Is it my streamer or does Audirvana sounds better?

The main “issue” I have with Audirvana when playing on a PC, compared to my streamers, is the bass. The low-end notes feel light. Especially at lower listening levels (45–55 dB), my streamers render articulate, clear bass, whereas Audirvana on PC sounds softer, lacking texture and weight.

I make sure my PC is running on battery, connected via Ethernet, with Wi-Fi turned off, and all other applications closed except Audirvana. When checking Task Manager, I noticed Audirvana uses over 800 MB of memory (for comparison, Google Chrome uses over 1,100 MB), placing it near the top of the list. This suggests it is performing a fair amount of background processing or optimization. It’s no surprise there’s still no full implementation on mobile devices, as it would likely be quite memory-intensive.

I also tried inserting a DDC between the PC and DAC, using fairly decent USB and I²S cables, but that did not improve the bass performance. It still seems somewhat attenuated, almost as if a high-pass filter is applied. I believe I was running in WASAPI Exclusive or ASIO mode, which should be bit-perfect.

In any case, if you have suggestions on how to restore the bass performance, I’d appreciate it.

@analogfan  I’ve used Audirvana for years now, running on an old Mac Mini with an Uptone DC supply.  It’s always sounded great.  Part of the magic is the pre-loading and conversion of files to PCM.  It recently updated itself to 3.0 and everything went awry, but after a few discussions at the forum the problems were fixed.  However, I still prefer the sound of 2.11, which a forum member kindly sent me to restore.  It just sounds more solid and realistic to me.

analougefan:  I'm really interested in this thread because I'm probably going to buy the Garlubidor Divinity and was considering the Eversolo T8 as the streaming transport.  Curious that you thought that the Audirvana was a better option.  Is it that much better?  I'd rather not have to use a MacBook.  Thanks for your reply.

I enjoyed Audirvana via a Mac Mini stripped down for music only, and was very happy with the sound. But I had technical issues with memory management and some other issues, so switched to an Innuos Zen Mk3 from TMR and didn’t look back. The Zen is a nice piece of gear.