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In Reply to: RE: It depends on the DAC posted by AbeCollins on March 31, 2014 at 14:07:05
"Do you not agree with my comment above? If not, lets agree to disagree. It's really quite simple. No need to lose your mind and go ballistic."
I disagree. With the DACs that most of us have, the better OS will make a serious difference. IMO these are differences that no DAC can add to the equation.
It is not that serious.
Follow Ups:
Restating what I said for clarity:
"...one will hear significant differences among various DACs, more so than the differences among various computers and operating systems..."
And your response:
"I disagree. With the DACs that most of us have, the better OS will make a serious difference."
I stand by statement above that the DAC itself will make a more significant difference. That's all.
M.A.D.
"I stand by statement above that the DAC itself will make a more significant difference. That's all."
You are entitled to your opinion.
But... What have you done to ASScertain this?
I hear differences when I tweak my computer. The ones I find convenient I do when I am listening seriously. But I've not found a single one of them that makes more difference than adjusting the volume control up or down a 1 dB step, angling my speakers a degree or two clockwise or counter clockwise, or moving my listening position half a foot forward or back. These are at most a few percent of sonic changes, vs. comparing a good recording or a poor recording. And if one wastes money or time chasing useless tweaks one will miss lots of wonderful music that could be enjoyed even on the proverbial AM table radio. Just my opinion. My DAC is relatively independent of what happens in my computer. YMMV.
At the danger of sticking my head in a wrong place, I will say that if your experience is much different, then your equipment has some serious problems, or you are not a music lover, or you are seriously over qualified at making yourself miserable by worrying excessively about irrelevant details.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
... on what this place - PC Audio forum - is, exactly.
If, as some of us assumed - probably erroneously - that this is the place where audiophiles , interested in computer audio, gather in pursuit of higher sound quality, then you certainly did. Not just today - you are doing it for quite some time now, just not as obnoxiously as some others.
If, on the other hand, this is the place (and I'm getting this impression a lot lately, thanks to posts by 1-2 VERY vocal and obnoxious individuals) where clueless, stubborn and hearing-impaired come, to put down anyone who dares to strive for better sound (and doesn't own 6 iPods) - you stuck your head just in the right place.
If the goal is to get better sound in a computer audio system, there are two ways to go about doing it: 1. to tweak the computer, 2. to select and configure the DAC and auxiliary cables and isolation devices. All are means for achieving the same goal. Personally, I believe that some of the computer tweaks discussed here ought better to be discussed in the Tweaks/DIY.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
and a tiny bit more open-minded-ness & forethought would allow you to see this.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
There are at least 57 other factors that affect the sound of an audio system other than the digital and mixed analog/digital portions normally discussed in this forum, e.g. computer plus DAC in the simplest form. However most of these also affect the sound quality of other sources, e.g. preamp, amp, speakers, room in their myriad aspects and are often not relevant to the discussion here except on occasion. (Examples where these are relevant are where the high frequency output of a DAC. espiacially a DSD DAC or a NOS DAC interacts with the downstream amplification, etc.) There are also examples where the noisy computer affects the preamplifier and amplifier (or obviously in some cases the listener's ears). But by and large, and particularly in the thread where people are talking about improving sound by tweaking the computer and associated digital equipment, I think my division was fairly comprehensive, if not detailed, namely, tweaking the computer and tweaking all the other digital devices in the audio system.
It is certainly possible that I left something out or that there are other interactions that are possible whereby the computer affects the sound even if the DAC is "perfect". So I would be quite open to a more detailed list. It is possible to consider various experiments that may make it obvious if there are other paths of "leakage" through the computer other than through the DAC (plus any adapters/reclockers). However, no one to my knowledge has conducted these. (Example: comparing the quality of playback from analog sources when the computer and DAC are powered down, powered up but idle, and powered up and "playing" but not driving the preamp.
There is also the question of whether the computer software (including driver and O/S) are even sending the correct bits onward. Years ago, people used to worry about this big time, because the usual operating systems mangled the bits. But today, one doesn't hear much about these problems and it has been quite a while where someone has discussed how to ascertain whether the software is actually sending the correct bits. Since there has been a lot of software releases that have gone back in the past few years, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if there are new bugs that are subtly corrupting the sound in some cases.
IMO, if someone tweaks a computer system and hears better sound, then they ought to verify that their "improved" transport is sending the same bits on to the DAC. Somethings remain an unnecessary mystery. For example, there has been continual discussion of "integer mode" in various versions of Apple operating systems. However, if there's been any discussion of whether the bits going to the DAC are the same in integer mode as in the other mode, I've seen no discussion of this. This is something that can be easily measured by someone who has a second computer with a digital input on the sound card. I know for a fact that conversion between 24 bit audio and 32 bit floating point and back to 24 bit can change the bits (e.g. low order bits). I also know for a fact that this difference is subtle but heard by some audiophiles on resolving systems. So these are all important details. But I don't see discussion of them.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
1,2 and combination of 1 and 2
"If the goal is to get better sound in a computer audio system, there are two ways to go about doing it: 1. to tweak the computer, 2. to select and configure the DAC and auxiliary cables and isolation devices. All are means for achieving the same goal. Personally, I believe that some of the computer tweaks discussed here ought better to be discussed in the Tweaks/DIY."
You are really not what many would call serious when it comes to computer audio. Maybe you are just not curious enough, or just can't be bothered.
None of this is life and death.
It is perfectly fine if you are happy playing music on your one home computer.
But... You tend to make judgments which you are not qualified to do.
.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Indeed, some people do not consider me serious. And there are some people here who are doing things that I think are foolish. If they are happy with their system, then good for them. Some do not seem to be such, however, as they are constantly swapping out components, making new tweaks, etc., and this leaves me wondering if they have any time or even interest in listening to music.
I haven't seen many here who are qualified to make judgements outside a very narrow context of their personal experience. In their posts, most people show themselves to be hobbyists or dilettantes. In their posts, few show any understanding of the scientific method and what is needed to reach conclusions that go beyond anecdotal. Most people appear to me to be just puttering around, but perhaps they aren't and there's a lot they've done that doesn't appear in their posts. Far be it for me to judge their qualifications without meeting them in person and without hearing their systems. (The latter is the gold standard test for me.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
None of this is life and death
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
People need to let that echo for awhile.
Its a freakin HOBBY, everything is fair game.
This may be a good time for some to self diagnose and read DSM-V guildlines for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Listen to music and stop analyzing sound.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
I enjoy music daily, and I don't even tweak my system to death daily. ;-)
"Finally – Beautiful Digital Sound"
Is this an audiophile version of the slogan "Perfect Sound Forever"?
It is sad that it takes some audiophiles so long with so much grief to get beautiful sound.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
I'm sure you personally can stick one end of generic USB cable into generic PC, another into cheap DAC, and declare the result "Beautiful Digital Sound".
Someone more discerning would call that "mediocre digital sound" - and would be entirely correct, IMO. Someone else might call your attitude very non-audiophile-like, and also an impediment on the way to better sound - and would be entirely correct, too.
Not to mention that you have no idea how long it took someone to arrive at the solution he's comfortable with, or how much grief it caused (none, I suspect).
It is a subjective judgement. For me, that judgement has nothing with the cost of the components or the amount of tweaking that I did.
I do my homework before I buy audio gear and expect to use it a long time. During that time I'm listening to music with only occasional thought about the sound of the gear.
> Not to mention that you have no idea how long it took someone to arrive
> at the solution he's comfortable with, or how much grief it caused
> (none, I suspect).
I remarked on the title of the OP. It is an audiophile ritual to talk about how terrible digital audio (or computer audio) sounded through various gear changes until the magic formula was found. I'm not surprised that humor is lost on you.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
Personally, I am looking for "beautiful sound" like what I hear at live acoustic concerts. When I hear reproduced sound that is quite close to what I hear at live concerts and provides similar musical enjoyment, I'm not going to consider it "mediocre". The problem with digital sound, at least until fairly recently, is that most of it wasn't even "mediocre" it was more like "disgusting". (Or going way back to the 1980's, the word might even have been "vile".)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"The problem with digital sound, at least until fairly recently, is that most of it wasn't even "mediocre" it was more like "disgusting". (Or going way back to the 1980's, the word might even have been "vile".)"
I felt pretty much the same, never cared for digital until I started with computer audio. Even then I still preferred analog, but digital convenience was just too appealing for all but the most serious listening.
With my current system I do not miss analog. Quite an accomplishment IMO.
For fun I sill enjoy trying different things. I recently tried a new Linux program Daphile. It is actually a pretty nice program Very good Linux audio but IMO not as good as my current system or a maybe good MAC system. Worth giving a listen, the developer has done a very nice job.
Everyone has different a mindset, some technologists and inquisitive and others complacent.
Either one can enjoy music equally. One can be whomever they like, but IMO most "computer people" I know enjoy tech and still find it interesting even after all these years. Maybe some of us are still just young at heart.
Yeah he did a good job, but its still your standard Linux/Squeeze (Play/Lite) under the hood.
He won't budge on tweaks being a bits-r-bits guy, but strangely enough he uses a real time kernel....which is said 'not' to have any benefit in play back.
Either way, if someone wants an effortless setup of Squeeze... Daphile is the way to go.
MpdPup is an abandoned puppy, already obsolete.
Still there are lots of options for every OS, so no worries.
Its been awhile since I played with Windows audio, I might give W-Server a spin, seeing I have an extra SSD laying around.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
"Its been awhile since I played with Windows audio, I might give W-Server a spin, seeing I have an extra SSD laying around."
That is funny, since last week you said you already did...
Does MPD.... pup stand for multiple personality disorder?
> Does MPD.... pup stand for multiple personality disorder?
No, but there are daemons at work.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
nt
Thanks for the video. I enjoyed it and, fortunately, my neighbors were out of town so I could play it at a suitable volume level. I would say that the music has certain similarities to the work of Carl Orff, as in this video:
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"It is sad that it takes some audiophiles so long with so much grief to get beautiful sound."
Where do you see grief, or any time frame???
I agree.
The implication being that over 99% of Asylum inmates cannot be enjoying 'beautiful digital sound' because they are not running Windows Server 2012 with AudioPhil's optimizer. Sheesh, gimme a break already!
I bet less than 1% (far less!) of Asylum inmates run Windows Server 2012 so I guess that means none of our systems produce 'beautiful digital sound'. ;-)
"The implication being that over 99% of Asylum inmates cannot be enjoying 'beautiful digital sound' because they are not running Windows Server 2012 with AudioPhil's optimizer. Sheesh, gimme a break already!"
Where was that the implication? That was just the title of someones blog? Do you have serious issues of comprehension? Nobody is allowed to discuss anything progressive without you coming back with the SOS regarding PCs and operating systems.
"I bet less than 1% (far less!) of Asylum inmates run Windows Server 2012 so I guess that means none of our systems produce 'beautiful digital sound'. ;-)"
The world is much larger than just the AA, maybe you need to check it out.
Why don't you put the video back up of your empty room, it would be more useful interesting and than what you are posting...
I'm sure there are some who are running Cplay on a modified WXP system who will tell us they are "enjoying beautiful digital sound".
I would say that I also hear "beautiful digital sound" on a large majority of my recordings, especially the hi-res ones, but there are people here who have concluded (or at least posted) that I am deaf and fooling myself, because I am not running preferred software in my computer. I would go farther and say that I enjoy "beautiful sound" with out adding any (potentially damning) qualifier such as "digital".
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
you have stuck your head in the wrong place.
To equate the sonic effect a a few degrees movement of your speakers, to the effects of using a top notch dac with the right ancilliaries (cabling, placement, isolation) and an OS/player that is not doing upsampling, room correction etc etc is just downright 'in the wrong place)!
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