Tír Na HiFi

Well said sima66 !! Am using MQn since its very early days and never dropped it for another player. Im after quality so that says something.
It would be a pitty to end this journey. But either way - HUGE thanks Gordon for so much good emotions !!!!

I can only concur with previous posts. I was just reminiscing this week on how often I've thought in the last 2 years that it couldn't possibly "get any better than this", and then it did, again and again! One listen at MQn that time long ago, and I just dropped Jplay and never looked back.

I've spent the last few days intensively testing MQn, ever since it got out of Haswell mode. I had wanted to do a full write up of the process, but for various reasons I'll skip that now. Still, some of the highlights:

* Rewrite definitely makes a big difference, at least with MQn, and the latest v43 is the best.
* Having the track stored at root level sounds better than in any subdirectory, and I've tried one level up, with very short folder and file names, and it's still valid.
* Root location on my HD sounds better than root on my SSD.
* A track with a very short name, i.e. 01.wav, sounds better than a track with full artist and track names. It sounds absolutely weird but this really is a consistent phenomenon across all my test tracks.
* I thought I would reach an even better result by removing all file tags, but this makes no difference, or strangely enough, made the sounds marginally worse.
* Best MQn version so far for me is loader v97 / control v116 / play v229, but I must admit these are all of the same date, and I haven't yet tried all different combinations across the timeline, and now probably never will.

So yes, after spending so much time with MQn, not just the past week, but the last few years, I did try the new kid and must admit that even at the default settings with a build not even tailor made for my CPU, it does already sound better than my favourite MQn.

That is my truth, and it's irrefutable. It's not about loyalty, it's about aiming for perfection. Gordon may have brought us 95% there, and Fryd utilized the inherent strenghts and benefits of Linux and managed to get even closer to that 100%. In my view this shouldn't be about competition, but about appreciation and gratitude, about acknowledging the huge amount of effort that has been donated.

So... life is life... and reality cannot be avoided. Thank you very very much, Gordon, for all the joy and pleasure you have made possible these last few years. It is really appreciated!

sbgk wrote:wtfplay (terrible name by the way) shows what can be achieved with a slimmed down linux, so shall be concentrating my efforts on a Linux renderer in the future, will be bespoke, so no sharing.

Hi Gordon,

we know quite long now what a slimmed down OS (R2 RAMOS), as well as other efforts (picoless LPSU/LPO4 batteries) can do. And we all now that players benefit from that - others as well as MQn. What we recognized all the time is that MQn was pushing the SQ constantly and at least for me it is still the best player yet.

The new kid on the block pushes but reaches not the sq where MQn already is. Fryderck added a very slim OS, that may give us new opportunities. Your knowledge and experience is MQn and we all enjoy that journey with you!

Not the time to say "adios" I think. Enjoy your achievements together with us and lets see where the journey will get us ;)
But maybe again the right time for a big THANK YOU

Cheers
Thomas

We have all enjoyed the MQn journey the most successful thread on tirnahifi to date and one that I think a lot of us have got great pleasure out of. It led the way and it is testimony to MQn that Fryderck has worked so hard to get a linux player that sounds so good and the fact we used MQn to benchmark it. Not everybody will migrate to a linux solution so would think there is plenty of mileage in MQn. Sure there are plenty of twists and turns ahead. Being honest none of the recent players work for me and with it limited to just 16/44 I reverted to earlier versions and gave up testing. Burnt out maybe! Maybe Gordon you should concentrate on getting a version that works on all resolutions including rewriter and pad out your blog with instructions.

Anyway aren't we all subjectivists so the journey can never end if it did we would be cured and nobody wants the cure

Well wasn't long till I gave up on Linux.

Uploaded mqnplay v234, quite a step up in SQ, tried something new and it worked. Windows not so bad after all.

sbgk wrote:Well wasn't long till I gave up on Linux.

Uploaded mqnplay v234, quite a step up in SQ, tried something new and it worked. Windows not so bad after all.

Indeed quite a significant step forward again. Amazing how it is still possible to do so.
Most noticable effect for me is that there is much more detail in double bass playing without sacrificing the depth of tone.
All other tonal ranges also remain very natural with a lot of details.
Definitely the best release.

Well done again.

That's excellent news! :)
I'm still at the v230 version, since I'm still doing some changes in my PC, witch I can't A/B, but I can compare only from previous memory and I don't want to confuse the results.
I hope for tonight! :)

uploaded mqnplay v235, am prepared to say it's exceptional. Don't know why, some instructions are better when placed in a certain position. No further plans to improve mqnplay, maybe slight improvement to control/loader and rewrite if I can get it working.

sbgk wrote:uploaded mqnplay v235, am prepared to say it's exceptional. Don't know why, some instructions are better when placed in a certain position. No further plans to improve mqnplay, maybe slight improvement to control/loader and rewrite if I can get it working.

Always behind!!!
At the moment I'm at v234 and is exceptional........I'm not gonna change anything tonight! :)

Gordon
What did you do in mqnplay v238?

Mqnplay v238 will not start, and after running this version only once not a single of the previous versions will run at all, even though v234 has been running just fine until trying v238. Not even after cold boots will any mqnplay run again. This has happended to both my 2012R2 music PC and to my Win10 desktop PC. It almost seems as if something has been done to the OS itself.

Is there a way to revert this situation?