Goodbye Itunes

[Jame5]

Thanks again for the comments. Pauln, no I didn't see that page, but it confirms that WASAPI is not necessary for my purposes.

I really like Musicbee. Very intuitive, with various options for customisation, and a decent remote for Android. I'm going to stick with it for now.

 

[wilro15]

iTunes has been "ok" for me. Occasionally the entire library disappears after a software update, but the files are not lost so I just add them back in.

In terms of sound quality, can anyone really tell the difference between iTunes and other players? I tried BitPerfect and Pure Music and didn't notice a difference, although I didn't do an A-B test so maybe the difference is very small.

 

[Jame5]

I'm resurrecting this thread because I've now given up on musicbee which would occasionally still pop and click even with direct sound selected rather than Wasapi. I do like the Musicbee interrface, but I wouldn't recommend it for HRT asynchronous USB DACs. The problem is that musicbee won't let you reduce buffering by the computer sufficiently. High levels of buffering by the connected PC are apparently problematic for asynchronous DACs, mucking about with the dac's ability to call down the data when needed. I'm trailing JRiver and after adjusting the buffer down to 25ms I've cut the clicks out and now have greater confidence that the DAC is receiving a bit perfect stream by using Wasapi.

So, thanks are again in order to those who recommended JRiver in response to my original post. So far it looks to be worth the money.

 

[fr0g]

I'm resurrecting this thread because I've now given up on musicbee which would occasionally still pop and click even with direct sound selected rather than Wasapi. I do like the Musicbee interrface, but I wouldn't recommend it for HRT asynchronous USB DACs. The problem is that musicbee won't let you reduce buffering by the computer sufficiently. High levels of buffering by the connected PC are apparently problematic for asynchronous DACs, mucking about with the dac's ability to call down the data when needed. I'm trailing JRiver and after adjusting the buffer down to 25ms I've cut the clicks out and now have greater confidence that the DAC is receiving a bit perfect stream by using Wasapi.

So, thanks are again in order to those who recommended JRiver in response to my original post. So far it looks to be worth the money.

Did you ever try Foobar? Ugly, but works brilliantly and better still, free. I use it pretty much exclusively now.