Your DAC deserves the bits you paid for.

KraiAudio is a Windows music player built around a native C audio engine. No resampling, no mixer, no garbage collector anywhere near the audio thread — the file's own sample rate, straight to your DAC.

Download — free 14-day preview

Not on sale yet · no payment details · nothing to cancel

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. Nothing else to install, no payment details to try it. The installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows will say “Windows protected your PC” — click More info, then Run anyway. Why that happens.

Bit-perfect, and honest about it

Most players claim bit-perfect. KraiAudio shows you, per track, what the DAC is actually receiving — and picks the best path it can get.

DSD file → DoP over WASAPI exclusive (DSD over PCM, v1.1) — bit-perfect, and accepted by nearly every modern DAC

↳ otherwise → PCM at the file's own rate, never resampled to a fixed rate

Native DSD over ASIO is written and waiting on a build that includes the ASIO SDK. The preview you can download today does not have it, so it is not listed above.

WASAPI exclusive mode: Windows' mixer is out of the path entirely.
The engine switches the device to each track's native rate — 44.1 kHz stays 44.1 kHz.
A bit-perfect badge that reads real device state, not wishful thinking. When something forces a fallback, it says so.
Verified on real hardware (Topping DX5 II), not only in a test harness.

Everything else a listening session needs

A real library

Albums, artists, genres, favourites and playlists over a SQLite library, with search and format filters everywhere. Tag editing built in.

Headphone correction

Bring a correction from autoeq.app — search your headphones there, export it, import it here — or dial in the 10-band parametric EQ yourself and save presets.

Headphone simulator

Give it a measurement of your headphones and one of another pair, and it fits the difference — roughly what the other pair would sound like on your system.

Native formats

FLAC, WAV and DSF, decoded in C. FLAC decodes in its native format rather than being widened first.

Nothing to install

Self-contained build: no .NET runtime, no Visual C++ redistributable, no Windows App SDK. Unzip and run, or use the installer.

Never phones home

The preview needs no account and no connection. Once there are licences, activating is the single network call the player ever makes.

Not on sale yet, and here is why

The Mac version ships first. This one is finished enough to listen to but has not been through a paid release, so rather than take money for it today I would rather you ran it for a fortnight and told me what breaks.

Every feature is in the preview. Nothing is held back for a paid tier.
No payment details, no account, nothing to cancel.
When it goes on sale it will be a perpetual licence for version 1 — bought once, not rented.
If your fourteen days run out before then, email me and I will keep you listening.

Download the preview Tell me when it is on sale

Questions worth answering honestly

What does the preview cost?: Nothing, for fourteen days, with every feature switched on. Whether a player suits you is mostly a question about your DAC and your ears, and neither is answered by a feature list.
What happens when the fourteen days are up?: Email me. Buying is not open for Windows yet, so I am not going to lock you out of a player I have not sold you — I will extend it. When it does go on sale you will be able to buy a licence from this page.
How will activation work once it is on sale?: You will get a licence key by email. Paste it into the player, click Activate, and that is the whole of it. After that the player is fully offline. The preview needs none of this — it just runs.
I reinstall Windows a lot. Will that cost me?: Not if you click Deactivate in the player first — then the reinstall is just a move. Windows identifies an installation rather than a machine, so a clean install reads as a different computer, which is why a Windows licence covers two rather than the Mac's one: the spare is there for the reinstall you did not think to deactivate before. Run out and I will reset it; just email me.
Windows says it protected my PC. Is this safe?: That warning is about a signature, not about the file. Windows shows it for any installer that has not been signed with a code-signing certificate, which costs a few hundred dollars a year and which I have not bought for something I am giving away. Click More info then Run anyway. I will buy the certificate before the player goes on sale, and the warning will stop — if that is not good enough for you today, which is a reasonable position, wait for that.
Do I need an ASIO driver for DSD?: Not for the preview, which plays DSD as DoP over WASAPI exclusive — bit-perfect, and accepted by nearly every modern DAC. Native DSD over ASIO is written but is not in this build; when it ships, an ASIO driver will be what turns it on.
Will the preview keep working after I buy?: Yes. Buying adds a licence key to the player you already have; it is not a different download, and your library and settings stay where they are.
Is there a macOS version?: Yes — KraiAudio for Mac, and that one is on sale. The two share the design but not the code, so they are not the same product: the Mac player reads more formats and does more once the sound is playing, while this one has the larger parametric EQ and native DSD over ASIO once that ships. A licence covers one of them, not both.