BitPerfect is a very affordable Mac app that works with iTunes to enable better sound It does this while maintaining the ease of use that iTunes offers. It made for an interesting comparison to PureMusic. Retail price when purchased in 2012 approximately 7,99 euro Please note that this review is for version 1. Meanwhile there is a v3, shown in the main image screenshot above. Below screenshot, as well as the rest, are of the V1 software.
Introduction My main concern is always sound quality. What are the audible differences?
Being more familiar with Windows computers, I won’t pretend to know exacty what BitPerfect does behind the scenes, nor will I bore you with a complete rundown of all its functionality. You can read all about that elsewhere on the web.
Bit Perfect Setup For Mac Mini
However, I need to say a thing or two about my earlier experiences with similar programs. I don’t know the fine details but just like Windows computers have lots of resampling and mixing going on with their kmixer, something similar happens with Macs. In the case of Windows there are various routes of shortening and/or purifying the “signal path”, Kernel Streaming being the most commonly known method.
For Mac I have used two programs that apply a series of methods to achieve the same thing: Amarra and Pure Music. Amarra is the most expensive at 178 euro for the full version while Pure Music at 113 euro is less expensive, although still far from cheap.
That compares nicely to BitPerfect’s 7,99 euro, doesn’t it? You can’t really compare these programs one on one because both PureMusic and Amarra offer much more functionality than BitPerfectmost important of which is FLAC playback, and, judging from the early BitPerfect reviews on the web, they could be more stable than BitPerfect. But having said that, thus far, newcomer BitPerfect not once crashed while I used it. I will however, compare BitPerfect directly with Pure Music on their sound merits alone. As can be seen in the above picture, BitPerfect has a minimal interface. All the regular control is from iTunes, but there is a preference pane that offers 4 screens with various settings, as can be seen on the pictures below.
Bit Perfect Setup For Mac Os
Sound I promised above to talk about sound foremost, so let’s skip to that right now! Switching from basic iTunes to BitPerfect Using the basic settings, only having selected the PS Audio PWD MKII’s USB input as output in the BitPerfect’s settings, I listened carefully to iTunes with, and without BitPerfect. The USB cable used was the excellent KingRex uArt-USB-S.
It doesn’t take long to hear the differences: standard iTunes sounds a bit boring and gray compared to BitPerfect, the latter having a much wider and deeper soundstage. The music sounds more emotional, more enveloping and more interesting with BitPerfect enabled. What surprised me though was that I wasn’t hearing the tightening up in the bass that I hear so clearly with Amarra and PureMusic. Then again, BitPerfect sounds smoother and friendlier than the other two programs, if I recall correcty. Switching from BitPerfect to Pure Music Still using the basic settings, I switched between BitPerfect and Pure Music version 1.65a. Sure enough: Pure Music was tighter, faster, more articulate. But it was also drier.
Somehow, I found BitPerfect to sound more engaging with its more widely spread soundstage. But with more rhythm-driven music, I found BitPerfect a bit too much on the soft side and even though standard iTunes sounded more gray and colourful, it did have slightly more attack and this made the drum whacks carry more power. By contrast, PureMusic provided much more refinement, focus and transparency than either standard iTunes or BitPerfect with standard settings while keeping PRAT intact. At this stage I would have a difficult time to choose because even though PureMusic was more transparent and precise, it also laid bare the somewhat sterile Macbook sound that BitPerfect compensated for so nicely.
Fiddling with BitPerfect settings Then it was time to start fiddling with BitPerfect’s settings. I learned that the changes won’t register until you either quit iTunes or BitPerfect. First up for experiments was upsampling. This worked fine and did the usual trick of providing more clarity and air at the expense of bass solidity and attack. Still, this may be a worthwhile feature for many systems sounding less open than mine. I prefered native.
Then there was the mysterious (for me at least) Integer Mode setting. This one is on by default but switching it off (and restarting the app) made for a marked loss in soundstage width, depth and intimacy. In a word, iTunes sounded more like standard iTunes. Ok, no gain to be had here.
Moving on to the max bit depth setting, I wondered what exactly “automatic/optimal” meant. I guessed that it would automatically choose the native bit depth, but switching between the automatic/optimal and 16 bit setting did make a difference.
Switching to 16 bit (and restarting the app, remember) made for a less charming sound but tighter bass, and, alas, also a less expansive soundstage. In fact, this made me think of how PureMusic sounded! A quick comparison between BitPerfect in 16bit (playing a 16 bit file of course) and Pure Music, revealed that indeed the two apps had now moved closer together. But I wouldn’t say that the 16bit setting is the best setting for BitPerfect per se. With some music I now preferred BitPerfect in 16 bit for its more organic character and with other music I leaning more towards Pure Music for its still more articulate character.
During the course of this review, an update for Pure Music was available (version 1.86), and I couldn’t very well ignore it. After the update I have to say the Pure Music seemed to be a little more emotional. It is still more transparent and more articulate and upbeat, but seems less dry than with version 1.65a and its soundstage now seems to be more comparable to that of BitPerfect in 16 bit mode. By contrast, BitPerfect, especially in “automatic/optimal” mode, is more romantic and palatable but also a little veiled. After longer listening I think that I now prefer Pure Music most of the time. I guess in the end accuracy wins as long as it can carry emotion, that is! Conclusion BitPerfect offers incredible value for money.
It does exactly what it says on the tin: to improve iTunes’ sound with minimal user interaction. It also offers automatic samplerate setting if you choose to let it. If you have a Mac and still use iTunes in its native form, it is simply a shame not to give BitPerfect a go. Oh, and don’t believe the negative reviews: I have had zero issues with it. DETAILS Macbook Pro 17 inch 4GB Ram 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac OS X 10.6.4 iTunes version 10.6.3 BitPerfect version 1.0.3 PureMusic version 1.65a and 1.86.
Note: The names of the sound card controls used in the following command examples will vary depending on the audio device installed in your computer and the driver module it uses. The command “amixer” entered without any options will output all of the controls exposed for your audio device and “alsamixer” or your favorite graphical mixer program can also be used to manipulate these controls to make these settings. Set Line In as a capture source and mute it so that it doesn't go out the Line Out jack: $ amixer set 'Line',0 0%,0% mute cap Set Capture as a capture source: $ amixer set 'Capture',0 0%,0% mute cap Tell the sound card to turn on S/PDIF output: $ amixer set 'IEC958',0 unmute Tell the sound card to route analog input to the S/PDIF port: $ amixer set 'IEC958 Playback Source',0 'Analog In' This last setting needs to be toggled back and forth when you switch from watching TV, TV recordings and other MPG sources via the PVR-350 card to watching DVDs, videos and listening to music. All of the non-PVR audio is PCM audio, not analog. Switching back to PCM audio can be done with: $ amixer set 'IEC958 Playback Source',0 'PCM' If you like, you can set up a. If your sound card does not allow you to set the 'IEC958 Playback Source', or you want to avoid having to toggle this setting back and forth, then you need to find some other way to route the analog audio from the Line In jack to PCM audio. One technique would be to use the “arecord” and “aplay” commands to route the capture sources on the sound card back in as PCM audio: $ arecord -D hw:0,0 -f dat aplay -D mixed-digital.
Note: Fedora Core 5 users should leave off the “-D mixed-digital” portion of this command If you use this approach then you will probably want to execute this command at startup so that it is always running and available while the MythTV frontend is up. One way to do that would be to add it to a script in /.kde/Autostart (assuming that you're using the KDE desktop.) Ad a script containing this line or add it to a script that's already there: $ arecord -D hw:0,0 -f dat aplay -D mixed-digital & The “&” at the end of the line causes this command to run in background so that the script can continue executing the rest of the commands that it contains. Note: Again, Fedora Core 5 users should leave out the “-D mixed-digital” portion of this command Note that this approach may not produce the best possible sound quality.
Ths sound is going out of the PVR-350, back into the soundcard, being sampled by “arecord” and “aplay” and then sent out the S/PDIF to be converted back to analog by your apmlifier. If you have an optical interconnect between your MythTV frontend and your amplifier it may help reduce ground-loop hum though. On the other hand, this technique may introduce a time lag that causes your audio to be out of sync with the video when you watch TV. Backing up your mixer settings Once you have your audio configured to your liking you may way to capture a snapshot of the mixer configuration as a backup, just in case.
The “alsactl” command can be used for this purpose. Running the following command as root will update the default profile. Some Linux distributions use this profile to save the current ALSA mixer settings during shutdown so that they can be restored during the next boot.
This is often accomplished using settings in the modules configuration file (/etc/modprobe.conf in recent Redhat/Fedora distributions.) $ /sbin/alsactl store 0 This command will save a copy of the current mixer settings in your home directory. (Substitute your MythTV user if you used something other than “mythtv”.) $ /sbin/alsactl -f /home/mythtv/asound.backup store 0 This command will restore the settings you saved in your home directory. (Substitute your MythTV user if you used something other than “mythtv”.) $ /sbin/alsactl -f /home/mythtv/asound.backup restore 0 How do I do this in KnoppMyth?
How do I do this in Fedora Core? How do I get my mac mini SPDIF out working? In Ubuntu 8.04, append this to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base: options snd-hda-intel model=macmini Also read in mac mini ubuntu guide. I also found that sometimes the SPDIF goes into a funky state and a reboot is the only thing that gets it out of this state. So if you think everything is right, but the sound just isn't working, try rebooting again. How do I get 5.1 AC3 audio to work again?
If your Dolby receiver once properly received 5.1 audio, but now just puts out loud static, an iec setting might have been changed. This fix should apply for pass-through AC3 and AC3 upconverting (stereo to 5.1 surround). The command line tool iecset will tell you the current settings: Mode: consumer Data: audio Rate: 48000 Hz Copyright: protected Emphasis: none Category: PCM coder Original: original Clock: 1000 ppm If you are feeding the receiver raw audio (PCM), then ' Data: audio' is correct. However, if you are feeding it an encoded stream (Dolby AC3 or DTS), ' Data: non-audio' is correct. To change it, type ' iecset audio on' or ' iecset audio off.' However, usually you will want to go back and forth between sources. To enforce 'audio off' for AC3 stream, you can open your device with an AES parameter.
To get this parameters, do 'iecset -x' after setting it up how you'd like. In this case, we're getting AC3 working again, so after turning audio off, iecset -x gives: AES0=0x02,AES1=0x82,AES2=0x00,AES3=0x02 Add this to your device string under Setup-General-Audio System-Digital Output Device. For example, I have multiple digital cards and I want to use my INTEL card, so combining the output of ' aplay -L' and ' iecset -x' I use this as my Digital Output Device: ALSA:iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0,AES0=0x02,AES1=0x82,AES2=0x00,AES3=0x02 My Audio Output Device is the same, up to the first AES setting ( ALSA:iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0). I assume that if I had problems with direct PCM audio not working, I would want to use this as my Digital Audio Device string (AES0 is the only thing that changes): ALSA:iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0,AES0=0x00,AES1=0x82,AES2=0x00,AES3=0x02.