The fundamental meaning of Bit Perfect refers to the process of transmitting PCM-mastered audio data to a DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) without any modification or loss, ensuring playback as intended by the artist. This approach is said to allow listeners to experience the music exactly as the artist intended.
From the perspective of a music player, this idea might hold some merit, but in simple terms, it means delivering data to the DAC without any processing.
However, from the listener's perspective, there are often cases where the sound is reinterpreted and adjusted to suit their environment. For instance, in small spaces, bass frequencies may be overly emphasized due to the speaker's booming effect. In such cases, filtering the bass range through an EQ or DSP can be very effective. Additionally, vocals can be emphasized, or a slight distortion effect can be added to create a live sound. Recently, the notion that high-performance DACs benefit from upsampling during digital-to-analog conversion has been widely accepted.
Such PCM processing is most efficiently handled by the music player. Since PCM data is the most suitable format for filtering, it can be transformed easily without degrading sound quality if processed before being sent to the DAC. Modern computing power is more than adequate for this task.
Does not using Bit Perfect change the sound?
Naturally, it does. To understand why, one must first grasp the role of the OS audio core.
As you know, a computer OS, including macOS, is not a device dedicated solely to music playback. It also plays game sound effects, warning tones, and miscellaneous sounds from web browsers.
To handle this, the OS mixes sounds from all currently running applications and delivers them to the speakers.
For example, if a music player is playing a song and a notification sound occurs when an email arrives, the low-quality notification sound is mixed with the music. This alters the PCM data of the music being listened to.
Additionally, a DAC strictly follows the OS's commands. If the OS instructs the DAC to process data at a 48 kHz sampling rate, the DAC must comply to avoid playback issues. If multiple applications send sounds at different sampling rates simultaneously, the OS must unify these PCM data rates (e.g., to 48 kHz) for mixing, causing downsampling or upsampling.
How to achieve Bit Perfect?
It’s simple: follow these two steps.
Ensure the DAC is not set as the system's default audio device.Check the OS audio settings to confirm that the DAC device used for music playback is not the system default device. If the DAC is set as the default, PCM data will be altered by sounds from other applications and the system. Once this setting is resolved, there is no further configuration needed in the OS.
Leverage the music player’s capabilities.The music's original sampling rate must match the DAC's sampling rate to prevent upsampling or downsampling. For instance, if you're listening to a FLAC file at 96 kHz, the DAC should also be set to 96 kHz.
To facilitate this, Pine Player Pro provides a "DAC Priority Mode."In this mode, as shown in the settings, the DAC device is designated as an independent device, and DAC Priority Mode is selected. Pine Player Pro automatically adjusts the OS audio settings to match the sampling rate of each track before playback. This ensures PCM data is transmitted to the DAC without any modifications.
Conclusion
Contrary to what some music players claim, Bit Perfect is not an extraordinary feature. Especially on macOS, it’s impossible to implement a custom audio core that bypasses macOS’s own. All that’s needed is to adjust the OS’s audio core sampling rate. Any additional processing would no longer qualify as Bit Perfect.
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