The audiolaz player: a free, open-source network audio player, bit-perfect and verified

Sources. When several play, the one started last plays.

• Roon: as a Squeezebox player, through Roon’s own Squeezebox support. Nothing to install on the Core; the player appears as a zone, up to 24 bit / 192 kHz.
• Lyrion Music Server (formerly Logitech Media Server), the same way.
• AirPlay, from an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac or an Apple TV (with shairport-sync). With video, the player tells the sender its own delay, so picture and sound stay together.
• Spotify Connect (with librespot).
• UPnP/DLNA: a built-in renderer, for the controller apps you already use.
• Any Linux app, through the “audiolaz” sound card or ALSA output; every Mac app, through the “audiolaz” output of macOS: Music, a browser, a streaming app.

Outputs. One at a time, chosen on the player’s page.

• Any ALSA card on Linux, any Core Audio device on macOS, in exclusive mode when asked: a USB DAC, HDMI, S/PDIF, a DAC board.
• Squeezebox players (squeezelite, piCorePlayer…) and UPnP/DLNA renderers on the network.
• AirPlay devices; the title, the artist and the cover go to the ones with a screen.
• audiolaz Link receivers, beside a DAC elsewhere in the house (below).

The player does not only promise to leave the music alone: it checks it, all the time it plays. Every frame that comes in and every frame it hands to the output are fingerprinted and compared, span by span; a sample changed by one bit, a frame lost, added or moved shows at once. It costs a fraction of a percent of one processor core.

Its page says “Bit-perfect, verified” only when every span compared was identical, and shows the sound’s path: the source, the format in, the format out, the output and the DAC. If something is not intact, it says what and why.

Nothing is changed on the way. Only what a device strictly needs to play at all is done, and said on screen as a conversion needed for that device:

• a rate the device does not accept: the nearest one it takes;
• a word length the output does not keep (a 32-bit source to a 24-bit DAC): requantized once, with dither; a 16- or 24-bit source is left untouched;
• a source of more than two channels to a stereo output: its first two.

audiolaz Link is a free, open network transport for audiophiles. The computer does the work, far from the DAC; a small receiver beside the DAC, a Raspberry Pi or a streamer, takes the music in small, perfectly regular packets and plays it as it came.

• Paced by the DAC’s own clock: the receiver reports what the DAC actually played, and the sender follows it.
• No resampling, no oversized buffer: the receiver’s reserve is sized by the network’s measured jitter, and changes only in digital silence, never by touching a sample.
• Bit for bit: the transfer itself is checked by the tests.
• Open: the protocol is documented so that anyone can write a sender or a receiver.

The free audiolaz app drives the player for you: it installs it on your Roon Core or your streamer, picks the inputs and the outputs, and measures your room, with an iPhone or a measurement microphone, for free. You see your room’s curve and its score out of 100 before you decide anything.

The app is in beta, on application (become a beta tester); its download opens after the beta. The player itself builds from its source today, on Linux or macOS.

In a room, some bass notes swell at your seat and linger, others vanish; the stereo image leans when you sit off-centre. No player, however faithful, changes that. audiolaz Room, the paid step, corrects what your room does to the music at your seat, and that is the biggest change you will hear in a system.

• The bass that booms is calmed, and no longer covers the midrange.
• Four sounds, Neutral, Balanced, Warm and Analogue, with “No correction” beside them, all at the same level.
• “Centre on me”: sit wherever you like, one gesture with the iPhone, and the stage comes back in front of you.
• The same correction on every source and every output above; the app puts the correcting player in place of the free one, in one step.

Measuring is free: you see what the correction will do in your room before you buy. A licence, bought once, no subscription. See Room and Room Plus.

• audiolaz Room: hear the music, not your room
• Questions and details
• Room correction for Roon, step by step
• Room correction with an iPhone
• Apple TV AirPlay lip sync