I’ve found it’s a very very good match with an Apple Mac Mini as its audio software, and have compared it to several. As a classical-music reviewer specialising in high-res downloads, I have worked my way through most available media players. Audirvana is several cuts.
The latest version of BitPerfect is 3.2 on Mac Informer. It is a perfect match for Players in the Audio & Video category. The app is developed by Tim Murison and its user rating is 5 out of 5.
Tim Murrison’s BitPerfect 2.0.1 (Mac App Store link) shows what iTunes music is capable of and is an audiophile’s dream. BitPerfect opens a world of clearer, more present sound that you never.
As its name implies, it ensures bit-perfect iTunes playback, bypassing a number of internal OSX processes especially the unwanted up/down-sampling that can plague iTunes. Of the four programs it is the only one to not offer memory playback (i.e.
BitPerfect is that rarest of audio gems. Designed above all else for uncompromising audiophile quality, it is probably the lowest-cost high-end audio product you will ever buy. It allows you to use iTunes as your primary music management tool. Whenever you ask iTunes to play a music file, BitPerfect steps in behind the scenes and takes over. BitPerfect is so simple to use that most of the time you won’t even know it’s there. Even non-audiophiles love its simplicity.
Back in the heyday of Vinyl, it took decades for the industry to grasp the fundamental importance of the turntable in the playback chain, and to learn to design and manufacture turntables of true audiophile quality. The same is true today of the computers which are overwhelmingly emerging as the music source of choice for audiophiles. If we are to expect computers to deliver the ultimate in audio performance, then we ought to design them from the ground up for that precise purpose. Today that remains, for most practical purposes, a distant goal. But we can make some significant strides in the area of software, and BitPerfect is one of those strides.
Most computer experts will state categorically that provided it sends the correct digital data to your DAC, there is nothing more that the computer can contribute to sound quality. In their view data is data, and computers are well understood in their ability to exchange massive quantities of data without managing to get a single bit wrong. However, at BitPerfect we have discovered what a number of audiophiles are also beginning to understand – that how you manage audio playback in the software domain, even while maintaining “bit perfect” data performance, actually has a significant audible impact on sound quality. 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. First, it isolates the music output directed to the audio DAC from all of the beeps and burps that computers seem to insist on producing from time to time. These instead are directed to the computer’s sound card (or wherever else you want them sent). This so-called ‘Hog Mode’ means that only the music you select to play – and absolutely nothing else – is played back through your hi-fi system. Second, BitPerfect automatically recognizes and handles the audio stream’s bit-depth and sample rate, and performs any conversions that may be necessary for your DAC to play the music – even if iTunes can’t. Third, BitPerfect supports ‘Integer Mode’ playback, which many audiophiles believe is the most accurate playback mode of all, provided your DAC supports it, and only if your Mac is running Snow Leopard (or until Integer Mode is supported under Lion/Mountain Lion). Finally, BitPerfect loads your music files into high-speed RAM memory and plays them from there, eliminating file I/O during playback.
We are confident that BitPerfect will provide you with the best audiophile quality sound source available in Computer Audio, and all for less than the cost of a compact disc. If you are serious about music playback, you owe it to yourself to check it out. BitPerfect runs on the Mac platform only, and is only available directly from the Mac App Store (click Here.).
Apologies in advance for the verbose post, and if I chose the wrong place for this, feel free to move it as needed.. I use my 2018 Mac Mini as my primary source of audio playback. I stream Tidal and Idagio lossless, and use a variety of players according to my mood to play back local files. Main ones are Swinsian, VLC, Fidelia, Vox, and occasionally even iTunes. Whatever I am listening to goes out to an external DAC, and from there to an analog amplifier.
Not long ago, I installed the latest release of Rogue Amoeba SoundSource, a little utility that allows me to control the routing of sound the computer. It also allows me to use plug-ins with any sound source. I often use one designed for headphones which gives a more natural stereo image. Among SoundSource’s features is little level meters. They are useless for determining actual sound levels, but they have one very handy feature: they change color to red when the signal is clipping. That's where I discovered I had a problem: All of the Applications mentioned above have their own volume controls. The standard advice I see (including from rogue amoeba) it Is to max out the volume control on the source, and control the volume using the system volume, to get ‘bit-perfect’ playback. There are a couple of problems with this. First, when the the DAC is selected as the output device, the system volume setting is grayed out. SoundSource does have a volume setting for it, but (AFAIK) it won't help with the second (and bigger) problem. Namely, all of the players mentioned above apply gain to the signal at their maximum volume settings. This results in clipping on peaks, verified by the indicators in SoundSource. As I just mentioned, changing the system volume going into the DAC can only be done in SoundSource. Also, it seems to me that if any source I am listening to is outputting a clipped signal, turning the volume down after-the-fact is not going to ‘un-clip’ it. And that's not what I want anyway. I want to control the volume in the analog domain. Even I know that a clipped signal is not ‘bit-perfect’.
So that's where I get into calibration, which is what my main question really is. I want to pass the signal to the DAC at the highest level possible without delivering a clipped signal downstream and then control volume after the DAC, in the analog domain on my amp. So far, I have done this by finding the recordings in my collection with the loudest peaks. So far, the champ is ‘Trilogy’, a Chick Corea live recording. I just back down the player volume until it stops turning red. Since Tidal has this recording, I found the same passage and adjusted the volume the same way. I did this with all my players. VLC has a tick mark on its volume slider that seems to correspond to unity gain, but it’s the only one. Fidelia has a ‘Prevent clipping’ checkbox in its prefs but provides no info on how it operates. This is all pretty confusing because when I started in audio back in the Mesozoic, you just turned the knob until you got the volume you wanted. Now there are multiple volume controls along the way. And of course, when you run out of bits, you’re straight into hard clipping. To confuse me even more, apparently ‘0dB’ in digital isn’t really 0dB, but has some ‘headroom’ calculated in to allow for that. So any advice on calibrating for ‘bit perfect’ playback (or something close to it?) I have the following tools at my disposal: Logic Pro X Audio Hijack TBProAudio ‘MyMeter 2’ (meter plugin with various modes) Test tones: (all 88K, 16 bit) : -3dBFS pink noise; white noise 0dBFS ‘Gaussian distribution; White noise -6dBFS ‘Uniform distribution' Thanks in advance