I enjoy Audirvana's old free player which I use mainly on my iMac creating on-the-fly playlists from my NAS drive. Works like a charm. The Audirvana people have been busy with the launch of their $49 Plus version and they've just announced iTunes integration (if you can't beat 'em, integrate 'em).
Perhaps one of the easiest and least expensive (as in free!) things you can do to improve the sound quality of your computer audio playback is to use one of the many audiophile-grade Media Player apps. If you’re attached to iTunes don’t fret – a number of these players let you keep the iTunes interface while they go about the business of better sound more or less in the background.
As metaphors go, the silver bullet is somewhat ambiguous, given that it's used to represent both the reliably destructive and the reliably beneficial. (Who would have guessed that an idea from a Lon Cheney Jr. film would prove too subtle and complex for people in the 21st century?) Nevertheless, at Montreal's Salon Son et Image on April 2, those of us who comprised Stereophile's reliably responsive "Ask the Editors" panel—John Atkinson, Robert Deutsch, and I—volleyed it with the sort of sprightly, vernal abandon that is the sole province of men with gray hair. To wit: We agreed that no materials, technologies, or design decisions can either guarantee or prevent good sound. Not vinyl. Not star grounding. Not class-A circuits. Neither tubes nor transistors. Neither belt nor idler nor electrostats nor multiway nor single-driver nor copper nor silver nor silk nor beryllium. Not even harmonic distortion. Each of those ideas may mean something to someone, in the short term, in the narrow view, but that's all. There are no silver bullets.
Media Player Software Reviews
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