Do music player programs (Foobar, Winamp, Dopamine, etc.) affect the quality of digital music file playback? Or do they just spit out digital information to the DAC? Or sound quality changes due to prebuilt internal EQ from the player (software)? I am wondering if some programs fail to send complete digital information of a FLAC file to the DAC? Maybe it’s placebo thing; Potplayer (I use it to watch video files) makes the music much noisier than VLC to my ears.
If no difference, are there some better programs (for Windows) to playback digital music files (ie FLAC)? No commercial, no privacy theft, etc.
Thanks!
there should be no difference. especially if you use the program as exclusive, as in WASAPI exclusive, or ASIO (exclusive means the program won’t send the info of the song through windows and directly to your DAC, which means no resampling and usually far better audio quality).
I recommend starting with MusicBee, it’s very easy to work with and very friendly.
MusicBee is fantastic. I use it in ASIO mode, since my Topping DX3 Pro+ DAC has an ASIO compatible driver. The DAC will switch sample rates to match the currently playing songs sample rate, rather than letting Windows resample for the currently selected output mode in Windows.