Decaud vs Lacquer

Decaud is free to use, with every feature included. No subscriptions, paid upgrades or locked features. In-app purchases are optional tips to support development; they do not unlock anything. Most players display the label on the file. Decaud looks deeper. TrueHz reads sampled windows across a track for spectral evidence consistent with lossy compression. It is evidence, not provenance. Decaud is a music player for people who care how their files actually reach their ears: hi-res lossless, DSD, and a signal path you can inspect at any moment. KNOW WHAT YOU'RE HEARING • TrueHz reads sampled windows for spectral evidence consistent with lossy compression, on songs whose audio is on this device • Analyzed songs keep their result on the row • Real-time analyzer, goniometer, phase, and LUFS meters BUILT FOR SOUND • An honest signal path: every stage between the file and the output, and what each one does to the audio • FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, DSF, DFF, APE, WavPack, and more • DSD plays as PCM with an in-app system-volume slider, shown in Audio Path. Optional native DSD requires a compatible USB DoP DAC, system volume at 100% and confirmation of independent listening-volume control on the DAC or downstream equipment. There is no in-app volume control during native DSD • Gapless playback, optional crossfade, and headphone crossfeed • ReplayGain and a 10-band equalizer MORE WAYS TO LISTEN • Internet radio from Radio Paradise, SomaFM, FIP, and your own stations, with live titles and covers • Station creates an endless session from your own library, chosen locally by sound • Classical browsing understands works, movements, and composers • The waveform is the seek bar • Tap the sound information in Now Playing to open Audio Path ANYWHERE IN THE HOUSE • Stream from NAS and SMB shares and DLNA servers • Play to AirPlay speakers through the system AirPlay picker • Control your Mac library from your iPhone over the local network • iCloud keeps your catalog, ratings, and artwork on your devices in your own account. Sending audio is always a separate, explicit action A LIBRARY THAT STAYS YOURS • Copy songs and folders from USB and SD drives to this iPhone or iPad for offline listening, even with the drive disconnected • Or play files from an attached drive without copying them • Download seven complimentary DSD64 tracks courtesy of NativeDSD, listen offline, and optionally upload them to iCloud • Sort As fields change ordering without renaming your music and sync across devices • Browse the playable library in CarPlay • Smart playlists, synced lyrics, and compilations • Your listening history stays private, with optional export to a server you host PRIVATE BY DESIGN No Decaud account required. No analytics. No tracking. Online metadata lookups are opt-in and send text or audio fingerprints only, never your audio.

A lot of the "hi-res" music out there isn't. A file can say 24-bit/96kHz on the label and still be an MP3 that somebody re-encoded into a FLAC container and sold on. Your player shows the badge and has no idea. Lacquer does. It reads the audio itself — not the file name, not the metadata tags — and tells you what is actually inside. QUALITY CHECK Every lossless file you import is decoded and analysed on your phone, with an FFT running on Apple's Accelerate framework. Nothing is uploaded. There is no account. The verdict does not come from a single cut-off number. Three things are weighed: how steeply the top end falls away, whether that fall makes sense for the sample rate the file claims, and whether the same edge sits in the same place across different parts of the track. Real recordings fade out, and they wander. An encoder's cut does not. It is also careful about what it says. A flagged file reads "may be upscaled", never "fake" — an old master or a quiet orchestral recording can look suspicious for perfectly honest reasons. When a file's top end simply ends too low for the evidence to point either way, Lacquer says it cannot tell, rather than guessing. Every verdict shows the number it was based on and the line that number was measured against, so you can look at the evidence and disagree. SEE THE EVIDENCE Tap the artwork while a track is playing and it turns over. On the back is the file — format, bit depth, sample rate, size — and under it the device you are actually listening on and the rate coming out of it. Below that is everything between the file and your ears: EQ, speed, sample-rate conversion and Bluetooth re-encoding. A file that failed the check does not get to show off the specs it claims. The label switches to the evidence instead: the claim struck through, where the sound really stops, how wide the roll-off is, and the threshold that decided it. WHAT REACHES YOUR DAC A signal path sheet shows file, engine and output side by side and says plainly whether anything is being resampled on the way through. Switch on "match the file's rate" and Lacquer asks the output to run at the file's own sample rate, and takes the equalizer and speed controls out of the path entirely. iOS will not tell an app which rates a connected DAC accepts, so Lacquer finds out the only way there is: it asks for each rate in turn and reads back what the hardware actually did. The answer is remembered for that device. TUNED TO YOUR HEADPHONES Import the ParametricEQ.txt measured for your headphone model and Lacquer plays everything through that correction. Pair it with a device and it turns on by itself when you connect. Add up to 10 bands of your own on top, dragged right on the graph, or pick a sound style in one tap. The preamp drops automatically so boosts never clip. THE REST OF THE PLAYER Lacquer plays FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC and m4a from your own library, gapless, with crossfade, and shows the lyrics embedded in your files. Bring music in from the Files app, from your DRM-free iTunes tracks, or straight off your own server — Lacquer has native SMB and WebDAV clients for the NAS boxes that never appear properly in Files. There is an Apple Watch companion for playback control. Everything stays on the device. It works on a plane. LACQUER PRO Unlocks Quality Check results for every file, headphone correction, the parametric equalizer, unlimited imports, cloud import and an ad-free app. Weekly, yearly, or a one-time lifetime purchase. The free version shows ads. Lacquer never plays DRM-protected tracks and never bypasses any protection. It is a player for music you already own. Privacy Policy: https://lacquer.siamclaw.com/privacy-policy.html Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/