wtfplay project - it's official

[cvrle59]

The tension…it’s normal in one hand - we’re humans, and most of us hung with Gordon and MQn for a while, so we're attached to it, more-less…it’s ridiculous in the other hand - we’re all adults living in the world driven by competition in every segment, and with options in whatever you can think of.

Every new product or “new kid on the block” (I don’t know why I picked that kind approach, I’m sorry, but it’s been quoted over and over) would probably draw the line that people suddenly start crowding on either side of it, claiming their side is better. This usually fades away after a while. The best comparison is Canon vs Nikon, but their both great. I do little bit of photography too, and I follow some forums in that regard.

I jumped on MQn wagon, back in 2013, and that was fantastic experience, very exciting time. As the time went by, more and more I realized that I was getting little tired of constantly playing same music to be able to compare different versions. But this process thought me something else, how easy is to get trapped into something that I would call very subjective appraisal for current version. What I mean is, I would jump on new version and for some reason, I could be in a very good mood, or glass of wine, or whatever, but new version sounds much better than the old one. After few days, I go back to the old version and I actually find that new version is worse, or sometimes not even close to the old one. I asked myself wtf is going on here. This went on and on until JP6 came out, so I gave it try, and I liked it. SQ wasn’t as good as my favorite MQn version at that time, but it was pretty good, and I could play all the formats including DSD. I found DSD very pleasing and I was bringing more and more albums into my library in that format. I was happy with JP6, so I was listening music rather than comparing versions and playing same music over and over.

It doesn’t mean, I completely forgot MQn. Actually, I constantly kept my eye one it with some hope that one day some stable version(s) will come out covering different formats, with simple implementation, and no major bugs. I would’ve definitely gone back to it in no time.

Suddenly, instead that happened, WtfPlay comes out answering all my questions (except direct DSD). It is simple to implement, it is wrapped with the guidance how to install it and how to use it, and most importantly, it sounds great. My PC is powered by batteries, and one circuit is drawing more than I thought, so that battery is under sized (I need to change it), and I hit quite a few times limit of it, so computer shot down. I just can’t stop listening. We all have different systems, and particularly different ears, but to my ears, WtfPlay sounds fantastic, very open, very analog, with so much air between instruments and voices, Chord Hugo loves it. As someone mentioned, Red Book sounds better than ever. More and more I’m trying to justify existence of HiRez files, considering the size and price.

I agree with other people here, we need both players, there is a room for it, and people will use whatever works best for them, regardless.

I thanked to Gordon so many times so far, and I do it again, now.
I thank to MrF too for his hard work, bringing this new experience to the masses.

[sima66]

All I can say that we are blessed to have this both players and specially with two complete different approaches.
Wtfplayer is so simple and doesn't need all the other crap and programs/scripts to give he's best, witch most of us already have and use.

Last night I played much more to the WTF setting, pushing the numbers to the limit to see what I can get.
Comparing to mqn, wtf sounds flat, lacking the air between the instruments, the 3d and lower end.
This are not big differences, but at the moment I still prefer mqn.

This is just my system and my opinion and I hope that will be taken like a constructive criticism and nothing else.

Let's mention that with mqn I had R2 in core, PL, Fidelizer (free version) RAM OS, rewrite, renaming/playing from root.......

[frd1996]

@sima66: Thanks for the information. Would you mind providing more details about the settings that you changed? Thanks.

[tony]

Question posed by Adam to me last night and I think Ken asked during testing does it matter Fryderck what order the command is entered?
I would have thought not but can you confirm?

i.e. uwtfplay -p 60 -d hw:1 -f 8192 -n 2

does it matter if entered arse ways!

i.e uwtfplay -d hw:1 -f 891 -n 2 -p 60

[sima66]

@sima66: Thanks for the information. Would you mind providing more details about the settings that you changed? Thanks.

I tried the priority "-p" from 10 to 99 just to see how it affect the sound. I ended up at 60....the difference was very small
As for the "-f" and "-n" didn't noticed almost any difference!
I keep raising -f until -n could not go more than 2 and still I didn't noticed any difference!!

This is how my settings looked in the end of the night..........I hope that I did something wrong, yes, I hope that I did something wrong and tonight I will correct and have a different opinion! :)

[frd1996]

The order of parameters does not matter, but they must be before file names that you want to play. So following your examples:

Code: Select all

uwtfplay -p 60 -d hw:1 -f 8192 -n 2 somefile.flac
uwtfplay -d hw:1 -p 60 -f 8192 -n 2 somefile.flac
uwtfplay -f 8192 -p 60 -d hw:1 -n 2 somefile.flac
uwtfplay -n 2 -p 60 -d hw:1 -f 8192 somefile.flac

The commands above are all correct. If you omit the parameter then the default value will be used. You can see all the default values by running:

Code: Select all

uwtfplay --help

or if you prefer to use wtfplay:

Code: Select all

 wtfplay --help

In the example above -p 60 is not necessary, as this is the default value. Please note that, higher priority does not mean better. I think Jonathan experienced and reported this first. If I remember correctly, in his system uwtfplay with the priority greater than 75 sounded like crap. I mention this in the manual.

Hope this helps.

F

[frd1996]

@sima66: Your screenshot looks OK. Thanks for the report and opinion.

[frd1996]

@sima66: One more thing that I almost forgot: what image (core2, corei7) and what kernel (9 ... 12) did you use? Thanks!

[sima66]

@sima66: Your screenshot looks OK. Thanks for the report and opinion.

Fryderck, thank you for all your effort.

It's interesting that I'm usually the one who's bitching about small differences and improvements and now I don't hear almost nothing by changing those parameters!!
Only when I changed the priority from 10 to 99, I heard a bit of difference, but I can live either way!!
Is there anything else that I might be doing wrong?!!

[sima66]

@sima66: One more thing that I almost forgot: what image (core2, corei7) and what kernel (9 ... 12) did you use? Thanks!

0.4.5 Corei7 and 12