1.2.0 — Stage, Level and lossless detection

Stage — a soundstage for headphones: width, crossfeed, dialogue lift, room and night mode, with presets and geometry controls, remembered per output device. Applied on the Mac, so the 5K's own EQ is untouched.

Level — live output level and a 14-day listening history.

Is this actually lossless? The Level pane can now tell you. It doesn't ask the player — no music app exposes that — it measures the audio, so it works the same for Spotify, Apple Music, a local file or a browser tab. Lossy encoders discard the top of the spectrum and where they stop is characteristic; lossless carries energy to the edge of its sample rate. The verdict is worded as evidence rather than proof: a lossless file made from a lossy source is reported as lossy (correctly), and warm masters that roll off on their own are reported as unjudgeable rather than accused.

Sample rate — the reason playback stops being resampled. macOS runs a USB DAC at one fixed rate and resamples everything else to it, and unlike iOS it never switches to match what's playing. So a 5K parked at 96 kHz plays every 44.1 kHz album through a resampler. The popover now has a rate row:

• Pick 44.1 / 48 / 88.2 / 96 kHz directly, no trip to Audio MIDI Setup.
• Change which rates the 5K offers the host — the device can be pinned to a single rate, and if it is, macOS has nothing else to offer. The row shows the current setting and can change it (the device re-enumerates, so audio drops for a second).
• Or tick Auto rate and let it follow the music: lossless → 44.1 kHz, lossy → the rate you chose, genuinely hi-res content → 96 kHz. It waits for a verdict to hold for ten seconds, leaves 45 seconds between changes, and narrates every state in plain words. Nothing happens silently, and it can be switched off.

Battery — the 5K's charge, surfaced without opening anything. A bolt in the menu bar while charging; the level joins the icon once it drops to 20%; hovering shows charge, active preset and link. The popover header goes orange at 20% and red at 10%. Notifications fire at 20%, at 10%, and when charging starts — once per episode, so they don't nag, and they survive a brief Bluetooth dropout without repeating themselves.

10-band / 20-band — switch EQ modes from the app. 20-band has now been used on real hardware and reads back correctly.

Fixes — EQ settings persist across device restarts; the popover no longer resizes when switching tabs; file dialogs are usable on the first click.

Requires macOS 14. Stage, Level and stream-quality detection need macOS 14.2 and the System Audio Recording permission, which is asked for once on first use; with them off the app never touches your audio. Universal binary, Apple Silicon and Intel.

The app is signed ad-hoc, so the first launch needs System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.

SHA-256 Qudelix-1.2.0.dmg

cbf3c2936523e751b65a13dc2d6107166187ec2f839611451e6692683b47dd5b

Verify before opening:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Qudelix-1.2.0.dmg