Clementine runs w/o interruption on MX-L 23.3

After Ubuntu Mate developed musicus-interruptus (see previous post), I faced the prospect of a couple of weeks without being able to play any music, until I could get an Android tablet with bit-perfect playback [1] and the ability to drive an external DAC via a USB port. The  Neutron music player is very interesting because it offers bit-perfect playback, although the developer considers it to be irrelevant due to the quality of the processing. However, high-quality processing might place significant demands on the CPU, and might consume a significant amount of power. The Neutron also offers POLARITY ("phase") INVERSION, which I thought was forbidden by the audio mafia.

Then I remembered that I didn't have any problems with music being interrupted when I was using Clementine, which I had written off because it degrades the audio with hidden processing. Fortunately, MX-Linux 23 includes Clementine by default, so I fired it up and listened to hours of background music without interruption. It seems to me that the message is that we can have degraded playback without interruptions, but if we want bit-perfect playback without interruptions, we have to go elsewhere.

Notes

[1] "Bit perfect" is generally understood as the ability to play unaltered data from the source-file. Some people apparently confuse bit-perfect with lossless, when lossless actually means the lack of lossy compression, which is a type of compression that cannot be reversed to re-create the original waveform. FLAC means "free lossless audio compression," which allows .wav files to be compressed for storage and transmission, and restored to their original state for playback.

Not surprisingly, my Ubuntu Mate 22.04 installation has developed audio-interruptus

 I assumed that it would just be a matter of time before Ubuntu Mate proved to be an unsuitable platform for playing music, and I was right. On Saturday, 8/31/24, it began cutting out for intervals of perhaps ten seconds. So, I booted up the live installation which I used for making the full installation, and it did exactly the same thing. So, the problem wasn't due to something I did to the full installation - it's built into the ISO. I gather that it reads the system's date and activates on certain dates. Note that it struck on the first day of a 3-day weekend, after working flawlessly for a couple of weeks.

So, my advice is to forget about using Linux as a platform for playing music, unless you're a system developer and know how to deactivate or eliminate the dirty tricks which are evidently being used for interrupting audio playback.  Based on this assumption, I doubt that Pipewire 1.2.2, which is supposed to contain a solution to Pipewire's random mute-until-reboot "problem," will actually fix the problem, at least entirely.

Fortunately, Android 14 supposedly includes provisions for bit-perfect playback, meaning that the data isn't processed (and probably degraded) on its way from the file to the DAC. There are also Android music players, such as USB Audio Player PRO, which apparently have the ability to bypass the limitations of previous versions of Android. So, with due diligence, it is possible to get an Android device to drive an external DAC with bit-perfect data via a USB cable (perhaps with a power-booster, such as a powered hub).

Notes

[1] Some people are apparently under the impression that merely resampling digital audio to a higher sampling-rate can improve sound quality, when in fact it will degrade the sound quality except in rare cases when a high-grade process is used, such as in a sample-rate-converter chip. When I realized that my Linux player was resampling the data from my music files, and eliminated the resampling, I was amazed by the improvement in sound quality. So, it's best to avoid resampling if possible. If it's not possible, use a high-quality resampling process.

As many audio authorities contend, CD-grade digital is plenty good for consumers, and high-res doesn't sound inherently better. Better recordings might be put on high-res, but the best versions are often reserved for LPs because LPs can't be copied perfectly and don't last forever. Furthermore, if someone wants to buy an LP, they'll probably buy a new one, which unlike buying used LPs generates profits for the music industry. LPs in general are made from digital recordings, which, as anyone with a TV knows, can sound perfectly "analog." (Many if not most or all TVs use TI/Burr-Brown Advanced Segment DACs or the cheaper variant known as Current Segment DACs, which are renowned for their "analog" sound quality even in cheap gear.)