flac

We can tell that the developers who came up with Soundbase are more into coding and music than PR since they call their freeware "a single executable that runs from any location" instead of a powerful, versatile, and highly flexible music database, player, and tag editor that can store, sort, edit, and play more than 100,000 songs, search for album art, and even play Web radio. It was created as an alternative to the large commercial MP3 players and organizers. It's based on Microsoft's DirectShow architecture and supports most popular formats, including MP3, OGG, APE, … Read more

Most of today's music on CD, LP, or download is compressed to sound loud all the time. The engineers, producers, and record labels are afraid not to make music sound as loud as possible.

Dynamic range compression isn't new, it's been used by recording, mixing, and mastering engineers for decades. A little bit of compression is fine, but the unnatural onslaught of dynamically compressed sound obliterates musical nuance, delicacy, and emotional power. Compression's loud-all-the-time nature sucks the life out of music. The overuse of compression has become known as the Loudness War.

Before we go any … Read more

Oppo Digital's Blu-ray and DVD players have found favor with the most demanding high-end customers. I knew that Oppo has collaborated with a number of high-end audio companies (Ayre Acoustics, MSB Technology, NuForce, and others) on a number of products, but I didn't know Oppo made improvements on its own products based on feedback from those high-end companies.

The Oppo BDP-95 ($999) may have a lot in common with the company's BDP-93 ($499) 3D universal Blu-ray, SACD, DVD-Audio player, but the BDP-95 really is a very different, potentially better sounding Blu-ray player. I say potentially because the $… Read more

Reports of the death of the CD have been greatly exaggerated. With sales hovering around 326 million units in the U.S. in 2010, the CD still generates a sizable hunk of income for the music business. You may not give a hoot about that, but if you care about sound quality, it still makes sense to buy a great-sounding CD player. I buy one or two CDs a week on average, and as I recently pointed out, it may be a very long time before iTunes or Amazon ever get around to selling CD-quality downloads. Why waste your money … Read more

Last month the Internet was ablaze with articles like Mark Milian's "Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads." Milian did mention that the improved sound might be accompanied by higher prices, but no further details were covered.

He also said, "Many models of Mac computers can play 24-bit sound, and the iTunes program is capable of handling such files. But most portable electronics, and many computers, don't support 24-bit audio." Right, so I can't see why significant numbers of iTunes buyers would even consider purchasing higher-resolution files.

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It took a long time for me to work up any enthusiasm for the original digital consumer format, the CD. Coming from an all-analog perspective, first-generation CDs and CD players in the early 1980s didn't light my fire. The problem wasn't that they sounded "bad," it was that CDs robbed music of its soul and emotional connections. LPs' sound engaged you; the CD's sound was too easy to ignore. People put music on, and started reading, talking, working, anything but actually listening to music.

That's why I waited six years to buy my first … Read more

The iPod is a phenomenon, and it has clearly elevated the state of the art of portable music players. But it's not a bona fide high-end device. It's good for what it is, but I've always been a bit frustrated by the iPod's inability to sound great with some of my favorite full-size headphones.

Earlier this year I reviewed the Hifiman HM-801, and dubbed it "the Hummer" of portable players. The HM-801 made my iPod sound feeble by comparison.

The HM-801 was conceived as an audiophile player, so non-sound-oriented features are scarce. Instead of a hard drive, the HM-801 uses 32GB SDHC cards, which can store 20 24-bit-96 kHz FLAC "albums," or 50 CD-quality albums. Obviously, you can bring a bunch of SD cards with you so capacity isn't an issue. The player retails for $790.

That's expensive, but the best stuff always is. The HM-801 is about to be joined by another Hifiman player, the HM-602. Priced at $439, it's a good deal more affordable, and smaller than the HM-801; it's just 2.4 by 4 by 1 inches. That's nearly the same size as an iPod Classic, but more than twice as thick.

I prefer the HM-801's bold styling, but the new player's ergonomics are better. Neither is as easy to use and navigate as an iPod, but I got the hang of the HM-602's functions in a few days. It also plays 32GB SDHC cards. Like the HM-801, the HM-602 plays 96-kHz sampled FLAC files, but reduces 24-bit resolution to 16 bit. It also plays WAV, MP3, ACC, OGG, and APE files. The new player has 16GB of built-in flash memory; the HM-801 has just 2GB.… Read more

Sure, iPods and Zunes can sound perfectly fine, but no one ever claimed they were bona fide portable high-end audio devices. Their "good enough" sound isn't entirely their fault: they're too small to house a battery potent enough to power a high-quality headphone amplifier and a high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz digital-to-analog converter.

The Hifiman High Fidelity Music Player HM-801 is the Hummer of portables; it's big enough to get the job done. It's 3 inches wide, 4.5 inches high, and 1 inch thick; that's about the size of an old Walkman cassette player from the 1980s. Hifiman doesn't say how much the HM-801 weighs, but it feels substantial.

If Apple wanted to build something as good or better, it could, but the potential market for something that sounds better than an iPod is probably insignificant, and certainly too small for Apple or Microsoft to bother with. They're too busy jamming more features into their players, and sound quality never makes the cut. Besides, the market demands ever cheaper products, and real quality is never cheap. so the HM-801 is downright pricey.

That's another way of saying it's aimed at the sort of music lover who's already invested in a set of top-of-the-line Etymotic, Grado, Klipsch, Monster, Shure, or Ultimate Ears headphones. If you have and you're using an iPod or Zune, you're not hearing all the sound quality you paid for with those headphones.

The HM-801 was conceived as an audiophile player, so non-sound-oriented features are pretty scarce. The HM-801 has a user removable headphone amplifier circuitboard/module that makes future upgrades easy as pie. Hifiman already has one such upgrade in the works, a $170 board specifically designed to maximize detail and resolution of high-end in-ear headphones. Looking inside the HM-801--it has removable panels--so you can see it features top quality components, like a Burr-Brown PCM1704U digital-to-analog converter and Burr-Brown OPA627 Op-Amp. This is a level of technology normally found in audiophile home componentry, and never before used in a portable music player. … Read more

DJ software like AdionSoft's DjDecks can put pro-level audio programming and playback capabilities at your fingertips. You can mix and sequence many different file types and play them back in programmed sequences, like most DJ-oriented software. It has a raft of beats, loops, echoes, and other special effects you can apply during playback or save in your chosen file type, as well as plug-in expandability, like some of its competitors. But what sets it apart from and above most similar software is its flexibility and compatibility with external devices, such as multiple sound cards, including ASIO driver support, and … Read more