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RE: Sound quality cd vs. computer.

Posted by Presto (A) on January 20, 2017 at 16:22:25

In Reply to: Sound quality cd vs. computer. posted by lesleymorley@yahoo.com on January 19, 2017 at 13:04:39:

Greetings:

You should take a 1/8" miniplug to RCA 'Y' cord and connect the audio output (green jack) of a motherboard sound card to your stereo system. Play 'wav' files from a file recorder. Disable all EQ, effect, delay, etc. functions. Ensure that your sound card is not resampling to anything...

Listen to it closely. This is your baseline for how your computer plays back .wav files. This is the *worst* your PC/laptop will sound.

Improvements, in order of cost from "free".

1. There are tips, tricks and hacks that can be done to improve motherboard sound output. Most here would not waste their time doing this, but in actuality, these tweaks are the highest value of all because they get you 80% of the way there.

2. A good soundcard will get you 90% of the way there.

3. To get into that last 10%, you'll need the DAC you don't want to buy.

4. To get into that last 1%, you'll need to do quite a bit of research, quite a lot of listening, and explore this as an "audiophile problem" and go through the "audiophile solution process".

If you do #1 or #2 and think you're 99% of the way there, then you won't need to waste your time or money on #3 or #4.

I am listening through a $150 sound card with upgraded OP amps and it easily smokes a *good quality* CD player. I have not spun a CD in... ten years now? My entire collection is ripped (extracted) to two drives - one I use, the other is a backup.

Once you have your collection at your fingertips and can make and save playlists you'll probably never want to go back.

Some 'philes like to surf or even shop while listening with the SAME COMPUTER but this is like using an amp to warm up a sandwich. You would think it would be an audio sacrilege to use an audiophile computer for *something other than audio* while listening, but many here who fuss and fret over much PC audio minutiae do exactly that.

Personally, I think one of the most important tweaks in PC audio is having your audio PC customized for audio playback only, and having a second PC in proximity for general computer use while listening.

Ironically, this is rarely discussed here.

Get this:

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

Run this utility and find out if your PC is running clean enough to avoid dropouts with audio. Note that a big cause of periodic and consistent latency spikes are wireless network cards, which can cause massive latency spikes in regular intervals. In my case, it was every 60 seconds. *DO* test while surfing the net, and watch how browsers and associated multimedia content result in major latencies.

How crazy you want to get about this whole this is up to you.

And with crazy, the sky is the limit.

Cheers,
Presto

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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