[LAU] Sound quality with different music players

[bl4]

Florian Faber wrote:
> On 06/25/10 12:08, bl4 wrote:
> 
>> Suppose I have cheap onboard soundcard and cheap speakers, two different
>> music players (for example mpd and mplayer) with the same output
>> interface (both using alsa or both using oss compatibility layer), no
>> resampling, filters or anything, with dmix disabled and no other
>> software mixers. Is it normal (or possible) that for the same audio
>> files each player will produce noticeably different (in terms of
>> quality) sound? In other words, does the choice of music player have any
>> impact on final sound quality?
> 
> If the data is identical: No.
> 
> If you play back compressed data, and the players use different methods
> for uncompressing/reconstruction, the resulting PCM stream may differ.
> And then you *may* hear a difference.
> 


If the players use the same library for uncompressing and there is only
one version of this library installed, is it enough to assume that the
results will be the same?

And the difference you mentioned, can it be picked up by an untrained ear?

-- 
bl4