Audiophile Linux anyone tried it?

[LowOrbit]

Perhaps it is right and fitting that this is not in the Computer Audio section... (Just joshing)

I ran AP Linux on a spare machine for a while. Compared to any other Linux installation this was a walk in the park. That was - I think - mainly because my WaveIO Interface is USB CLass 2 compliant, which means it should just show up in Alsa. And it does.

A few wrinkles with deadbeef/jack (mostly Jack config) but it mostly worked and sounded quite nice. BUT - I do not believe it is bit perfect. Alsa seems to resample everything. Removing the resampling options killed sound every time.

JPlay was a clear victor over AP Linux.

So I moved onto Daphile - another packaged Linux build, using LMS (Squeezeserver). Installation is easy provided you have a clean, unpartitioned drive. It's a headless set up, so you need another computer to complete the setting up of the system, specify devices and drives and so on. LAN is easiest to do that because wireless (like on almost all Linux systems in my experience) is flaky or not working at all.

Again it worked easily, produced a good sound, and with a bit of fiddling I had it working with my iPhone as remote. It sounded a little better to my ears than AP Linux, on a par with a basic JPlay setup on one pc, no hibernate. I could live with it if I had to. There's a growing thread covering Daphile over at DIYAudio and the developer seems fairly engaged, and may even know what he's doing.

But unless you don't have any Windows licenses or a MAC, why bother? I reckon the Music player app on Windows 8.1 sounds as good, and there are better players. Jplay (Hibernate, KS, dual PC) sounds "tighter, tidier" and works pretty much first time every time (which even with these dedicated Linux Distros was not the case).

In my humble (Ha!) opinion WIndows/Server is the optimal platform for a computer-based audio source right now.

(And I didn't even mention any players beginning with an "M"!)