BitPerfect’s proprietary 64-bit audio engine has been designed for one sole purpose, and accepts no compromises in delivering what we believe is unsurpassable audio quality from the Mac platform. Beyond its audio engine, BitPerfect provides a number of additional features that we consider essential to audiophile playback. JPLAY is described as a bit-perfect player openly discussed in the FAQ but if you look at items 5 & 6, they seem to imply that 'timing is everything' and somehow, an optimized software player can make a difference.
USB Audio Player Pro, the popular music playback app from eXtream software, now supports MQA decoding, but you will have to pay a little extra for the option.
The upgrade comes in the form of an in-app purchase which costs $3.99. Once purchased, it unlocks the ability for UAPP to function as an MQA core decoder, which means the software will perform what is known in MQA parlance as “a first unfold”.
Basically what this means is that MQA encoded music, whether it is a local file on your phone, or streamed from a Tidal account via the app, should playback in better than CD-Quality, due to the MQA decoder’s ability to convert or unfold the file (which usually comes in 16/44.1kHZ or 16/48kHz FLAC “wrapper”) from a 44.1/48kHz sampling rate to a 88.2/96kHz rate.
However, if you connect a DAC with MQA “Rendering” (like the iFi Nano BL we just reviewed) capability to your phone via USB, then that device can take the MQA Core signal passed on from UAPP and perform what is called a “second unfold”, which means that you can playback the file at even higher rates than the 88.2/96kHz, if the file has the additional bandwith encoded.
USB Audio Player Pro started out as an app which allowed audiophiles to bypass the limitations of the Android operating system which doesn’t natively support Hi-Res playback, namely files with bit depths higher than 16bit and sampling rates higher than 48kHz. Before UAPP, even if the software on your phone could play a Hi-Res file, the output would be downsampled to what the OS could support. UAPP was able to bypass the sound system of your phone and pass the digital output of Hi-Res files bit-perfect out of the USB port to an external USB jack.
Since it’s original release, UAPP has been refined with the addition of many features, one being the option of Tidal playback through the app. If you have a Tidal subscription, many find that playing it from UAPP sounds better than playback thru the Tidal Android app. Since Tidal streams MQA files via its Tidal Masters program, I feel like MQA decoding was the next logical upgrade. Bravo to eXtream for following through with yet another enhancement that makes this app seem like it is a must-have for Audiophiles who use their phone as a Digital Audio Player.
Here’s is a summary of the MQA upgrade from the developer:
Version 5 now includes a MQA Core Decoder (in-app purchase required). MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) is an award-winning British technology that delivers the sound of the original master recording. The master MQA file is fully authenticated and is small enough to stream or download, while also being backward compatible. The Tidal streaming service supported by USB Audio Player PRO features many tracks in MQA and offers a great opportunity to experience MQA.
The MQA decoder will unfold the MQA stream from 44.1/48kHz to 88.2/96 kHz and can also be combined with certain USB DACs that feature an MQA renderer (e.g. AudioQuest DragonFly / iFi DACs) for further unfolding to even higher sample rates.
Please visit http://mqa.co.uk for more information about MQA and https://www.extreamsd.com/index.php/mqa to read more about MQA inside the app.
Related
BitPerfect is an App that runs alongside iTunes and providescapabilities to improve its playback of high quality audio files. When you use BitPerfect, iTunes is still yourmain interface to your music collection. You still use iTunes to create, store, and manage your music collection,to build playlists, and to decide what you want to play and when you want toplay it. BitPerfect just sits in thebackground, doing nothing, until you ask iTunes to play a track; thenBitPerfect steps in and takes over the playback. However, you won’t see anything to visuallyindicate that anything is different, because iTunes still thinks it is playingthe music – the track position indicator moves along as normal, and the volumecontrol slider ramps the volume up and down. But all of your instructions to iTunes are intercepted by BitPerfect,which implements any playback actions you have just initiated.So why use BitPerfect? There are three primary reasons. First, and foremost, BitPerfect is designed to squeeze the best possibleaudio quality from your sound system using your Mac as a music server. Second, BitPerfect supports playback in thenative file format, even if that format changes from track to track. Third, from version 2.0 onwards, BitPerfect can seamlessly play back DSD files, through the use of Hybrid-DSD files which you can import into your iTunesLibrary. You will need to purchase DSD Master from the App Store to create Hybrid-DSD files.
The driving force behind BitPerfect, and the core attributeof the BitPerfect philosophy, is a desire to extract the best possible sound qualityfrom your Mac when used as a music server for an audiophile-grade soundsystem.
We began by examining how a computer manages audio playback,and focused on the concept of ‘bit perfect’ playback. This term refers to the idea that all acomputer has to do is deliver the exact data contained in the audio file to theDAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), a device which turns the data into actual music. Many Audio Player applications exist whichensure that ‘bit perfect’ data is indeed delivered to the DAC, but it was asurprise to us to find that despite this, they all sounded different. Our research showed us that there are twocontributors to these audible differences – the server software and theoperating system. And we found thatMac’s OS X operating system consistently provided superior results whencompared to Windows – even when we ran both OS X and Windows on the same pieceof Mac hardware (dual-booting into one or other operating system).
We then chose to focus on the server software’s contributionto sound quality, and established, by trial and error, a number of basicprinciples. How and why these principlescan affect what is always ‘bit perfect’ audio playback remains a matter ofspeculation and, in some quarters, outright skepticism. Be that as it may, we created BitPerfect as avehicle that encapsulates nearly everything we know about optimizing the soundquality of audio playback on the Mac platform. Of course, iTunes itself is also capable of delivering ‘bit perfect’audio playback. But it is our contentionthat BitPerfect provides a significant improvement in sound quality over nativeiTunes. So, cue up your favorite tracks,get comfortable in your favorite listening chair, and find out for yourself.
Back in 2012, we put our money where our mouth is. We paid out over $3,000 in order to exhibitat Montreal’s SSI, a high-end audio show. We prevailed upon our friends in the industry to lend us the mostsophisticated, cutting-edge, audiophile-grade playback gear we could get holdof, in order to demonstrate as convincingly as possible the capabilities ofBitPerfect. Our DAC was the Da Vinci, by Light Harmonic,an incredible device which alone retails for $20,000! Our amplifiers were the CP-800 and CA-2300models from Classe Audio, which together retail for $12,000. The loudspeakers were Wilson Audio Sophia 3, which, although they retailfor $16,900, are the “entry level” model in the Wilson range. Speaker cables were Cardas GoldenCross, which alone retail for $5,800. Quite an impressive collection! Read what Michael Lavorgna of AudioStream hadto say about it:
Not to be confused with different file formats, which aremerely different ways of storing the same digital music data, the music itselfcan be represented digitally in fundamentally different ways. Here we shall concern ourselves only withso-called ‘PCM’ formats.
The music signal we want to store and subsequently re-createis an electrical waveform whose oscillations represent the actual sound waves. In PCM (Pulse Code Modulation), the analogmusic signal is sampled at a regular fixed rate, which is called the SampleRate. Each time the music signal issampled, the magnitude of the signal at that particular instant is stored as a digital value. The precision with which this digital valueis stored is called the Bit Depth. Thefirst wide-spread digital music format, the Compact Disc, adopted a PCM formatwhich has become a standard to this day, and is often referred to as ‘Red Book’. The CD format uses a Sample Rate of 44.1kHzand a bit depth of 16 bits.
However, many experts in both the recording and playbackfields acknowledge that superior sound quality can be obtained by increasingthe bit depth, and also by increasing the sampling rate. 24-bit bit depth is now an acknowledgedstandard for ‘high-resolution’ files, as well as various sample rates based onmultiples of either CD’s 44.1kHz or DVD’s 48kHz. These different formats include ‘24/96’ (whichmeans 24-bit 96kHz), and include sample rates up to 384kHz and evenbeyond. Many music sources now offerdownloads of “Studio Master” quality music in one or other of the highresolution formats, and equipment for amateur recording enthusiasts is cheaplyavailable which can produce high-resolution recordings (your everyday Mac laptopcan do this). As a result, many musiccollectors now include tracks in various high-resolution formats in their musiccollections.
Under Apple's OS/X operating system, when iTunes plays back a music track, it looks at the formatof the track itself, and then looks at the settings of the output device. If the settings do not match, iTunes willautomatically convert the file from its own ‘native’ format to the format whichthe output device has been set to. Mostaudio experts agree that this process inevitably results in some degradation of thesound quality. Your only recourse, if yourmusic collection contains tracks with different music formats, is to go intothe Audio Midi utility and manually change the output settings each time theformat of the music file changes. Mostusers find this to be an annoyance.
When BitPerfect handles the playback, it automaticallyre-configures the output device to the format of the music track beingplayed. It does this instantly, so thattracks of different formats can be played seamlessly, one after the other. You no longer need to keep track of what themusic format is, BitPerfect handles all of that in the background. For the modern computer-based musiccollector, this is a critical advantage.
Bit Perfect Usb Audio Player App
DSD is the name of the music format used by SACDs. DSD represents music in a radically different way to PCM, and many audiophiles have come to the opinion that DSD sounds more 'musical' - more like analog - than does PCM. Although SACD as a format never caught on, the DSD format itself is making a dramatic comeback, and downloadable DSD files can now be purchased from several sources.
Usb Flash Drive Audio Player
Starting with version 2.0, BitPerfect can play back DSD files. However, you cannot import DSD files directly into iTunes. BitPerfect has developed a solution for this, which we call the 'Hybrid-DSD' file. A Hybrid-DSD file looks and behaves like an ordinary Apple Lossless file, but also contains the original DSD content which BitPerfect can play back, provided your audio output device supports DSD. At the time of writing, only a limited number of highly specialized devices support DSD playback, but new products are appearing on the market at an accelerating pace, and at ever lower price points. It is necessary to purchase DSD Master from the App Store in order to convert ordinary DSD files into Hybrid-DSD files.