8/19/24
At one point in my quest to find a way to avoid Pipewire's years-long problem of audio randomly cutting out, I concluded that the solution would be to get an Android tablet to use as a music server. However, after using the Celluloid and Parole media players on my full installations of Ubuntu Mate 22.04 and Xubuntu 22.04 (which have PulseAudio, not Pipewire), each on a separate µ-SD card and each plugged into an Orlian µ-SD-to-USB adapter when in use, I've concluded that both are solid general-purpose distros, and that either would be a good temporary music server until Pipewire is fixed and I can go back to MX-Linux, or until I get a new Android tablet. A live installation of either would probably work, but Ubuntu live installations take forever to boot. Oddly, they both have the same couple of weird irritants [1] that would probably torment newbies, but I've found that they can be dismissed or shut down without causing any problems. After using the Xubuntu installation for a few hours, it interrupted the music-playback to notify me that software-updates were available, even though it was running on an air-gap PC and could not have known about any such updates. Notifications can be disabled, but something that can't be disabled might take their place. So, ultimately, it might be necessary to use an Android device to get away from all of these bogus impediments.
I tried Strawberry (from the Strawberry site, since it's not in the Ubuntu repository) on UM2204, but it had a "buffering" problem, as if the LUKS-encrypted SD-card I use as a source is a slow internet connection. The version that comes with MX-Linux 23 doesn't have this problem, but Pipewire, at least for now, has the audio-cutting-out problem. Version 1.2.2, which is in the testing-phase, supposedly addresses this issue.
Now that I've gotten away from the Clementine player and resampling [2], I've realized that CD-grade digital has the potential to sound downright juicy when played through a good digital playback device. The best budget DACs use TI/Burr-Brown Advanced Segment DAC-chips (ASDs), which I explained in my Zen DAC V2 review. ASDs might be the ultimate DAC-chip for audio playback, due to their unique design which gives them low jitter-sensitivity (output noise vs. clock jitter) and unusually tight control over low-level detail. However, ASDs are apparently incompatible with the requirements of ADCs, because there are no ADCs which use ASDs. But the recordings which sound so good through ASDs are made with regular sigma-delta converters, which clearly can be made to sound amazing, for a price. Still, Audio Research and Bel Canto use ASDs in their DACs, which are among the best.
From the music industry's perspective, CD-grade digital is a threat to their bottom line, because it lasts forever and can be distributed forever without paying them. So, they like to put their best versions on LPs, which are impossible to copy perfectly. Furthermore, most people are reluctant to buy used LPs because they might be worn out and/or otherwise damaged, so if they want the best version of classic albums from the 60's and 70's,they'll probably end up getting new LPs, which are made from great digital recordings made early in the digital era, but which will never be released in a good digital form. Streaming might be based on the best recordings, because it's watermarked and can't be pirated with impunity, but watermarking apparently degrades the audio at least subtly (since it has to be woven into the music to be effective), which can make all the difference to those who care about sound quality.
Notes
[1] I've noticed a "system program problem detected" pop-up, which is the only indication of a supposed problem, and a supposed "unattended upgrade" that loads down the CPU and prevents the PC from shutting down normally. I'm supposed to believe that an actual unattended upgrade could be occurring even though the installation is running on an air-gap PC. In the first case, I click on the button that just gets rid of the pop-up, and in the other I use the task manager to kill the process, or if I'm trying to shut the PC down and the "upgrade" is preventing it, I just push the power button until the PC shuts down.
[2] Resampling is a mathematical process which introduces audible errors or consumes large amounts of system-resources. Pro-grade gear such as mixing consoles typically uses sample-rate-converter chips, which are very transparent. Resampling to a higher frequency can't IMPROVE sound quality, because resampling cannot add information, such as high-end or low-level detail. High sampling rates are used when converting to and from digital to allow the use of simple, clean, and cheap analog anti-aliasing filters, but when the high-frequency "DSD" used in ADC-chips for sampling the analog input is internally converted to high-res PCM (such as for use by recording engineers, who process it down to CD-grade digital for distribution), very little if any of the musical information is lost.
Although high-res makes it easier for recording engineers to do their job, CD-grade digital is plenty for consumers. Those who disagree probably have never heard a good CD-grade digital recording played back on a good system. I use a Zen DAC V2, which I reviewed in AudioCleanAndCheap.blogspot.com, although when I reviewed it I was unwittingly listening to poorly resampled data.
