Are software players really different ?

11-16-12: Vapor1

Very cool, and gotta say a nice effort in trying to objectify things. The data is useful, but as I'm sure you realize a bit hard to intrepret into anything you could use to draw a conclusion. I'd say keep working on ways to display the data, maybe with some overlays that switch on mouse-over.

One thing I missed, what is your subjective opinion of difference between J River and Foobar on PC?

Thanks Vapor1. I find Foobar to be a bit more on the bass end as compared to J River or in other words J river appears to have more high end. I am currently listening mostly to Fidelia that in my sound setup appears to be the most transparent. With respect to improving the readability of the charts I will do some more work on that as I find the time.

There are diferences, even in different revisions of the same player S/W. I use a specific rev of Amarra, not the latest, because it beats all of the others.

I dont really know what is causing the difference in SQ, but I can speculate:

1) offset differences
2) floating point math is wrong
3) delays and queueing as it executes is different

Some of these things may be causing more common-mode noise on the USB or S/PDIF interface. This can increase jitter.

steve N.
Empirical Audio

Very cool, and gotta say a nice effort in trying to objectify things. The data is useful, but as I'm sure you realize a bit hard to intrepret into anything you could use to draw a conclusion. I'd say keep working on ways to display the data, maybe with some overlays that switch on mouse-over.

One thing I missed, what is your subjective opinion of difference between J River and Foobar on PC?