Messages

1

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: June 01, 2022, 09:54:02 PM »

Indeed.  This is why I said "practically flawless".  I inserted the "practically" in there in an attempt not to rattle the cage of the kind of audiophiles that must find this discussion suffocating.  As for the technicality of being flawless, such a concept cannot exist for audio in general and also specifically when it comes to DA converters that oversample because we want them to.  I personally started to use upsampling recently (for lower than 96kHz sources) simply for convenience because of my setup and that is it.  When upsampling an easy way to ruin the quality of audio is to use bad resamplers, since they do exist, and the reason why I've taken an interest in the resampler used by MusicBee.

2

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 31, 2022, 10:13:22 PM »

Thanks to information provided by Ian Luck, the developer of BASS, the resampler's quality with BASS_CONFIG_SRC=4 (maybe Steven can confirm) should be pretty close to the results from "iZotope RX 8.1 (Default)" that has been tested at http://src.infinitewave.ca/.  Here it is compared to SOX with VHQ Linear Phase setting that can be considered a reference.





Unless somebody specifically tests BASS with the setting that MB uses we can't be 100% sure, but if those results give some sort of approximation, it looks practically flawless.

3

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 28, 2022, 04:31:29 AM »

According to the documentation http://www.un4seen.com/doc/#bass/BASS_ATTRIB_SRC.html the highest resampling quality setting is 4 which uses 64 point sinc interpolation.  The documentation is quite limited and there is no mention about the type of filter used.  I've posted my question here https://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=19778.0 so hopefully we get a bit more information.

4

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 28, 2022, 12:20:34 AM »

i havent read through all of this thread but just to confirm MB configures bass to use the highest quality setting available and secondly, some time ago the bass developer upgraded the re-sampling algorithm so any comparison tests done a long time ago are no longer applicable

Thank you Steven!

5

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 28, 2022, 12:09:46 AM »

I have been trying to shed some light on things by explaining that MusicBee uses Bass as the audio engine, and that Bass will also take care of the upsampling part.

Perhaps I should have been more concise and clear about exactly what I'm asking.  Most sound libraries allow parameters to be set when implementing them into a program.  I know for a fact that some resampler libraries do not and only have a default setting.  I tried to look this up in the BASS documentation and I could not find it, yet according to this post that I've linked already (http://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=17860.msg125464#msg125464) it leads me to believe that 1. the ASIO output can be configured with two different resamplers and 2. the resampler that BASSmix uses can likely be further configured via BASS_ATTRIB_SRC attribute.  Those 2 things must be configured in MB as the library was implemented.  This is specifically what I'm asking and hopefully somebody knows and can answer before we can try to find more information about the resampler in the un4seen forum.

6

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 27, 2022, 06:04:59 PM »

I agree, it would be nice to have some indication as to the quality of the resampler used.

The only relevant indication on that (to me) would be reproducible blind tests.
And that seems to be a very big problem when it concerns up-sampling.
Even a sensible notion such as that up-sampling would best be done in factors of natural numbers is sometimes disputed by some people with solid technical backgrounds who say it really doesn't make any discernible difference.

So my advice to anyone that has some feelings of insecurity about the matter of up-sampling (in relation to listening and enjoying music, which is what any music player such as MusicBee is intended for):

1. Either don't use up-sampling.  (you can then be confident that MusicBee will output a bit-perfect signal)
2. Or use your ears, and decide for yourself if you are able to hear differences, and then decide on the best approach for you and your equipment and circumstances. And that will be strictly personal.


edit:
To the respected forum members participating in this thread:
To test various upsamplers yourself, you don't need to wait for further explanations about the way how MusicBee uses upsampling, nor what upsampling plugins do work, or which ones don't.
There are plenty ways to try out different up-sampling methods and algorithms, without any need to (solely) use MusicBee for testing them.

Be that as it may, your response has the potential to leave us in the dark when it comes to the question of upsampling.  I just don't see what's the problem of having a bit of information about how it has been configured in MB.  Upsampling can be a useful tool depending on people's setup and there is no reason to defeat its purpose or the importance of its quality by talking about bit-perfect signal chain or using our ears when iFriend has already confirmed that he hears sound degradation.

7

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 27, 2022, 04:52:14 PM »

If we are stuck with BASS resampler hopefully one of those days somebody will care enough to do some instrument tests or maybe people more knowledgeable about the BASS resampler can provide some information.

This is something you should take up with the BASS developer.

Thank you for the reply phred.  According to this post here http://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=17860.msg125464#msg125464 the resampling by bassasio.dll can have either BASSASIO or BASSmix handle resampling stating that having BASSmix handle it offers higher quality via the BASS_ATTRIB_SRC attribute.  Do you know if this was done in MB?  As I understand it the BASS library provides configuration options for the resampler which MB hasn't made configurable through the settings, do you know how it has been configured?  Once we know this then I can ask in the BASS forum and hopefully we can gain a little more insight.

8

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 27, 2022, 04:28:26 PM »

I agree, it would be nice to have some indication as to the quality of the resampler used.  I tried to find tests of the BASS resampler that somebody might have done, but I couldn't find any.  It is very likely that it is good enough as I highly doubt that it can be worse quality than the one Windows 10 uses, and that has already been instrument tested couple of times and shown to be good enough.  So a solution would be to allow sampling plugins as you suggested or maybe include a high quality resampler as an option in the settings.  SOX comes to mind since somebody already did a plugin for it https://github.com/aidan-g/BASS_SOX and it is highly regarded resampler for quality when configured that way.  As for your hearing tests, among many factors that can contribute to this maybe it is possible that you have heard sound degradation because you were upsampling from 44.1 to 48kHz.  The general consensus seems to be that it is best to upsample with an integer factor of 2 or 4.  I couldn't hear any difference at 96kHz which also has interpolation, but maybe interpolation works better at 96kHz.  If we are stuck with BASS resampler hopefully one of those days somebody will care enough to do some instrument tests or maybe people more knowledgeable about the BASS resampler can provide some information.

9

Questions / Re: internal resampler used

« on: May 27, 2022, 03:31:36 AM »

I think my "question" is not worth answering after reading this article https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/windows-resampling-not-actually-that-bad.9092/.  I'll just use WASAPI shared mode and leave resampling to Windows 10 which seems to do a fine job.

10

Questions / Re: internal resampler used

« on: May 27, 2022, 01:18:03 AM »

MusicBee uses Bass (by un4seen) as its audio engine: http://www.un4seen.com/

Any resampling is probably done using the main bass.dll
So your question would probably best be asked on the Bass forum.

According to this post here http://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=17860.msg125464#msg125464 the resampling by bassasio.dll can have either BASSASIO or BASSmix handle resampling stating that having BASSmix handle it offers higher quality via the BASS_ATTRIB_SRC attribute.  Do you know if this was done in MB?

11

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 26, 2022, 10:51:57 PM »

hiccup replied in the other thread that I posted stating that likely BASS's built-in resampler is the one used by MusicBee.  It looks to be a popular audio engine, likely with a quality resampler, but somebody created a resample library on GitHub https://github.com/aidan-g/BASS_SOX specifically to be used with BASS, so many not.  You said you can definitely hear a difference.  Can you provide a little more detail about the source material that you use to compare and what sample rate do you use to upsample to.  Since you said you use RME I assume you use ASIO driver for the output, but can you confirm that this is what you use when you do the comparison.  I just did a bit of A/B comparison between 44.1 kHz file with and without being upsampled to 96 kHz and I can't hear a difference.  I use AKG K712 Pro headphones together with RME Babyface and an external O2 headphone amp.  I tested it with many different sound files.  Theoretically if the resampler is "good enough" and not actually bad (some examples here of both https://lastique.github.io/src_test/) there could actually be a potential benefits with the filter used when upsampling.

12

Questions / Re: internal resampler used

« on: May 26, 2022, 10:20:14 PM »

Thank you hiccup.

13

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 26, 2022, 09:03:43 PM »

Not trying to start an argument, but unless Steven went out of his way to choose a bad resampler I think it would not be easy to hear a clear difference.  There are definitely resamplers out there that result in bad quality, but given that latency performance is irrelevant for a music player I highly doubt this is what we have.  Still, I can agree that it can definitely be auditable and significant in quality degradation, which is why I hope we can get a little more insight about the resampler used.
Edit: Hopefully somebody knowledgeable here or in the new thread I started https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=36624.0 will reply to give some information about what kind of resampler is being used.

14

Questions / Re: highest possible quality resample filter (plugin)

« on: May 26, 2022, 08:24:09 PM »

Did you ever find any solution?  Also did you do any testing to establish the quality of the internal resampler used by MB?

15

Questions / internal resampler used

« on: May 26, 2022, 07:47:46 PM »

Does anybody know what kind of resampler MB uses internally when the "resample to:" in Preferences/Player is enabled?  The reason I'm asking is because when I use ASIO as the output my RME BF interface switches the Sample Rate used in Windows to whatever it was last used by ASIO even after I stop or close MB.  I prefer the default sample rate in Windows to be 96kHz and I don't want to have to manually change it every time I use MP.  So this can be avoided if I force the output in MB to be resampled to 96K.  The alternative would be to set WASAPI as the output and use Windows's resampler, which although doubtful to be better, has been improved in recent Windows updates according to reports.
Edit: I guess a third option would be to use WASAPI exclusive mode, which I prefer not to use.