24 replies to this topic

[Catherine Barkley]

Hi guys. Nice forum you've got here! I've been saving some money for a stereo set up for a small apartment that doubles as home theatre (I'm not fussed about not getting surround sound), and I have a couple of questions about getting the best audio quality possible out of my chosen home theatre/music program, XBMC.

The components will be:
3DTV
HTPC
Cambridge Audio Dacmagic
Redgum Sonofagum amplifier
Usher S-520 speakers
The turntable that I already own

Essentially, what I'm wondering is whether anyone has any experience setting up either bitperfect or basic audiophile quality sound through XBMC. If so, what hardware, firmware and software do you use? I'm just now going through the tedious process of deciding what components to put into the PC, and at the same time whether to run Windows or Linux.

XBMC for windows can output its audio by optical/coax through WASAPI. Would this theoretically be bitperfect (or the same as, say, playing the file in Foobar and running it through WASAPI which seems to be the benchmark for audiophiles)?

In Linux, you can supposedly get bit-perfect sound in ALSA. Again, would it be bit perfect if I set it up this way, and has anyone had any success doing so? Linux is my preferred operating system because I would like to have the most minimalistic installation that I can to improve speeds.

XBMC is limited to 16 bit audio on all platforms for now; everything else gets converted to 16 bit by the program. But I think this is irrelevant to me for the most part because although multi-channel Blu Ray and DVD rips would be processed by the software due to being higher than 16 bit, they would need to be processed anyway to downmix the audio from 5.1 or 7.1 to 2.0 for the DAC to understand it (you choose your output mode in XBMC - i.e. 7.1, 5.1, 2.1, 2.0, etc)

And although I want my movies and TV to sound GOOD, the only thing I really care about getting EXCELLENT sound quality out of is the flac files that I've ripped from my CDs.

[Dr X]

No I don't believe XBMC is bit perfect, even using WASAPI.
I use JRiver http://www.jriver.com which gives you bit perfect audio, cost $50 US.
Here's a configuration walk through http://www.computera...4-Configuration although it's a tad out of date.
Hardware wise I use a Musical Fidelity V-Link which is a digital only output device, with coaxial and optical outputs.

Edited by Dr X, 02 November 2011 - 12:06 PM.

[Catherine Barkley]

Thanks for that info.

JRiver is excellent software for its application, but what I'm looking for is software that looks fantastic whether I'm browsing my music, movies or TV shows, and is all self-contained so I don't need to be switching between programs to listen to music and movies. The interface of XBMC is really unrivalled in this regard.

The only other two other options for getting that look I'm after are Windows Media Center and Mediaportal. As far as I know, it's nearly impossible to get bitperfect audio in WMC, and I'm not sure about Mediaportal. I would consider it as an alternative, but only if I can find a way to set up bit perfect audio.

[Dr X]

JRiver is self contained. There is a Theater view for Jriver intended for HTPC use. I launch JRiver and then control it with my media centre remote control, not a keyboard and mouse.
I use JRiver for both my music and movies. Granted XMBC has better menus and features for movie watching.
With JRiver, I simply navigate my folders (using theater view and media remote) and then select the movie I want to watch.
I don't use it for TV watching and recording though, I use Windows Media Center which is far superior.

I got bit perfect music out of Media Portal using ASIO but not for movies. Overall I found it too difficult to get everything working properly and after many hours I gave up.

Yes WMC is not bit perfect I believe.

To summarise the best combination I found is JRiver for music and movies and WMC for TV viewing and recording. Of course this may change in the future! But for now I'm happy.

Cheers.

[Catherine Barkley]

Thanks. I don't mind having less-than-perfect audio for my DVDs, movies and mp3 files. Really, the only thing I'm concerned about is that the flac files that I rip from my CDs sound good. So Mediaportal may be an option.

[Dr X]

I'd be interested to read what you think once you've tried it. JRiver has a free fully functional 30 day trial by the way.

Also regarding XBMC, even though it isn't bit perfect, subjectively still sounded very good to me. As a matter of fact in a blind test I reckon I would find it hard to differentiate between JRiver (bit perfect) and XBMC (nearly bit perfect).

Cheers.

[Catherine Barkley]

As a matter of fact in a blind test I reckon I would find it hard to differentiate between JRiver (bit perfect) and XBMC (nearly bit perfect).

Well that throws another spanner in the works and puts me no closer to deciding what components to use haha. Oh well. I guess I will just have to mess around with it myself. Was this using XBMC for Windows through WASAPI? And perchance have you tried XBMC for Linux as well?

I'd be interested to read what you think once you've tried it. JRiver has a free fully functional 30 day trial by the way.

No worries, I'll be sure to post in this thread again once I've got it all set up.

[ots340]

hi, a fellow xbmc fan here. I run it on an appletv and I also have 2 dinosaur issue xboxes around my house also. I ended up giving up on music through the atv (xbmc) in my main system instead going for a squeezebox touch. In my secondary system I use a dnla ps3 to watch videos but I am experimenting with a netbook running xp for music. Which leads me to my recommendation for you:

squeezeslave. it is a headless squeezebox client for pc/mac/linux. the program can start on boot and run in the background without you knowing. Then you can access your entire music library with your iphone or android smart phone using ipeng or similar. all while xbmc is still open waiting for you to watch a video after you have finished listening to music. It also supports asio and wasapi.

that being said though, I don't think you would be missing too much by running wasapi out of xbmc to coaxial or usb out to async device. worth trying before you add another program into the mix.

[Dr X]

I've only used XBMC on Windows 7.

[Catherine Barkley]

hi, a fellow xbmc fan here. I run it on an appletv and I also have 2 dinosaur issue xboxes around my house also. I ended up giving up on music through the atv (xbmc) in my main system instead going for a squeezebox touch. In my secondary system I use a dnla ps3 to watch videos but I am experimenting with a netbook running xp for music. Which leads me to my recommendation for you:

squeezeslave. it is a headless squeezebox client for pc/mac/linux. the program can start on boot and run in the background without you knowing. Then you can access your entire music library with your iphone or android smart phone using ipeng or similar. all while xbmc is still open waiting for you to watch a video after you have finished listening to music. It also supports asio and wasapi.

That is a very elegant solution, and something to consider even having alongside XBMC. Thanks mate!

The only issue may be trying to set up two programs to run simultaneously, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

that being said though, I don't think you would be missing too much by running wasapi out of xbmc to coaxial or usb out to async device. worth trying before you add another program into the mix.

I will be setting up a bit perfect program such as Foobar2000 through WASAPI and doing a blind test to see whether I can tell the difference between it and XBMC. And if I can't, I will definitely just use XBMC.

[beetle]

If Linux is your preferred OS, then may I be so bold as to suggest XBMC as a front end to MPD? XBMC has a very nice plugin client for MPD called, funnily enough, MPDCLient. That way you can have XBMC as your Video front-end and also as audio front-end-by-client with MPD as your bit-perfect playback engine.

[bob.saccamanno]

Running 3 XBMC Live boxes here, 1 side by side with a Win7 PC using Foobar and WASAPI - as best I can tell, with highly revealing headphones, there is zero detectable difference, to me. I recommend XBMC Live (or OpenELEC) as its best for that "appliance" feel.

[Catherine Barkley]

If Linux is your preferred OS, then may I be so bold as to suggest XBMC as a front end to MPD?

Certainly! I have not heard of MPD before, but I will look into it. Cheers.

Running 3 XBMC Live boxes here, 1 side by side with a Win7 PC using Foobar and WASAPI - as best I can tell, with highly revealing headphones, there is zero detectable difference, to me. I recommend XBMC Live (or OpenELEC) as its best for that "appliance" feel.

I will be going for the most minimalistic installation possible that still allows me to have MythTV, a torrent client, Google Chrome and perhaps Unrar installed and sometimes running in the background. I will try to keep it as bare-bones as possible.

[4heckssake]

nah i reckon it's probably more likely fish or something like a fish like maybe a duck?

[Catherine Barkley]

nah i reckon it's probably more likely fish or something like a fish like maybe a duck?

Sorry? I don't follow...

[Catherine Barkley]

For future reference, apparently it is bitperfect. According to one of the devs:

http://forum.xbmc.or...124#post1033124

[Catostylus]

Noted. Thanks for that. I've been meaning to play with XBMC on Linux for a while now.

[Kamikaze]

I'm sure XBMC doesn't do bit perfect on hi-res stuff at the moment. I had a lengthy talk from a mate who's really into it. Apparently Linux xbmc supports less bit-perfect than PC version.
Apparently workaround/new version of xbmc for linux is being developed to cater for that.

[Catherine Barkley]

Yes, it should be noted that XBMC does not properly handle anything higher than 16 bit, so it's no good for high-res files, although the Audioengine branch are working on this, and from what I understand bitstreaming of HD audio should be in the next release (Frodo; late 2012). Apparently you can use Foobar as an external player with a nogui switch if that's your thing, although I haven't tested this myself. And I haven't had a complete confirmation of whether it is in bitperfect in Linux; only Windows. But I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be? Hopefully one of the Linux devs pipes up. Most of this information is also in the thread I linked to.

Also, some people may be interested to know that a Squeezebox addon was recently released. See http://forum.xbmc.or...ad.php?t=122199

[hochopeper]

I haven't had much 24bit audio to test with but I thought I had a previous linux install with alsa sending 24bit output to my receiver. I lost my 24bit files though in a hard drive mishap, can't test that in a hurry right now.

The audioengine development has been going for a long time now and really without a lot of support from the main devs since maybe middle of last year when it was decided to leave it out of this release. I've had a complete system rebuild (due to previously mentioned hard-drive mishap and a video card fan failure) since then and been distracted building amplifiers and subwoofers so htpc hasn't been as important to me, I'll have another go at it checking it all again soon, especially now that Eden is pretty much locked down, I usually compile from latest git for 2nd half of a development cycle so once the development is mostly done I start tweaking rest of the system to suit.

[hochopeper]

I haven't had a chance to compile the latest git repo but will give it a try this weekend now that audioengine work is all merged into main repository - http://xbmc.org/ddda...-audio-goes-hd/

I thought a few others might be interested since this looks like a good step forward and really nice to see an opensource media application put this much focus on the audio subsystems.

[hochopeper]

I had some time today and compiled the github-master branch of xbmc (since I use fedora linux there is no nightly option other than to compile for myself).

After some tuning of the device settings in xbmc and changing my advancedsettings.xml file to include the below that forces every file to be played at native bitrate/samplerate (I think one of the masteraudio features to implement crossfade means that if the next song is not the same bitrate as the one playing before it then it will be resampled to allow the continuous playback necessary for crossfade.

<advancedsettings>
   <audio>
	 <audiophile>1</audiophile>
   </audio>
</advancedsettings>

I now have the latest masteraudio features running

I have had ongoing problems with my hard-drive setup and don't have any high bitrate/resolution files to test at present. Will post back here after I've tried that.

[O.Sydney]

I had some time today and compiled the github-master branch of xbmc (since I use fedora linux there is no nightly option other than to compile for myself).

After some tuning of the device settings in xbmc and changing my advancedsettings.xml file to include the below that forces every file to be played at native bitrate/samplerate (I think one of the masteraudio features to implement crossfade means that if the next song is not the same bitrate as the one playing before it then it will be resampled to allow the continuous playback necessary for crossfade.

<advancedsettings>
   <audio>
	 <audiophile>1</audiophile>
   </audio>
</advancedsettings>

I now have the latest masteraudio features running

I have had ongoing problems with my hard-drive setup and don't have any high bitrate/resolution files to test at present. Will post back here after I've tried that.

here's some you can download and try out http://www.lessloss....dings-c-68.html

I don't use xmbc but I can see this will make a great difference to those who do

[Catherine Barkley]

Yeah, this is fantastic. I'm a very very big fan of this software.

[bearski80]

I've been running XBMC since the old xbox days and now have a custom built Media PC running the linux version - I can't live without it. Recently upgraded to the latest audioengine build and to me the sound quality has definitely improved, even on 16bit FLAC material. It sounds cleaner and a little less muddy. I'm very happy with it. There's more info in this post on xbmc.org

http://xbmc.org/ddda...-audio-goes-hd/

FYI I run a coaxial connection to a DacMagic -> Marantz PM7001 amplifier -> Monitor Audio RX6's