The BEST App for iTunes Integration

EDIT: VIrtually all my gapless albums FAIL to smoothly play back gaplessly so -2 stars. This is a central feature of the software in my opinion and it fails to work properly. I understand iTunes is very much to blame, but other applications (Audirvana) manage to work around this through various hacks on their end. I will gladly revert back to 5 stars once this is fixed in a new version (currently on v3.0)

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Alright so I’ve tried virtually ALL “audiophile” audio apps out there: Amarra, Pure Music, Audirvana (in Legacy iTunes integration Mode), and finally BitPerfect. In short, BitPerfect is the best audio app out of all 4, the most reasonably priced, and does exactly what I want and nothing more.

For reference, my setup is MBP with OS X El Capitan, Sennheiser HD 800, and OPPO HA-1 amp/dac. Alright so with that out of the waym why is BitPerfect the “best” out of all the options out there.

1. iTunes Integration and Playback: BitPerfect seamlessly integrates with iTunes. You click a song and it starts playing right away. No loading times, nothing. Try that with Amarra or Pure Music and you’d be staring at “Loading Please Wait” screens for sometimes half a minute…

2. Gapless Playback: Decently executed but I’ve encountered bugs every once in a while. Definitely better than Amarra and Pure Music which have extremely buggy playback engines. Audirvana seems do this slightly better.

3. Oversampling/Integer Mode: BitPerfect has nice Oversampling features and is realatively bug free, especially with Integer Mode. BitPerfect is only (barely) topped by Audirvana because Audirvana offers more control with the Oversampling filter paramters. Pure Music has increadibly buggy oversampling especially with Integer Mode enabled, Amarra Symphony doesn’t even have this feature.

4. Audio Quality: This is digital playback. Audio quality is the same as any app out there. Only thing that can make BitPerfect sound "better” is the signal processing done bu Oversampling/Integer Mode. Don’t be fooled by advertisement claiming superior audio quality of other programs. It’s nonsense in the purest form. Audiophoolery if you will.

5. Minimal Interface: BitPerfect is out of your way and does it’s job when required. I very much prefer the iTunes interface for browsing my music. I believe Apple is very capable at designing fluid interfaces and any other audio program is lacking, and missing features (like Apple Music). It’s nice that BitPerfect does it’s job in the background, without any window to get in my way. Also it doesn’t try to shove it’s playlist or library browser features in your face.

6. Price: Fraction of the price of all other products. Seriously anything more than $10 and you’re getting robbed.

George Mhmmm about BitPerfect