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Audirvana Studio – Back in black

Audirvana Studio is the successor to Audirvana, whereby the generation change is also accompanied by a change in the sales strategy. Audirvana Studio is now sold in a subscription model.

Audirvana Studio is the latest generation of Audirvana’s media management software, which has been highly appreciated for years. The French software company Audirvana is breaking new ground in many respects, not least in the way the software is distributed. Audirvana Studio is a new subscription-based distribution channel.

Damien Plisson is thus choosing a path that many software developers have been following for a long time in order to be able to offer a continuous development of his solution.

Audirvana standard for many years

It is clear that Audirvana has been a kind of standard in media management and music playback software for many, many years, especially on the Apple macOS platform. When the French development team developed their solution over ten years ago, it was basically the most elegant and simplest solution to achieve really high-quality music playback on Apple macOS, even if Apple iTunes still served as the basis in those early days.

Over the years, the software tool grew into an extremely versatile tool that was eventually also ported to the Microsoft Windows platform.

Audirvana Studio is now set to open a new chapter in the long success story.

Audirvana Studio with numerous innovations

Audirvana already offered access not only to its own content, but also to some leading streaming providers such as TIDAL, Qobuz and HRA Streaming from HIGHRESAUDIO, but local content and online offerings were separate.

With the new generation of Audirvana Studio, this is now to be different, with the company’s own content and online content from a subscribed streaming service merging into one media library. According to the developers, Audirvana Studio should thus prove to be a particularly powerful, central administration.

This applies first and foremost to the greatly improved search function, which searches for corresponding music titles and artists both locally and online.

  • Audirvana Studio 01
  • Audirvana Studio 02
  • Audirvana Studio 03

Favourites and playlists can now include titles from the local media library as well as titles from streaming services.

Another new feature is that you can now access internet radio as well as podcasts.

A very important advantage of Audirvana has always been that the audio signal is not “left to” the operating system, but that Audirvana takes over the signal processing. For this purpose, this software is equipped with particularly sophisticated algorithms that guarantee the most perfect signal processing possible with the most diverse hardware or make the best possible use of the available hardware, such as in the form of D/A converters.

This means that Audirvana can play back any relevant file format, even if it is not supported by the operating system itself, of course including hi-res audio in Linear PCM as well as DSD up to content encoded in lossy MQA.

Optimised signal processing

With Audirvana Studio, the developers have also refined and expanded this central function so that, on the one hand, the algorithms themselves have been improved once again and, on the other hand, the user can transparently explore the signal flow and also receive detailed information about the actual quality of the audio data at hand. This even goes so far that the software is supposed to help uncover any trickery in connection with hi-res audio data, for example, to indicate when these have simply been extrapolated and thus do not really correspond to what they are reported as. This is said to happen occasionally in the field of hi-res downloads…

New drivers, especially for the Microsoft Windows platform (WASAPI and ASIO), are also on board, and the software also has a new kernel streaming mode for a particularly short, and thus qualitatively best signal path.

New business model

Until now, one simply bought Audirvana, whereby the provider was quite generous with free updates. So you could say that you got a lot of performance for comparatively little investment.

Now, however, with the introduction of Audirvana Studio, this looks different, they are changing the business model.

Like so many other software developers, including large corporations, the French software company is now moving to a subscription model.

Audirvana Studio now costs € 7 per month, but can also be purchased for a discounted annual subscription of € 70. Existing customers will be granted a discount.

As announced, Audirvana Studio will be available from 16 May 2021. From this date, Audirvana 3.5 and thus the previous version will no longer be offered, but existing customers can of course continue to use it.

Anyone who wants to take a detailed look at Audirvana Studio 1.0 and test it in detail can do so without any problems using a trial version. All you need to do is enter your name and email address.

Getting to the point

With Audirvana Studio, the French software company delivers a version of its highly successful Audirvana media management and playback software that has been improved and expanded in essential areas. Local content now merges seamlessly with online content from streaming providers such as TIDAL, Qobuz and HIGHRESAUDIO, and signal processing has also been optimised again for both Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows. However, the introduction of the new version of Audirvana Studio is also accompanied by a change in the business model, as from now on Audirvana Studio will be available solely for a monthly or annual subscription price.

Manufacturer:Audirvana
Distribution:Audirvana
Price:€ 7,- per month
€ 70,- per year

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Michael Holzinger

Michael Holzinger, founder and editor-in-chief of HiFi BLOG and sempre-audio.at, has been working for years as a journalist in the fields of IT, photography, telecommunications and consumer electronics.

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