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Topic: Memory player XXHE/cPlay (Read 3880 times) previous topic - next topic
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Memory player XXHE/cPlay


Is it just the typical "but I can hear it" or is there any, even the slightest, evidence that playing from "RAM" ( a concept that is quite new to me) has any benefits vs. "streaming and buffering"?
I could not find any discussion using search here on HA, if there was any, please point me in the direction.

It all started with the claim that "software jitter" is a concern for replay from files:

http://www.highendaudioads.com/forum/topic...p-with-coax-out
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I'm referring to playback 'on-the-fly' decompression, the playback being done with cPlay. This likely has to do with sofware jitter as cPlay goes out of it's way to reduce this quantity, at the expense of user convenience.


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I don't know the technical reasons why memory players sound better than the others....something to do with the disc mechanical system contributing noise while in operation I think....but I know that they do sound better. If you want to hear the differences you have to listen to one of them, not a bunch of others progs that all operate under the same principles. Did you even listen to XXHE? It's free to try...is a stand alone program that doesn't register with windows so there's nothing to clean up when you're done with it.


http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/forum/viewt...=11&t=14512
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On the latter, also note that "the way" to play is what I call "Unattended Mode" (see checkbox near the bottom), which lets disappear the user interface and in fact the whole program. Why ? well, because it again influences SQ. So, it allows me to keep the SQ under control and change the UI where needed without influencing.

The graphs posted (by ripblade) nicely show why XXHighEnd is a "memory player", and that this is quite different from increasing buffer sizes. So, indeed all processing needed (like converting from FLAC) is done in advance of playback, actually with the reason of not influencing sound (which real time conversion does as many believe).


Thanks for your attention.

Memory player XXHE/cPlay

Reply #1 –
Ah. Yes. Those guys.

That was a huge discussion topic a few years ago on HA (no links though, sorry). Unsurprisingly, those on either side of this fence want nothing to do with the other side....

The memory player guys make pretty bold claims about what can audibly influence sound, with little (if any) objective evidence supporting it. It's not really that any of what they say is false, per se; it's just all murderously unfalsifiable. They tend to concern themselves with laughable, Rube Goldberg-esque distortion modes -- like hard drive seeks influencing audio output jitter levels -- of course it's going to happen, but if it's it's -240db down, does anybody give a damn? And more importantly, why would one ever want to concern oneself with such piffle, when there are so many vastly more important issues that still are murderously difficult to hear?

Granted, there is one computer-related distortion to look out for, but it's a very base distortion which the memory playing people generally do not concern themselves with IIRC. Depending on vagaries of computer activity -- particularly relating to transient changes in CPU current draw pulling the ground in various directions -- changes in CPU load can impose an audible signal onto analog outputs. This is a very obvious first-order distortion effect, and it's supposed to go away with an improved analog configuration (usually that means a better sound card).

The energy content of this distortion goes to zero when the CPU load is precisely either 0% or 100%. You'll never get 0% CPU load -- that means it's hung! -- so a perfectly valid way to work around this issue (which I have experienced at times) is to run some background task that sucks up all your CPU time, at idle priority. Note, this is precisely the opposite strategy of what cPlay takes, which is to try to pre-decode everything.

Memory player XXHE/cPlay

Reply #2 –
XXHE is a blatant, glaring ToS8 violation.

Memory player XXHE/cPlay

Reply #3 –
Quote from: kraut on
Is it just the typical "but I can hear it" or is there any, even the slightest, evidence that playing from "RAM" ( a concept that is quite new to me) has any benefits vs. "streaming and buffering"?


If you buffer you're playing from RAM, so those two are literally the same thing.  In practice, compressed audio (flac or whatever) has to be buffered, and so its always played from RAM. 

I don't know what those quotes you provided are talking about, they make no sense.