressions of other players.
The first minus Jetaudio, which pops up even when downloading is a full version. An ordinary user naturally prefers to download Coca some free multimedia player than pay for jetaudio. Moreover, the most offensive is that the owners of Cowon branded products will also not be able to get the full version of Jetaudio for free. They will have to pay for her too.
Of course, complete with Cowon portable players, a less cut -out version of the Basic VX is a functionally cut, but it is still cut regarding the paid versions of Plus VX, or Premiere VX.
The next drawback that I immediately caught my eye when organizing an audio biblioteum in a player is the lack of Cue Sheet support.
The player does not know about the existence of such files and simply does not react to them in any way. Accordingly, almost all of my collection of music in Lossless got into the "Unknown Artist". It also seemed to me that the player does not always correctly read tags from Lossless audio format.
Then I began to study the settings of the player in which I found many different audio filters with catchy names, such as “X-Bass”, “Wide”, “BBE HD Sound”, etc.D.
Most of these filters personally have no particular value for me and seem to be marketing passages. For example, the “BBE HD Sound” filter should supposedly restore the purity and clarity of sound, but in fact it simply dynamically increases the volume at various frequencies – something like an automatic equalizer that is adjacent to the spectrum in real time.
Basically, all these filters will be useful for lovers of listening to MP3 in a low bitrade, or lovers to watch a video with low sound quality. Music in Lossleess begins to sound unnatural because of these filters, since the ratio and balance of instruments and sounds that were determined in the studios during the information are violated.
Then I drew attention to the fact that the player itself, when reproducing one of the Lossless, Audio files loaded my processor by about 4-5%, while also the Audiodg system process.EXE began to create an additional load of 5-10%, which in the compartment gave approximately 10-15% of the load on the system.
The reason for this lies in the output of the sound through Waveout and as a result of sound processing, as well as the imposition of all filters and effects using the KMIXER system software mixer kernel. I could not find any plugins to support the output of sound through Asio, or Wasapi Exclusive. Moreover, as I mentioned earlier in the section "Technical side of the issue"
– “Alternative Output”, Kmixer in itself noticeably shallows sound, and also creates emphasis on low frequencies. In general, the sound of the player on Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems to call it pure my tongue will not turn.
Based on all of the described above, it becomes clear that my choice fell on Foobar2000 and I still think that this player when displaying sound through Asio, or the Wasapi Exclusive gives the purest and most high -quality sound.
Thanks to everyone who had the patience and effort to read this article! =) If you notice a mistake or think that I am wrong in something, then write about it here and I will definitely take into account your comments.