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This kind of dovetails with the "Vibrato" discussion on Music Lane, and also my experiences with some audio compression formats, most-notably Apple Lossless.....It may not be unique to Apple Lossless.....
I am currently on my mom's PC, and I notice a huge difference in the amount of vibrato I hear from different singers. I'm also picking up the inflections. Though the computer speakers. (I don't notice this with my own powerful home PC through AKG 701 headphones.)
I then played that Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto that I discovered on this PC on YouTube, and noticed that "Cleveland Orchestra" quality from the NHK Symphony, but didn't quite hear it on other PCs.... The brass sounds more like real brass, the piano sounds like a Steinway.... And the nuances once again hit me.... (I think I now know why not everybody warmed up to the performance.)
I played the Who's "Endless Wire" CD, and it sounds more like how I remember it though my home system....
I don't know how signals get converted and processed within the inner workings of PC hardware and software, but this disparity in nuances I find bothersome, for I think it has given a lot of people false impressions of performances. Mostly good performances whose soul has been ripped out of by the digital recording process.
This should also be a "heads-up" for those of you thinking about computer-based playback. Different PCs may sound ghastly different, for reasons that right now leave me clueless. Maybe it's the sound card. It's a real mystery. But the difference can be profound.
Follow Ups:
c
...I've been told by 'someone who should know' that Apple's encoders for 'ALL' are not as good as, say, Microsoft's for Windows Lossless (WMA).When recording to iTunes on my PC, to get a better quality recording:
-hit ctrl/alt/del to bring down the process menu
-right click on the two iTunes processes and change their priority to 'High'.
-right click on the DVD launcher and change its priority ot 'Low'.Seems to help.
I haven't done any A/B comparisons lately, but I can't hear subtle differences on the speakers/sub on my computer that I can hear on my Shure E5c earbuds.
Todd:PC's often have a horrible overblown stereo wide feature. This can reveal things not heard before, screw things up, add echo and reverb and so on. Its really not a digital thing as it is on some boom boxes at the preamp level in a regular circuit(lch has:L+,R- rch has:R+L- )In other words it can do good and bad although mostly bad in my experience. See if the sound card drivers have an adjustment. I have two PC's that do.
(nt)
nt
As has been said here, all the hardware and software on a computer influence the way the music sounds. It's not rocket science. Two computers can sound radically different. Just as two CD players can sound different or two violins.What you are describing about the vibratro of the music could be attributable to sampling rate the music is played at. If you take a complex piece of music, and it doesn't get more complex than an orchestral recording, and change the sampling rate it is played back at, it can change the vibrato. Some sound cards resamplle all audio to 48Khz, in fact most consumer sound cards do this. CD music is recorded at 44.1 Khz. Resampling the music to 48Khz, can change the vibrato and 'pulse' of the music. This is very clear to hear in the high notes of a bank of violins etc. But something you woundn't notice unless you knew the piece VERY well. Or were doing head to head comparisons.
you can also hear this change in an upampling CD player.
The sound may be clearer initially, but the resampled piece may ultimately lose the subtle nuance, and some vibrato or pulse of the music.
My PCs are running Kernel Streaming, which was a noticeable improvement over Kmixer. My mom's PC is still running with Kmixer.....Next visit, KS in that PC.....
It's like I spend mostly casual time on that PC. It just hit me yesterday.
the stock cords on each...but I have found that they do make a difference in the sound of the PC playback as well...just one more thing to add to the list...doesn't have to be a hugely expensive cord either...the 'Exito' hospital grade power cord for instance...added a lot more 'pop' to the playback over stock...which otherwise sounded a bit lifeless and dead.
My home PC has a Silver Audio Wattmaster. My mom's PC has a run-of-the-mill 16-gauge cord that came with the PC.....
Hey Todd,Are you using different players on different pcs?
I'd love to do an ABX test on this, but the machines are at different locations. (I'd also use the same speakers for the ABX test. Unlike most sonic tests, I don't think ABX would obscure anything here. What I'm hearing is pitch related.)I also know that both my mom's PC and my PC use the the same SoundMax sound card, so even that variable is out of the equation.
Another thing I can try is make analog cassette recordings off the machines. Although level-matching would be difficult.
You are right about ABX and different computers.But what a bout apple lossless and .wavs on the same computer if you think that Apple lossless is doing something to the sound?
I just need go find someone to conduct the ABX, so what I'm listening to is a complete unknown.What I might do is see if Apple Lossless converted back to WAV still sounds like Lossless. Then I'll have someone conduct the ABX test that way, provided the character of Lossless is sustained. (I will also compare WAVs, to see of the data changed.)
Hey Todd,Foobar has an ABX built right in...you don't know what file is what.
Use control to highlight the 2 tracks in question and then right click for the "utils" you will see an ABX obtion. Uncheck the dsp settings for a more accurate comparison.
it will generate a txt file witht eh results, like the one I took comparing 192 vbr mp3s vs. .wav:
foo_abx 1.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.3.1
2006/10/13 17:49:17File A: H:\Nephilim\Love Under Will.wav
File B: C:\Documents and Settings\Dawnrazor\My Documents\test mp3\Love Under Will.mp317:49:17 : Test started.
17:58:14 : 01/01 50.0%
17:58:30 : 02/02 25.0%
17:58:48 : 03/03 12.5%
17:59:16 : 04/04 6.3%
18:00:06 : 05/05 3.1%
18:00:18 : 06/06 1.6%
18:00:33 : 07/07 0.8%
18:00:55 : 08/08 0.4%
18:01:12 : 08/09 2.0%
18:02:03 : 09/10 1.1%
18:02:22 : 10/11 0.6%
18:02:37 : 11/12 0.3%
18:03:13 : 12/13 0.2%
18:03:28 : 13/14 0.1%
18:03:44 : 14/15 0.0%
18:04:00 : Test finished.
I don't have Foobar active at the moment..... It lost out to Winamp as my player of choice.... But I can always re-install it.
Sorry to pry, but do you listn to albums or songs? Do you random alot?
"Why did win amp win?"One, it sounded best to me. (I think Foobar is overrated.) And two, when coupled with FFDSHOW and VID4WA, with some tweaking of the "merits" of the various encoders, decoders, renderers, splitters, etc., the video presentation destroys some of the "package" products I've tried. Like WinDVD and PowerDVD. FFDSHOW is also works great with Media Player Classic.
Like digital audio, digital video has also underachieved relative to its potential. Although like bad digital audio, bad digital video isn't necessarily offensive.... Just boring.
Are you plugging the headphones directly into the computer audio output? This will result in greatly different sound quality from computer to computer, as the amplification will vary and the design of the circuit will effect noise levels in the analog output.A computer is really only useful as a transport to an outboard DAC and amplifier, and only should be evaluated as such.
Hey A,And here I have been happy all this time listening off my high end sound card. I even replaced my old trans/dac system.
Who Knew.
greatly varying amounts of, and susceptibility to RFI in a computer!I could be way off, though....I'm no expert.
I don't think it is RFI, although it definitely causes a plethora of other problems. (I could be wrong here.)I think it has something to do with the compression algorithm, where either repeated cycles are translated to exact repeated values or a jitter component is correlated with pitch change. Although if it's the latter case, the jitter would have to be sizable.
Especially subtle vibrato, such as Ella Fitzgerald has in her recordings with Louis Armstrong.
not limited to:harddrives
power supply
video card
sound card
mother board
cpu
memory
monitor
peripherals attached
keyboard
mousecomputer based music playback is a total field-day for analog lovers and tweakers!!!
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