Bug Head Emperor, world's best audio player ?

[johanjongstra]

Would you have the ambition to build world's best audio player? Well a Japanese engineer has. And he succeeded pretty well in building it for Windows with the legendary name Bug Head Emperor. Expensive? No... it is for free. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I love geniuses with a vision, so does this forum if you ask me.
So, if you want to upgrade your windows pc with absolutely the best player around, try Bug Head. Just get rid of iTunes, Foobar, or even JRiver. (don't throw HQPlayer away yet). Install it is very easy, after that it becomes a little more difficult. The manual is for 90% in Japanese and the 10 % English is unreadable.
You can find the latest version here: https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=95b15e62 ... 211D%21105.

So what can you expect:
1. Absolutely the best PCM sound you ever get. If you have a lot of 16/44.1 redbook files, this is for you.
2. DSD through DOP, but also Native, depending on the possibilities on your DAC to DSD256.
3. A user interface that is a challenge! You just load files from your HD, so no fancy picking of an album through a nice cover flow interface.
4. Lots and lots and lots of tweaking. Choosing filters with nice exotic names, jitter levels, Phase filters and not to mention the zillion of hidden menus when you right click on something.
5. None documentation apart from some fanatics at forums at Computeraudiophile.com and JPlay.com.

If you want to give it a try than a few hints for starting:
1. installing gives you 5 programs, you need the one with the lovely name Infinity Blade SQ, that is the highest standard player.
2. Clicking gives you a logo on which you have to click again to get into the settings
3. It lets you choose your driver, mostly an Asio driver of your DAC
4. You get into a screen that has a lot of blue and red options. It took me a few times but good to know that red is a chosen option and blue is an option to chose... My suggestion is to leave all to the standard settings for now.
5. After that you come into the actual player. Just wonder about the GUI and try to load a file. Hit play and see what is happening.
6. The player isn't reacting right away, but starts with a proces to 'rewrite' your data (probably it writes your file into memory processing it with the chosen filters. Of course the process doesn't affect your actual files)
7. After rewriting another proces is started called envalid (not sure what that means in english).
8. After that the file starts to play, cover art is visible, and the most wonderful sound is heard.

Let me hear what you think, and maybe we can help each other in finding out about this amazing free product

[jammy395]

Well JoJo I cant understand too much youve just said, as im a bit of a Ludite Dinosaur.......
But if it sounds good and is free, smashing.
I like formats you can actualy lay yer hands on be it LP, CD, Casette, DVD etc....
Theres something theraputic in the ritual of puting on an L.P.

[johanjongstra]

Hi Jammy,
Don't worry... I still have a turntable and lots of lp's. It is therapeutic indeed and I do that lots of times.
Digital music is just a kind of other addiction I have to satisfy!
Thanks for the post.

[jammy395]

Well enjoy yer music JoJo, im sure Terry, Fretless and the rest of the "With it- Hip n Trendy Techno-Dudes" should be along soon......

[Fretless]

This certainly looks fascinating Johan. Things are a bit hectic here at the moment but as soon as I get a chance I'll be investigating this. Thanks for the detailed instructions.

[slinger]

Well, I got it up and working and it sounds fine but the interface would drive me absolutely crazy given enough time. I prefer a user interface that's actually been written for users. At the moment I have no idea what any of the options do and I don't want to learn 100% of an absolutely mad system, especially by trial and error, to work out the 10% of it I probably want to use. I'm afraid it's back to JRiver for me until someone writes a decent GUI to sit on top of Bug Head.

[johanjongstra]

Thanks Slinger for your post. I understand your opinion about the GUI. Hard to understand, but the more you dive into it the more respect you get for this program. I read that Lukasz Fikus, the man behind Lampizator developed a music server with JRiver and thus JRemote as GUI with Bug Head as player. Everybody wants to know how he did that !