i want the best quality for playing mp3 with pc

giorgio · « **on:** 3 Mar 2003, 08:01 pm »

i want the best Pc sound possible for mp3!
I have a ultra quiet pc with SL-800 and a 12dbA.
i need to buy a soundcard and i want the best possible...
I want to play mp3 and connect the pc to a DIY AKSA amplifier, but i want to have the best quality from my pc to my amplifier......what's soundcard i must choose? other things? mod to the soundcard? cable?
Or perhaps no soundcard and bypassing it and use some strange preamplifier with usb input?

What's your opinion about? a very best soundcard or bypass it and use a preamflifier with usb input?

Thanks
Giorgio

EchiDna · « **Reply #1 on:** 4 Mar 2003, 01:04 am »

budget?

Personally I have an M-Audio Revolution soundcard and do not have any problems with it at all, that said, I have never owned a card-deluxe or a Lynx 2 which are both held in very high esteem. Between these three cards, I think you can find what you are looking for

I've got an AKSA too, and it is connected to my pc through the revo and a GK-1 preamp....

I'm considering mods to the revo, but just haven't had the time to do them yet (caps etc...)

witchdoctor · « **Reply #2 on:** 8 Mar 2003, 06:53 am »

If you want the best sound I reccomend-
1) Use the M-Audiophile Soundcard
2) run the digital out from the card into an audiophile dac
3) run the analog cables from the DAC into your pre-amp.
4) Use very good cables.
5) try experimenting with DFX , a plug in for musicmatch jukebox

I use the above set up with a DAC and cables I purchased from Bolder Cables. Check them out on this site.
Doc

Phat Phreddy · « **Reply #3 on:** 13 Mar 2003, 03:35 am »

Well there are a lot of vaibales and some miss information being passed here... You say you want the BEST sound but for MP3's... If you want the best sound stick with WAV's or lossless compresssion... I use APE files for my compression and Media Jukebox (now media Centre) which has built in ASIO connections to bypass the awful windows KMangler.

Secondly you say the BEST... You realize pro cards can be >2k for a soundcard ?? if you want nearly the best RME / LynxTwo / Etc range from about 300 to 1k or so... If you want consumer (midfi) the M-Audio Revo and 410 or 24/96 are still miles ahead of the SBLive / creative cards but are not in the same class as the others listed above...

Sorry Witchdoctor but

Quote

1) Use the M-Audiophile Soundcard
2) run the digital out from the card into an audiophile dac
3) run the analog cables from the DAC into your pre-amp.
4) Use very good cables.
5) try experimenting with DFX , a plug in for musicmatch jukebox

is pretty much all incorrect advice...

1) As addressed above.. Good but midfi (still better than most consumer recievers to be sure)...

2) The point of using studio cards is that they have exceptionally good DACS for the price point involved... The Revo DAC's (IIRC) have better performance specs than the Lexicon processors... The point here is using the soundcard DAC's...

3) as above

4) granted but speaker cables is all he should need..

5) Hmmm... are we trying to get accurate sound here or are we looking for enjoyable coloration or distortion ??? I agree that a correct implementation of CSII is worthwhile as I am a 5.1 user and enjoy 5.1 listening of 2ch audio... DFX or other ambience filters do do it for me personally... Also MusicMatch makes me shudder... it has no ASIO output method (I think) and as such ALL sound passes through the KMixer and gets bit mangled very audiably (play a DTS CD to test)... Media Jukebox in ASIO mode or WinAmp with the ASIO plug in is reccomended....

For a recent High end ABX card review including Lex MC12 for reference and a 6K DAC check This link...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=236215&

There are many other such shoot outs including Theta equipment and other high end gear brought down to size... It is expected that this year will see a M-Audio 1010 replacement with uprated DAC's and hopefully the consumer drivers of the Revo including CSII and the speaker delay / bass management of the M-Audio's new consumer division (the Revo is thier first product release)... This will be a outboard solution with multiple in / outs like the 1010 if hints are correct... This product will proably tempt me if in the 3 - 500 range...

Thump553 · « **Reply #4 on:** 9 Apr 2003, 02:43 pm »

Does it have to be mp3 format? Check out my comments about SHN format in this thread:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=1700

I personally find SHN to have much superior audio fidelity than mp3 (not trying to start a format war) but the trade-off is that SHN takes substantially more harddrive space (roughly double that of mp3s).

KevinW · « **Reply #5 on:** 9 Apr 2003, 05:02 pm »

Quote from: Phat Phreddy

Well there are a lot of vaibales and some miss information being passed here... You say you want the BEST sound but for MP3's... If you want the best sound stick with WAV's or lossless compresssion...

You should check out OGG/Vorbis for your audio compression. It's an open source version of MP3, and has excellent sound quality with good compression. Consumer MP3 portable players will start having OGG support this year. Trust Open Source Software to make a product that is better than the commercial software, and is totally 100% FREE. www.vorbis.com

Phat Phreddy · « **Reply #6 on:** 9 Apr 2003, 05:19 pm »

I am just not the target market for lossy compression... I am sold on lossless and have built a 640GB RAID array to store my music and many DVD's... With that in place the savings involved in audio compression being 50% or being 20% are less important... APE (for which source is available) files are simple and easy and integrate very well within my fave player...

In fact its higher rez audio I am hurting for... It looks like the RIAA have caused the Revo SW DVD-A player to be stillborn (after taking thier licence fee of 10's of thousands of USD) and the app is from what I hear mostly complete.... GRRRR

DTH · « **Reply #7 on:** 9 Apr 2003, 08:44 pm »

640 GB, damn. Would you mind describing the hardware you use in your system?

Also, I was reviewing this thread earlier, you mentioned using ASIO. I am not sure what this is or what it does, could you offer some insight?

I am thinking of upgrading the audio out in my system, one option I have considered is one of the high end cards you mention. But I am also thinking of going with a with a USB audio device, like the M Audio Audiophile USB to a Monarchy DIP, to a DAC such as a modded DI/O. Or possibly the M Audio Audiphile sound card.

It seems like you are taking the computer as HI FI device pretty seriously, I would appreciate you comments.

FYI, my reference is a Stereo Link USB DAC. As a cheap solution it has suited my needs for a couple of years, but I am wondering how much better I can do.

Anonymous · « **Reply #8 on:** 13 Apr 2003, 10:48 pm »

Greeting DTH, ASIO is a way the programs talk to the soundcard. Some other ways are DirectSound, Wave/MME (this is legacy), and kernel streaming. ASIO and kernel streaming are more direct routes to the soundcard in that they bypass the windows audio mixer (known as kmixer). The mixer processes the sound so avoiding it keeps the signal purer.

Phat Phreddy · « **Reply #9 on:** 14 Apr 2003, 11:45 am »

Sorry for the delay in response... I had seen the post but its been New Year celebrations here for the last few days and anyone that has been part of Song Kran in Thailand knows its a wild (and wet) few days...

The above post is a very good summation of the ways a soundcard can be communicated with... The reason for needing ASIO or Kernal streaming are that in any WDM driver set (WinME onwards) the Windows KMangler (opps I mean mixer

) will bit mangle any PCM signal it is presented... 48Khz DD or DTS signals are not touched but 44.1Khz signals do get badly resampled... Using Either Media Jukebox (now Centre) 9 or WinAmp and the ASIO output plug in or Foobar2000 etc provide you with a clean PCM signal...

I should note that although I consider myself a keen amature in PC audio I am no where near the level of experience or knowledge of many of the AVS or Hydrogen audio members.

I had the good fortune to be presented with the free use of a corporate buying account as a perk last summer... Hence a P4 2.4 HTPC a similar workstation and a P1.8 media server with 5 x 160GB hard disks in RADI5 config. In this config I have data protection against a single drive failure and this machine is headless (no keyboard / mouse or display attached)... If I need to do any maintainance on this machine I simply RDC into it via XP's remote desktop tool. This is tucked out of the way on my network and eventually I suspect this will also be an X10 controller and may serve secuity camera info to a MainLobby GUI etc... For now its only purpose is to be a mappable media drive on my home network...

I would advise against a USB soundcard... Everything I have read indicates that sonically they are not a really good proposition... Many complaints about sync and timing issues for any DVD related playback and I am suspicious using USB to carry the audio...

With the Revo being $65 (after rebate) from Comp USA I would call that the bargain upgrade.... If you dont mind a bit more the RME cards are respected... Personally I am sticking with my 410 as I hear rumors of a rackmout replacement for the 1010 from M-Audio...

DTH · « **Reply #10 on:** 15 Apr 2003, 03:38 am »

Does the sound card need to support ASIO, or can any sound card do this? I have looked around for a ASIO Winamp plugin w/o much luck.

Phat Phreddy · « **Reply #11 on:** 15 Apr 2003, 04:21 am »

Not any card will work in ASIO mode... Almost any studio type card that is designed for music production rather than gaming will have ASIO drivers... The low latency is important in that arena...

Media Centre (formerly Media Jukebox) from J River support ASIO out of the box... For the winAmp plug ins (I dont use them) if you cant find them trawl AVS searching the HTPC forum or drop me a mail and I will hunt it for ya...

DTH · « **Reply #12 on:** 15 Apr 2003, 04:37 am »

Thanks again. I did find it, only thing was it is in Japanese. But it looks like everypne is using this version, so I guess I will give it a shot.

i want the best quality for playing mp3 with pc

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