https://bard.fm/ Development notes for bard, a desktop music player. en https://bard.fm/blog/20260812-what-is-bard/ <p>bard is a local music player. &quot;Local&quot; in the sense that your files live on your computer's hard drive. It could be a network-mapped drive, or a cloud-synced folder.</p> <p>But read on for more if you like.</p> <h2>Some Historical Context</h2> <p>Before the days of music streaming services, but after the age of physical medium (which still exists today), people stored music digitally on their computer hard drives and played music on their computers. There were various programs to play and organize digital music that you owned.</p> <h2>Today</h2> <p>Those days are gone now, streaming services dominate music consumption instead. However, the market of physical music media clearly hasn't gone anywhere. It's market presence has diminished greatly, but people still purchase and enjoy vinyls and CDs, enough that todays popular artists and record labels continue to release in those formats.</p> <p>The same is true for digital music ownership. There is enough demand for digital music purchases to justify the existence of companies like Bandcamp and Qobuz, who sell non-DRM music for you to own.</p> <h2>bard</h2> <p>But what became of the music programs of old? How are people listening to digitally owned music today? While there are standards of physical music medium, and standards of digital encodings, there doesn't seem to be a set of go-to music players that enthusiasts flock to. Everyone has their own. Which is just as well - listening equipment such as speakers, amplfiers, and DACs are similarly varied and diverse, there is no end to the choices available to a listener today.</p> <p>bard is yet another player in the mix. It focuses on library management, curation, and engagement with the art form.</p> <h2>What bard isn't</h2> <p>It's not a bit-perfect music player. I hesitate to say it's not for &quot;audiophiles&quot;, because what does that term mean anyways? Is it someone who enjoys a beautifully mastered track with great recording quality? Well bard can play that recording back just as well, as just about any player will. But if &quot;audiophile&quot; means reproducing a 24-bit, 192 kHz recording bit-perfectly, with no upsampling or transcoding, then bard does not do this. bard does not painstakingly reproduce bits of music that can't be heard by human ears. But it's honest about what it does produce, and about the signal chain (as far as it can observe it).</p> <p>bard's development draws a distinction between quality (a goal) and purity (not a goal). bard can't promise the bits sent to your DAC are the exact bits that are in your 192 kHz audio file, because this is an ask for purity. However, bard does promise that in blind tests across a spectrum of music, that you won't be able to perceive the difference.</p> Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Ehsun https://bard.fm/blog/20260812-what-is-bard/