Re: [Banshee-List] Banshee is bit perfect in Linux, but not in Mac OS X!?

["Wade Menard" <wade ezri org>]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:47 +0100, "Matthias Brennwald"
<matthias brennwald org> wrote:
> Dear all
> 
> As far as I can tell, the Linux version of Banshee does not resample  
> the music data before playback (i.e. sound playback is done using the  
> exact data in the sound files, no changes in the sample rate or bit  
> depth). At least, the sound data is sent to GStreamer without  
> resampling or changing the bit depth. The Mac OS X version of Banshee,  
> however, seems to play the music using the sample rate and bit depth  
> set using the 'Audio MIDI Setup' program (which is a utility program  
> that comes with Mac OS X). In other words, the sound data is resampled  
> before playback (this behaviour is the same in iTunes). I (and MANY  
> others) do not like this resampling at all, because the resampling  
> affects the sound quality. Also, I think it's unfortunate and  
> undesired that the Linux and Mac OS X versions of Banshee don't work  
> in the same way.
> 
> Therefore my question: is there a way to control the resampling  
> behaviour in Banshee? An alternative to iTunes that would allow music  
> playback without resampling would be gorgeous!

As you say, this is a side effect of interfacing with
Quicktime/CoreAudio, which apparently has a poor quality sample rate
conversion algorithm. iTunes actually has it's own sample rate
conversion algorithm they say is higher quality than the one CoreAudio
uses, but apparently its still not good enough for some audiophiles.

An option would be to test Gstreamer's sample rate conversion elements
(i'm assuming it has libsamplerate available to use in OSX?) to see if
they perform better than CoreAudio's SRC.

I'm not involved with any of this code though so maybe Eoin Hennessy has
some more insight.

-Wade