Not for High Resolution Music

I have a very large collection of FLAC files which are mostly 96Khz 24 bit. A few are higher and some are 44.1Khz 16 bit (CD rips). I have tried a lot of music player software with varying degrees of success. I decided to try VOX as a low cost compact application for a new MacBook Notebook. The MacBook has only a 250GB solid state drive. I keep my music files on an external 2TB USB 3.0 drive. I also use one of three external DAC’s for playback. I have Fiio x3, x5ii and an Audio Engine D1. One would think that the application has only to stream the digital audio to the DAC and the DAC will do all the heavy lifting. This is not necessarily the case. I found with VOX that it somehow colors the sound. With VOX a 96Khz 24bit file sounded like it was comming from a echo chamber. At first, I thought it was the recording itself, but after testing I found that it was VOX that was casuing the coloration. All the VOX settings were the defaults.

I liked VOX. Its user interface is simple and direct. It seems to handle hi-res files without choking, but the sound coloration is not acceptable. I am now exerimenting with Decibel. It’s more expensive, but seems to work flawlessly.

KO6JW about VOX: MP3 & FLAC Music Player, v2.8.7