#Bitperfect macos catalina trial

J.River Media Center ($50 with frequent discounts & trial version available) is an iTunes/Apple Music replacement and will flawlessly play back files at the correct sample rate/bit depth with no further modifications, i.e. That ensures that iTunes/Music imports the files in the order of the tracks on the album, thereby enabling BitPerfect to pre-cache the correct track and eliminating that tiny gap. The workaround is that when you import a live or otherwise gapless album into iTunes/Music, you need to manually drag each track into the library, one at a time, in the running order. It will of course display them in order, and it will play them in order - but BitPerfect doesn't 'see' them in the right order behind the scenes so it has to quickly start caching the next track from scratch, resulting in that tiny silence. And because the music files vary in size (because they might have very different running times), iTunes/Music will often import the tracks out of order (because it can process, say, a 2-minute Track 9 faster than a 6-minute Track 8). But if you are playing a live album or a similarly gapless album with no silence between tracks, then BitPerfect will sometimes add a tiny but audible fraction of a second of silence between the tracks.Īs best as I can tell, what's going on when this happens is that the only iTunes/Apple Music info BitPerfect has access to about the next track is the order in which the tracks were first added to the iTunes/Music library. With a typical studio album or random playlist, this is of no consequence - behind the scenes BitPerfect has to delay the transition between songs by a tiny fraction of a second, but it's too brief to be detectable as an increased silence between tracks. One other small convenience/use-case note RE BitPerfect: because of a quirk in how iTunes/Apple Music works with 3rd party apps/plugins, BitPerfect is unable to reliably know which song is up next. I should chase down that bug, but re-enabling BitPerfect was just easier in my case since I already have it installed and it works so simply behind the scenes. I have since re-enabled BitPerfect, but only because I found that for some reason the Audio MIDI settings would randomly reset themselves to 44.1k periodically.

#Bitperfect macos catalina mac

I used to think it was, but after being educated by on how non-integer resampling can actually retain perfect analogue reconstruction of a digital signal within the Nyquist limit of the lowest sample rate involved, I tried setting my Mac mini music server's Audio MIDI to 24/96k permanently and then turning off BitPerfect, and I can't say I heard any audible difference in any of my music. BitPerfect is useful only if you want to be able to switch resolutions on-the-fly rather than manually (so you can, for example, play a 16/44.1kHz album and then immediately play a 24/96k album without pausing the playback and going into the Audio MIDI utility in between).Īnd of course BitPerfect is useful only if you feel that sticking with the music files' native resolution is necessary. I really like mpd, because I can control it from my iPhone or my Mac, or from the Mac terminal.Īh, now I understand what you are saying - thanks! And yes, that squares with my understanding too. I only have 2 ripped SACDs, but when I play the dsf files, the DAC now shows '2.82 DSD' on the display, and when I switch back to a CD quality FLAC is says '44.1 PCM.' It has done it for every USB DAC I have connected. For some reason Apple adds a space to the end of the device name for the DAC. The two things here that tripped me up were:

#Bitperfect macos catalina mod

Mod happily switches sample rates on the fly and will even play DSD using DoP.īut I struggled setting it up, so I figure I would post the audio_output section of my config that finally works, so you don't waste 30 min figuring this out:

#Bitperfect macos catalina free

But I really wanted to find a way to get this to work.īecause I am a cheap bastard, I wanted to find a free solution. To be clear from the outset, I'm in the 'CD is as good as it gets' camp, when it comes to digital music. You can force it to 24/192 using the Midi Settings app, but then it's stuck there and when you play 16/44.1, it's upsampling everything. Particularly disappointing was Apple Music, that now supports up to 24/192, but the DAC will not auto switch to 24/192.

Some are still in the Mac app store, but are pretty much abandonware, not seeing updates for as long as 3 years. There are players available which will do that, but they cost $10, $20, even $40, and often don't get good reviews. I have a Topping D10s that I bought based on Amir's review, and was deeply disappointed when I found out that most Apple music players WILL NOT switch sample rate and bit depth on the fly when you play a 24/192 song or a DSD file.