Sound quality of volumio

Diy and Tweaks Diy Volumio Projects
1

Hello fellow voluminians. I am playing a bit with different software distributions, one of them is ofcourse volumio, where I have a SS subscription.
I have built 2 identical setups, running on Pi4, with Ess9038DACs.
Volumio is the easiest to get up and running as no LMS is required for anything as long you have the subscription.
The other software I am playing with is Max2Play. There an LMS is required, in version 8.1 to get Tidal and so on to play. Max2Play is hell to get up and running compared to volumio,
Now for the fun part.
Max2Play is up to date. New distributions, certificates, everything. In addition a 64bit kernel.
The sound quality on Max2Play, especially with the 64bit kernel is considerable better than the Volumio. Anyone experienced similar things?

Another funny thing with volumio is that it seems it alters the MAC adress from the PI, so DHCP reservations are not working. Anyone experienced similar phenomenons?

Also as we spoke before, the volumio team must do a major upgrade of the software at some point.

2

Just because I’m curious… When you write that the sound quality in max2play is considerably better, on which criteria?
Did you perform measurements?
True blind tests ?
Same settings (no EQ,) same volume level, mixer.
It is important to understand why it is so different.
Thanks

3

Fair question. What I did was that each setup got a different input on my amp. Then I used my wife and kids that had no idea what is happening and asked. All said that nr.1 is better, my wife said more alive. This is also what I thought was best, nr 1 was the max, 2 the volumio. I hoped that it went the other way around as I prefer the user interface in volumio.