If you like a digital album, and you want to enjoy it at maximum audio quality, take its FLAC/WAV/DSD files and play them with PAP. Same listening approach as with vinyl records, you place side one on the turntable and listen, maybe skipping one or two songs.

PAP runs under Windows 10 & 11 on modern CPUs to gently feed the ASIO buffers on music in a smooth and regular fashion. 

• No installation required, low-energy consumption during execution.

• Minimalistic user interface, which does not distract visually while listening. 

• No knobs and special effects: press CTRL-C during play to enter a MENU.

• Born for playing on the latest ASIO drivers (and it does only that), passively feeding them.

• Cache-efficient low-latency memory play to avoid I/O problems during playback.

• Pristine signal (no DSP done) through the original integer samples (no intermediate conversion to floats).

• File formats: FLAC, WAV and DSF.

• Audio formats for 2 channels: 16-bit and 24-bit PCM at 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192, 352.8 (DXD), 394, 705.6, 768 KHz, ..., and Native DSD or DSD-over-PCM (DoP) at 64, 128, 256, 512 fs, ..., up to the maximun sample rate supported by your ASIO driver.

I am fully aware that one should be careful with downloaded software, and I care about that. The Microsoft Security Intelligence confirmed that my code is clean: I do not sign it with a digital license certificate as this is not a commercial site, and so Windows Defender warns a PUA (potentially unwanted application) that can be ignored. Please read the Microsoft Security Intelligence report saying that my EXE file is not malware for more details. 

Let me give some more details below. Please contact me directly if you need any clarification. 

My programming environment is clean: I use a clean Windows 10/11 pro installations, along with some compilers, profilers, source code libraries, and tools such as git. Also, I use Chrome, Google drive, Mega drive, and some ASIO drivers for testing. I do not connect to the internet, except for Google/Mega drive (I use another computer for web surfing). I keep Microsoft Defender active. Software PureAsioPlayerUSB.exe and PureAsioPlayer.exe are safe.  

As for PureAsioPlayerUSB.exe, its purpose is to establish if PureAsioPlayer.exe can run on your computer from your USB flash drive. Specifically, it collects information (which you can monitor) as follows:

• Check if you are launching PureAsioPlayerUSB.exe from a USB flash drive.

• Check the ASIO driver features, after you turn your DAC on.

• Get information on your CPU and RAM features.

• Perform a specific check if the AVX2 instruction set is supported.

• Get manufacturer data from your USB flash drive.

• Write the collected information in a TXT file on your USB flash drive.

• Open an URL for filling a request form with your browser, if you give the permission.

Sometimes very few false positives occur with Acronis / Elastic over around 70 tests in VirusTotal.com. All of the above security tests are purely statistical with some error rate.  As my software is clean, these tests are misled by the fact that PureAsioPlayer.exe needs to run as admin with high priority, and get some Windows rights and system calls to lock the memory, all of them contributing to its high-quality sound in your dedicated PC for audio. 

No harm to your system, no files installed on your PC hard disk, just squeezing the best sound out of it.

PureAsioPlayerUSB.exe has checksums 

• MD5: 5da560f01b8aa197606ccec731625bf8 

• SHA-256: 95c07bd608edd0f37c52a20a3d697d0816464d1011324748c6948d4f68034c4b

PureAsioPlayer.exe is obtained by compiling the source code with your collected data above, so it is tuned for each individual system and ASIO DAC, and thus each EXE has a unique signature. It would be nice to sign each EXE with EV Authenticode certificate issued by an authority recognized by Microsoft. But this needs a formal business activity, which is not the case here as this is just a non-commercial hobby for me.