Best-audio-quality configuration is discussed at length in the Music Player Daemon threads -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=70052
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=81984
Now that you have asked, here are the basics: roughly speaking, sound quality depends on
1) the ability of the playback application, operating system and hardware driver to process the PCM audio data without changing it - such that the processing chain is bit-perfect.
2) the ability of the operating system and playback application to present the PCM audio data to the hardware device with a bare minimum of digital jitter (timing accuracy).
1) is relatively easy to achieve in Linux - just disable the "dmix" function of ALSA, and its audio processing will then be bit-perfect. Here's how - create a new document in Geany with this -
Code: Select all
pcm.MYSOUNDCARD {
type hw
card 0
}Reboot. That's it. Now a good test that you have successfully disabled dmix is to slide the volume control up and down in DeaDBeeF. If the volume control has no effect, that's good! DeaDBeeF is probably passing bit-perfect audio.
But if the volume control still works, it likely means that DeaDBeeF includes its own internal software volume processing - that's no good for audiophile purposes.
Regarding 2) there are some audio playback applications that are better for sound quality than others. This probably means their processing method is more technically streamlined ... but the theory is unclear and frankly I don't understand it.
As an experiment, you could play the same track with DeaDBeeF and a also a commandline application like aplay.
If you're really keen, try the commandline applications ecasound - it's been reported as possibly the best-sounding application. Let your ears decide.
But there are also tweaks possible to the ALSA audio driver - especially for USB audio interfaces under Linux, by varying the "nrpacks" parameter of the driver.
And there are also tweaks possible to the Linux operating system, itself, to improve jitter. One significant configuration is to disable the graphical display! This reduces the overall load on the operating system.
At the end of the day, if audiophile quality is what you want, I suggest you get Idolse's MPD-Pup, and use Music Player Daemon as your playback application.
