cMP Music Player (1 Viewer)

[PeteA]

Hi All

I was browsing the net and found this site "cMP - the open source high-end Memory Player" and thought that I would have a look.

This site is run by a physics professor who is also a high end Hi-Fi nut who decided to make a PC sound as good at music playback as a high end CD player.

His approach is twofold, 1) was to build a dedicated PC just for the playback of music, not so inetresting as I alredy have my HTPC, and 2) Tweaks to Windows XP (he says that Vista and 7 are no good for music) this was very interseting to me as I already run MP on Win XP with Symphys PureAudio plugin.

I must admit I made most of the changes to Windows that he suggests (some can't be made as needed for TV playback) and what a difference it has made, my music files using PureAudio and ASIO were very good but with these changes to Windows they now sound amazing!

I thouroughly reccomend a visit to his site and have a read up on his tweaks to Windows, well worth while.

Peter

 

[Helios61]

AW: cMP Music Player

Big , Peter for Information! Here you will find cMP Music Player -> Link!

And i hope, PureAudio will soon support cuesheets!

 

[jameson_uk]

What exactly did you change to improve the audio?

 

[PeteA]

Hi Jameson

I followed his instructions on tuning windows xp as far as I could, some things he recommends turning off we can't do as MP needs them, but I managed about 85% of them.

Check all works after each change (I managed to kill my two TV cards!)

I also checked that my soundcard had its own interrupt in windows.

Both of these I would say made a massive improvment when listning to music via MP and Puraudio plugin, music sounds clearer and a lot smoother in character via my Arcam amp and SP/Dif.

 

[jameson_uk]

Both of these I would say made a massive improvment when listning to music via MP and Puraudio plugin, music sounds clearer and a lot smoother in character via my Arcam amp and SP/Dif.

If you tested after each change though, what made a big difference?
The card having its own IRQ should make a difference but I would be interested to see whether you think any of the other chnages made a difference.

 

[PeteA]

hi jameson that was why I killed my tv cards I just steamed in and shut down loads of services without testing.

 

[PeteA]

Ok I can see that I need to give a better explanation of what I did.
On the cMP front page there is on the lefthand side a menu that contains a section called "Optimisation" this starts with removing unwanted programs that can interfere with music playback, such as virusguard etc, I removed all of these programs, then if you scroll down he recommends removing all programs from running during startup, such as the shortcut on the statusbar to ATI setup etc. After this he then goes on to removing bits from Services that are not needed for day to day running of Windows and then he talks you through removing bits from the registry using regedit (a bit scary). After this is checking that your music card has its own IRQ, which mine already had. The final parts are to adjust the BIOS settings, I have not completed any of these yet. That is what I have completed on my HTPC so far and I can honestly say that it has made a difference bearing in mind that my HTPC had no optimisations at all, it was a standard Windows XP install with MP installed on it. As to which bit made the most difference I cannot say as I tested each section before continuing but did not do a listning test as well.

 

[SirShagsalot]

Hi,

I used to run MP and Pure Music on XP, tuned up CMP Style.

I recently changed a lot in my system, now I use an external, asynchronous audio device (USB to SPDIF to be precise) AND an Atom 330 CPU and whereas I could previously cause an appreciable drop in sound quality for example copying a big file in the background, or unzipping a big rar archive, now I can pretty much do what I want with no impact on sound quality. I have not been able to cause all four threads to saturate with anything I do on that machine.

Following that test I just put Windows 7 on and other keeping the install minimal did nothing. No change in sound from optimised XP.

Greez SSAL

 

[dint10]

Wow - just had a look at the guys site [cMP Music Player].

There is enough reading there to keep you going for a while!

Very interesting though and I plan to delve deeper.

Actually - reading through the tweaks for XP reminded me of an article I read not that long ago about tweaking Win7 for audio playback.

Audio playback is what interests me most in MP & I use Win 7 too so I followed it myself.

Its here : Windows 7 Audio & J River Media Center 14 Configuration | Computer Audiophile

Obviously, you just skip the section about JRiver.

Good website actually this one : Computer Audiophile | High-End Audiophile Music Servers

It was this website that led me to HDtracks and the wonderful Steely Dan Gaucho files.

Been planning to take a look at the JRiver Media Jukebox too as it seems highly regarded for ASIO playback and WASAPI too.

I wonder if anyone has had experince of that?

 

[SirShagsalot]

Hi,

Been planning to take a look at the JRiver Media Jukebox too as it seems highly regarded for ASIO playback and WASAPI too.

I wonder if anyone has had experince of that?

The current version of the free Media Jukebox has deleted ASIO and WASAPI outputs, you would have to get an older version.

I had a go at J-River on my machine at home but went back to Media Portal. For music alone J-River is okay, but I have a library of movies and TV Shows and J-River does not handle things as well as MP, never mind MP-TV Series and My Movies...

So I'm now running MP latest stable release, with all the good add-ins, Black Glass Nova Skin.

Greez SSAL