wtfplay project - it's official

[Octagon]

Hi Fryderck,
Hi All,

first a big hand to Fryderck for not only providing us a great player already at this early stage but also providing really comprehense and supportive information like the manual through his webside. That is a very professional approach which took a lot of time, well done. :)

I had some troubles to test wtfplay at the beginning because not only my FF UCX was not recognized but my Tascam 144MKII neither. In between I remembered Alsa and UAC and RME's Class Compliant Mode. That works, and I can confirm it works very well.

So If you have one of RME's hardware which allows their CC Mode, switch to CC Mode before you boot and wtfPlay will recognice your device and play.

Take care
Thomas

[sbgk]

RTFM!!

Frd has spent a long time writing very clear and comprehensive documentation to answer your question and all others regarding operation of WTFPlay, unlike most other 'one-man' enterprises.

http://wtfplay-project.org/manual.html#_advanced_topics is where to find it.

Well worth spending the time to experiment with the three settings' parameters. In my experience, they can make the default settings player from very good to outstanding. The ability to tune the settings to your own hardware is one of the great appeals of this player. The experience of the beta testers was that their own particular sweet-spot could be very different to other users. So you have to try them out on your rig. It's fun!

Jonathan

is that a dig at mqn jono, thought you were brought up better than that.

[sbgk]

I tried it, sounded detailed, but unnatural and tiring to listen to. Was hoping for better. Maybe it's the linux/alsa house sound.

Try version 9 Gordon. Initial testing of it in the early stages concurred with your take but no not now. This is the dogs bxllxxs!
Maybe on a laptop you are getting the detail but not the body/soundstage but we have had a good period of testing on this and it is really
top notch. I hesitate to call it the best but certainly has won me over and if you look at all my posts over the years warmth in the sound is really important to me.

was the same issue as Satshanti, so sounding better now, still very hi-fi, not relaxing and found I'm just listening to the detail.

tried aplay and found the sound more relaxing.

eg

aplay -L to get device name then

aplay -f cd -M -D default:CARD=Audio /media/sda4/"3-What Is This Thing Called Lo.wav"

[tony]

was the same issue as Satshanti, so sounding better now, still very hi-fi, not relaxing and found I'm just listening to the detail.
tried aplay and found the sound more relaxing.eg

aplay -L to get device name then
aplay -f cd -M -D default:CARD=Audio /media/sda4/"3-What Is This Thing Called Lo.wav"

That's good to hear Gordon I assume you are using those settings to get it to work on an amd machine??

It was mentioned elsewhere today but afaik you have not bought in to the audio pc/tweaks. I think you would be shocked at the difference.
Not every change has a big impact some of it is cumulative but as an example Ppang USB V1 card and Nigels card with good clock and battery are poles apart. Software is one aspect and very necessary but you need to start on that journey to really experience what MQn and wtfplay can do

[joelha]

Given that all of the control of this player must be local (not remote), I'm wondering what people are using for servers?

Laptops are tough to optimize and headless servers couldn't work so I'm assuming a monitor and keyboard would have to be connected adding noise to the system.

What's best in people's experience?

I'm excited about trying this player.

Thanks to the developer for creating it.

Joel

[satshanti]

After a long session of MQn testing I played the same 7 test tracks on the Core2 version of wtfplay with default settings on my AMD PC. Without any doubt whatsoever, it did sound better. It just sounds... effortless... spacious, detailed, bass control, musical, in short an absolute joy to listen to. It's not a huge difference with MQn, but a clear one. And I haven't even started tinkering yet, or finally playing hirez files again! This has huge potential. Thank you Fryd for sharing this freely with the rest of us.

[Aleg]

Given that all of the control of this player must be local (not remote), I'm wondering what people are using for servers?

Laptops are tough to optimize and headless servers couldn't work so I'm assuming a monitor and keyboard would have to be connected adding noise to the system.

What's best in people's experience?

I'm excited about trying this player.

Thanks to the developer for creating it.

Joel

I'm still using MQn for daily use.
wtfplay is just used as a try out. With wtfplay I connect a screen, keyboard and mouse to the server to get it booting properly and for selecting files in the UI.

To get wtfplay to a workable level for me (I'm using a headless server and a large NAS) wtfplay needs to get support for NFS or CIFS networking and support TTY-terminal over SSH.
The last feature allows me to use a terminal emulator like PuTTY on Windows or Remoter on iPAD and connect remotely to the server, then I can use wtfplay in headless setup again.

But until then MQn is my player of choice.


Cheers

[sbgk]

Given that all of the control of this player must be local (not remote), I'm wondering what people are using for servers?

Laptops are tough to optimize and headless servers couldn't work so I'm assuming a monitor and keyboard would have to be connected adding noise to the system.

What's best in people's experience?

I'm excited about trying this player.

Thanks to the developer for creating it.

Joel

I'm still using MQn for daily use.
wtfplay is just used as a try out. With wtfplay I connect a screen, keyboard and mouse to the server to get it booting properly and for selecting files in the UI.

To get wtfplay to a workable level for me (I'm using a headless server and a large NAS) wtfplay needs to get support for NFS or CIFS networking and support TTY-terminal over SSH.
The last feature allows me to use a terminal emulator like PuTTY on Windows or Remoter on iPAD and connect remotely to the server, then I can use wtfplay in headless setup again.

But until then MQn is my player of choice.


Cheers

yes, I still haven't had any music out of wtf, a hard sounding detailed sound yes (this seems to be the linux sound). Reading about alsa, it's far from optimal and likely that win 10 is more advanced. Considering wtf is comparable to a highly optimised windows machine I'm getting 99% of the detail with mqn (and even then it's more about balance than lack of detail) out of a standard win 10 setup, so maybe there's life in mqn yet.

[frd1996]

I think there is too much tension here. Let me share few thoughts.

Some people will newer look at wtfplay because it does not have features
that they want - and I accept that. All I can do is to work hard to provide
these features in time.

Some people will try wtfplay but will decide they did not like its sound.
And I accept that too. After all I can not tell people what to like ant what
not to like. It's completely up to them. I also do not have a recipe to
make everybody happy - neither of us have.

All we can have is an idea what the perfect sound should be like. If a
couple of other people share the same idea this is good enough reason to
continue what we do.

Finally - this is not about competition and it would be a great shame if MQn
work was abandoned just because there is "a new kid in the block". That's
simply childish.

Gordon, if you can make MQn better than it is now - go for it! I am sure
you will find a lot of appreciation because of that. I am not sure
if you are planning to do what you said in the other thread, that is
switching to Linux. If so, they you have my even greater thumbs up.
For me, and some other people Windows is not an option.

[Sligolad]

After a long session of MQn testing I played the same 7 test tracks on the Core2 version of wtfplay with default settings on my AMD PC. Without any doubt whatsoever, it did sound better. It just sounds... effortless... spacious, detailed, bass control, musical, in short an absolute joy to listen to. It's not a huge difference with MQn, but a clear one. And I haven't even started tinkering yet, or finally playing hirez files again! This has huge potential. Thank you Fryd for sharing this freely with the rest of us.

Sounds like you are on the slippery slope Satshanti.....musical was the key difference for me and it will respond very well to improvements, I have a good collection of DSD and I have not even thought of listening to DSD in quite some time since I started listening to wtfplay, PCM on wtfplay just grows on you, I still get days when I am surprised how good some 16 44 albums sound!
Cheers, Pearse.