So why use BitPerfect?
There are three primary reasons.
First, and foremost, BitPerfect is designed to squeeze the best possible
audio quality from your sound system using your Mac as a music server. Second, BitPerfect supports playback in the
native file format, even if that format changes from track to track. Third, from version 2.0 onwards, BitPerfect can seamlessly play back DSD files, through the use of Hybrid-DSD files which you can import into your iTunes
Library. You will need to purchase DSD Master from the App Store to create Hybrid-DSD files.
Audiophile Sound
Quality
The driving force behind BitPerfect, and the core attribute
of the BitPerfect philosophy, is a desire to extract the best possible sound quality
from your Mac when used as a music server for an audiophile-grade sound
system.
We began by examining how a computer manages audio playback,
and focused on the concept of ‘bit perfect’ playback. This term refers to the idea that all a
computer has to do is deliver the exact data contained in the audio file to the
DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), a device which turns the data into actual music. Many Audio Player applications exist which
ensure that ‘bit perfect’ data is indeed delivered to the DAC, but it was a
surprise to us to find that despite this, they all sounded different. Our research showed us that there are two
contributors to these audible differences – the server software and the
operating system. And we found that
Mac’s OS X operating system consistently provided superior results when
compared to Windows – even when we ran both OS X and Windows on the same piece
of Mac hardware (dual-booting into one or other operating system).
We then chose to focus on the server software’s contribution
to sound quality, and established, by trial and error, a number of basic
principles. How and why these principles
can affect what is always ‘bit perfect’ audio playback remains a matter of
speculation and, in some quarters, outright skepticism. Be that as it may, we created BitPerfect as a
vehicle that encapsulates nearly everything we know about optimizing the sound
quality of audio playback on the Mac platform.
Of course, iTunes itself is also capable of delivering ‘bit perfect’
audio playback. But it is our contention
that BitPerfect provides a significant improvement in sound quality over native
iTunes. So, cue up your favorite tracks,
get comfortable in your favorite listening chair, and find out for yourself.
Back in 2012, we put our money where our mouth is. We paid out over $3,000 in order to exhibit
at Montreal’s SSI, a high-end audio show.
We prevailed upon our friends in the industry to lend us the most
sophisticated, cutting-edge, audiophile-grade playback gear we could get hold
of, in order to demonstrate as convincingly as possible the capabilities of
BitPerfect. Our DAC was the Da Vinci, by Light Harmonic,
an incredible device which alone retails for $20,000! Our amplifiers were the CP-800 and CA-2300
models from Classe Audio, which together retail for $12,000. The loudspeakers were Wilson Audio Sophia 3, which, although they retail
for $16,900, are the “entry level” model in the Wilson range. Speaker cables were Cardas Golden
Cross, which alone retail for $5,800.
Quite an impressive collection! Read what Michael Lavorgna of AudioStream had
to say about it:
Seamless playback of
different audio formats
Not to be confused with different file formats, which are
merely different ways of storing the same digital music data, the music itself
can be represented digitally in fundamentally different ways. Here we shall concern ourselves only with
so-called ‘PCM’ formats.
The music signal we want to store and subsequently re-create
is an electrical waveform whose oscillations represent the actual sound waves. In PCM (Pulse Code Modulation), the analog
music signal is sampled at a regular fixed rate, which is called the Sample
Rate. Each time the music signal is
sampled, the magnitude of the signal at that particular instant is stored as a digital value. The precision with which this digital value
is stored is called the Bit Depth. The
first wide-spread digital music format, the Compact Disc, adopted a PCM format
which has become a standard to this day, and is often referred to as ‘Red Book’. The CD format uses a Sample Rate of 44.1kHz
and a bit depth of 16 bits.
However, many experts in both the recording and playback
fields acknowledge that superior sound quality can be obtained by increasing
the bit depth, and also by increasing the sampling rate. 24-bit bit depth is now an acknowledged
standard for ‘high-resolution’ files, as well as various sample rates based on
multiples of either CD’s 44.1kHz or DVD’s 48kHz. These different formats include ‘24/96’ (which
means 24-bit 96kHz), and include sample rates up to 384kHz and even
beyond. Many music sources now offer
downloads of “Studio Master” quality music in one or other of the high
resolution formats, and equipment for amateur recording enthusiasts is cheaply
available which can produce high-resolution recordings (your everyday Mac laptop
can do this). As a result, many music
collectors now include tracks in various high-resolution formats in their music
collections.
Under Apple's OS/X operating system, when iTunes plays back a music track, it looks at the format
of the track itself, and then looks at the settings of the output device. If the settings do not match, iTunes will
automatically convert the file from its own ‘native’ format to the format which
the output device has been set to. Most
audio experts agree that this process inevitably results in some degradation of the
sound quality. Your only recourse, if your
music collection contains tracks with different music formats, is to go into
the Audio Midi utility and manually change the output settings each time the
format of the music file changes. Most
users find this to be an annoyance.
When BitPerfect handles the playback, it automatically
re-configures the output device to the format of the music track being
played. It does this instantly, so that
tracks of different formats can be played seamlessly, one after the other. You no longer need to keep track of what the
music format is, BitPerfect handles all of that in the background. For the modern computer-based music
collector, this is a critical advantage.
BitPerfect can Play DSD files
DSD is the name of the music format used by SACDs. DSD represents music in a radically different way to PCM, and many audiophiles have come to the opinion that DSD sounds more "musical" - more like analog - than does PCM. Although SACD as a format never caught on, the DSD format itself is making a dramatic comeback, and downloadable DSD files can now be purchased from several sources.
Starting with version 2.0, BitPerfect can play back DSD files. However, you cannot import DSD files directly into iTunes. BitPerfect has developed a solution for this, which we call the "Hybrid-DSD" file. A Hybrid-DSD file looks and behaves like an ordinary Apple Lossless file, but also contains the original DSD content which BitPerfect can play back, provided your audio output device supports DSD. At the time of writing, only a limited number of highly specialized devices support DSD playback, but new products are appearing on the market at an accelerating pace, and at ever lower price points. It is necessary to purchase DSD Master from the App Store in order to convert ordinary DSD files into Hybrid-DSD files.
