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In Reply to: Re: For the audiophiles looking for convenience? posted by kls on February 22, 2007 at 08:18:55:
You spouted off a bunch of unfounded, unsupported staemnts. You are going to have to back your statements up with facts before anybody takes you seriously.Lossless? It is, well, lossless. If the data is exactly the same then the sound is exactly the same.
Decompressing a lossless file is completely different than sample converters. Nothing is converted. It is exactly the same as it was before.
Latency? The file is decoded, the data is exactly the same, and it is presented to the DAC at exactly the same rate (44.1K) as an umcompressed file. There may be a few microseconds delay from when you push the play button but once it gets going it is identical.
iTunes? If iTunes does the same things as described above. Why is it not audiophile? Data is data no matter what program handles it. I use it and a former high end dealer left here the other day and saying this was hands down the best system he has ever heard. I don't believe it is the best by any strectch but it is definitely "audiophile."
Follow Ups:
I havn't seen a word or explanation in your post that prooves your statement regarding, "I'd be wrong at all counts." Not at all.Sounds like you got very deep PC HW and SW knowledge to come up with
such a statement.You don't expect me to respond to your post with facts, do you?
"You don't expect me to respond to your post with facts, do you?"
*** Flac playback means, additional proccessing time, latency and more buffering asf in the system. ***A different processing load on the CPU may have an audible impact on the system.
This would of course depend on the system, but higher CPU usage can lead to higher EMI levels, and also higher noise dumped into the audio circuits in the form of logic induced modulation.
Anyway, just thought I'll provide a different perspective. Not intending to defend or attach anyone here.
Hi there.Let me give you some hints:
First of all, just to make it clear. The PC on its own is regarded
and handled by todays "PC-audiophiles" more or less like a blackbox.
Most of them even accept software-players which are mainly
intended to play mp3. None of them was developed to playback audiophile audio.The pro-scene is at least 5 years ahead of the consumer scene.
It started all with foobar, when audiophile-people realized there is a high audio potential on the PC. (However, try to talk about audiophile playback at Hydrogene, your thread won't survive for long.)
The PC world is just a different world.
Todays audiophile-PC-activities starts usually by tweaking the soundcard or DAC earliest. 99% of all people think it is all digtial! It doesn't matter what player I use they take it for granted that it can't be made better. They'd be right in case we'd have a perfect soundcard, which would be able to perfectly regenerate the data-stream. Unfortunately I never came across of such a card.
Just as an example: Perhaps you read above thread about the USB-audio-driver. This driver is available since a long time and ways better than anything else around. How can it be that it has been just ignored for such a long time!?!
That's also valid for playback from RAM.
Now some words regarding the problems I encountered by using a PC
as source:IRQ handling is a big issue.
HW-Latencies are an issue
Noise and EMI are for sure an issue.
Power supply is an issue.
Clock is an issue.
Data conversions are issues.
Audio data-formats are an issue (44,1 just doesn't match the PC environm.)
Buffering is an issue
Blocksizes are an issue
Operating systems are a big issue.If you put this all together you'll realize that the PC has never
been intended to be an audiphile device.Above issues will severely impact the "timing" (Jitter,Latency Jitter) and induce nonlinearirties to the data-stream.
Even if people claim - my player plays bit-perfect - It doesn't say anything about audiophile sound quality.
Because above sound-deteriorating effects are just not considered. We're talking realtime data. That's something else than opening a word document, which is also a "bit-perfect" task!FLAC conversion is just another task in a realtimeprocess-chain.
The PC processes all instructions sequentially and is giving them this
or that priority. The PC cannot finish ceratin tasks since higher
priotity tasks jump in, like graphics refresh or similar. This is causing nonlineraties. The buffers have to be quite big to cope
with these "interrupts". Buffer refresh and fill is potentially a hot topic here. The PC has to play and to convert at the same time. This
is not possible, even if the CPU would be loaded with 10% load only.Since a while I am upsampling my 44,1 material to 48kHz using
Shibatch ssrc_hp. Because 48kHz is just a better choice for the PC
environment and my external DAC. If you compare realtime upsampling to
offline upsampling you'll find a big difference on sound quality, even
when using the same conversion algorithm. Doing it realtime will add
100-200ms or more of latency to the stream, which seems to be sufficiant to wipe out the advantages generated by the conversion.By using a Realtime-Linux system I could manage to get around of many of the above mentioned issues, especially lowering the latencies lot, what led to the best sound I ever had on a PC.
Linux advantages:
Realtime operation
Higher precision timer
Higher Audio process priorities
Real Multitasking (there is still space for improvement)
Better process structure
asf.Beside that playing back from RAM, > 500W powersuplies or battery
operation will improve the situation.There are more things to do, that's for sure.
Just try it. And you'll see how it works.
Good luck.
Cheers
KLS
Hi KLS,Can you give me some information on which Linux distribution you are using for audio playback? I would also be interested in knowing which soundcard/dac player combo you are using.
I read your post and what you say makes sense. However, at the end of the day what really matters is how it sounds. You offer all sorts of reasons why it won't or shouldn't work, but my system and thousands like it prove that it does indeed sound fantastic. Our ears have proven that all of your concerns don't matter.
Hermanesque.1. Above are not concerns, these are facts, clearly audible in
my system.
2. I am not saying it is not working in general, It works well even with a non
tweaked setup and even better with a high quality soundcard.
What I am saying is - it can work better!
3. If thousands feel it sounds fantastic, great. Enjoy it.
Millions say there is no difference to MP3. These folks enjoy MP3.
Fair enough. And a minority of creasy nuts -- never happy
with anything -- claim that there is still space for improvement.
So, what's the issue. It'll always be like that.
I am not the one running after majority opinions! I work it out
by myself.I promise you, if there are more than a couple of positve feedbacks
on the USB-driver and RAM playback, these thousends you're talking about will be the first ones jumping on these options.
The millions will follow later -- as soon as the industry jumps in.Cheers
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