Player sound comparison

Alexander · Joined: 13 Dec 2024 Posts: 100 Location: Germany

Hello everyone,

we've recently discussed (on a mailinglist) the differences of audio players, soundwise. I was surprised to hear people say that they can spot a (very) audible difference between foobar2000, winamp and Deliplayer.

It was said that for example winamp sounds more "round" and "fat" in the bass range, that fb2k is lacking bass and sounds "raw", and that Deli sounds "muffled".

I only compared fb2k and Deli, and they sound identical to me. Maybe fb2k sounds a bit more crispy in the high range, but it could be an illusion (I haven't rendered samples to really make a double blind ABX test, just playing snippets in one and then the other player).

I'd be interested to hear your experiences. Is there really a (wellknown and thus much used) player that sounds (very) different, be it better or worse? And if so, can you pin-point it down to a specific frequency range, or an overall impression, and name any downsides of DPs sound?

Thanks...

Coma · Joined: 03 Jan 2024 Posts: 81 Location: Modland

Maybe it's the unfortunate default mixer setting "interpolated" instead of "scaled" that makes people believe DP sounds muffled. They are right of course, it does sound muffled until you remove that pesky interpolation to get the nice crispy Amiga sound back.

At least I think that's the default setting... I haven't made a new installation of DP in a long time. But as far as I can remember I always had to do that change after every (re)installation.

steve-läinen · Joined: 19 Dec 2023 Posts: 76 Location: Denmark, Copenhagen

Hej Alexander.

Which kind of music files did people refer to in that mailing list?? Modules or MP3/Ogg style files??

I will try it out myself. Maybe my god ol' Stax ear speakers will come to glory again after so many years in the dark

Peter

Alexander · Joined: 13 Dec 2024 Posts: 100 Location: Germany

You are right Steve, I should have added that information - we were mostly talking about Ogg/MP3 music.