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In Reply to: RE: Snap Crackle and Pop posted by Bob_C on April 10, 2014 at 22:53:08
... that they have large buffers set in either driver, or media player - or are unaware of the negative impact of large buffers on sound quality.
Pretty easy to hear in resolving system - and is the reason JPlay sounds best with DirectLink option.
Follow Ups:
Media player documentation/ setup instructions advise that using large buffers can degrade SQ.
I'd be curious as to which products come with such documentation.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
JRiver, Foobar2000 and JPLAY. I use all 3 of these players in various systems. Buffer size "warnings" are not just in the documentation but are also graphically reiterated during media player setup.
Of the three players, JRiver, Foobar2000 and JPLAY, the only one that I've installed is Foobar2000. I do not recall any warnings that too large a buffer size might impact sound quality . The documentation that I've seen says that too small a buffer size may cause stuttering, while too large a buffer size may make the user interface sluggish. I would be extremely surprised if the official documentation for Foobar2000 includes a mention that large buffer sizes might adversely affect sound quality since the purveyor follows the dogmatic religion that "bits are just bits". The official FAQ implies as much:
Does foobar2000 sound better than other players?
No. Most of “sound quality differences” people “hear” are placebo effect (at least with real music), as actual differences in produced sound data are below their noise floor (1 or 2 last bits in 16bit samples). foobar2000 has sound processing features such as software resampling or 24bit output on new high-end soundcards, but most of the other mainstream players are capable of doing the same by now.
I repeat my request for player documentation that describes how too large a buffer size may negatively affect sound quality .
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
See HA/Foobar 2000 Wiki:
Quote:
"High buffer sizes offer stronger protection against glitches but introduce side effects such as long delay between changing DSP settings (eg. adjusting equalizer bands) and changes in sound output."
"High buffer sizes offer stronger protection against glitches but introduce side effects such as long delay between changing DSP settings (eg. adjusting equalizer bands) and changes in sound output."
That comment relates to the time delay between changing the DSP settings and the change in what you hear. It does not refer to what you continue to hear after the time delay has passed.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
.
Mine didn't say anything about sound quality but since I use my convertor to record as well as replay I obviously set it to the smallest buffer possible in order to keep latency to an absolute minimum.
What size buffers do you use?
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
... for me to set the buffer size is in the playback engine.
There, the buffer size is set to 0 samples.
I've got three different buffer settings:
1. HQ Player buffer size, set in milliseconds. (10, 20, 50, 100, 250, default)
2. USB PAL (for Mytek) Asio Buffer Size (settable to Minimum, small, large, maximum). Large is 6.0 millseconds, 1152 samples at 192000)
3. USB PAL (for Mytek) Streaming Buffer Size (settable to Minimum, extra small, small, large, extra large, safe). Extra Small is 2.0 milliseconds at 192000.
If this confuses you, note that it also confuses me. :-)
It looks like there is a three stage pipeline. The settings that I can get away with depend on the sample rate of the file, the upsampling rate if different, and whether or not digital room correction is enabled. Also, whether or not anything else is running in the computer . This especially means anything with complex graphics or lots of operating system interaction, such as web browsers (real bad on scroll wheel mouse scrolling even though mouse is on separate USB controller) or worst of all the Windows task manager. The good news is that the USB PAL control panel has status information which includes counters which tally the number of glitches of different types, providing an easy and reliable way of catching all the errors without having to hang around and listen carefully. (Which may not catch all the errors anyhow, e.g. if one occurs during a silent portion of the music.)
The way I normally run things, I can play 44/16 without any glitches and still use the computer for other things. However, high-res or DSD requires dedicating the computer for the duration or accepting the occasional glitch. However, if I run room correction I have to have a large buffer in the player software, which runs a few seconds ahead anyhow since it is doing FFT processing of convolution and this has to be somewhat batched. As fmak pointed out a high quality analog parametric equalizer between my DAC and my amplifiers would probably be better than using software which is using 50 watts of power when room correcting in the DSD domain. (Not a factor at 44 kHz.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
For me, the best sound is to be had with all set to minimal consistent w/o
breakup or hf issue.
The only time I encountered drop-out problems or snaps and crackles is when I put music files on the internal hard drive of my Toshiba notebook computer. As long as I used an external USB hard drive for all music storage, I had no more problems with drop-outs even at 24/192, which is the highest resolution my DAC can convert.
My main computer music server uses a 1-TB eSATA external hard drive for music storage and I never encountered any problems with drop-outs or snaps and crackles. I use Foobar2000 software for streaming and an April Music Eximus DP1 DAC . I've played this system for about a year and a half without any of the problems you are talking about.
Best regards,
John Elison
Like carcass said, it will depend on the buffer sizes. I like to work with the smallest possible buffer sizes which makes the problem worse.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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