In new version of Audiophile Linux, you don’t have to use Jack for quality playback any more and automatic sample-rate works without problems. Of course we have left Jack tools if someone wants to play with it and compare the sound. In version 3.x we are mainly using two players. Cantata and Deadbeef. There is also Ario, GMPC and old Audacious installed. Which one you will use, it depends on your preference. But to be able to play DSD files, you will have to use MPD clients like Cantata, GMPC or Ario. Both .dff and .dsf files are supported. Of course, your sound card must have DSD support. The first thing you need to know if your sound card (DAC) is visible in the system, and on which port is connected. You can find that out like this: Right click on empty desktop space to a open a menu and then go to DAC setup -> List Cards. This will list all sound cards visible in your system.

[lightbox link=”http://www.ap-linux.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/01-list-cards.png” thumb=”http://www.ap-linux.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/01-list-cards.png” width=”1360″ align=”center” title=”List sound cards” frame=”true” icon=”image”]

Sometimes your cards will switch places, but that’s not a problem. First we are going to introduce an easier player, our old friend from previous versions and my favorite Xmms/Winamp style player, Deadbeef. Deadbeef is a very nice player. It doesn’t have support for some metadata info (info about author or song) but it plays well. Right click on empty desktop space and find Deadbeef in the menues. Open Edit -> Preferences  and select your card in Output device. Don’t use default value. Add music and play.

[lightbox link=”http://www.ap-linux.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/02-deadbeef.png” thumb=”http://www.ap-linux.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/02-deadbeef.png” width=”1360″ align=”center” title=”Deadbeef player” frame=”true” icon=”image”]

To be sure that your Deadbeef plays correct and don’t up-sample or down-sample, open terminal and type this command. It will probably be different on your PC. Try to replace cardX and pcmXp directories.

<server1>[~]$ cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params

access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 48000 (48000/1)
period_size: 1024
buffer_size: 16384

Some cards that don’t support high sample rates, will remain on 48000 or 44100.

[lightbox link=”http://www.ap-linux.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/03deadbeef.png” thumb=”http://www.ap-linux.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/03deadbeef.png” width=”1360″ align=”center” title=”Deadbeef sample-rate check” frame=”true” icon=”image”]

If your sub0/hw_params that you get from the ‘cat’ command, are the same as on your Deadbeef player, (particularly rate numbers) you are good. Remember Jackd from previous AP-Linux versions? You can also play with period size and buffer size and see how that sounds.

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If you have problems with samplerate, try to select another card in preferences. Sometimes your card will have two names in Deadbeef for one card. One will for example be called “Card1 Default audio device” and one “Card1 Front Speakers”. Changing to one of them will correct samplerate. You can also check DSP -> Resampler and Plugins -> ALSA output plugin.

That concludes the Deadbeef player. In the next section, we will talk about MPD.