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Topic ClosedDigital Audio Myths - Listening on a PC

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cobb View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:00
Huh, maidenrulez. I thought there was a cable that went directly from the cd rom to the soundcard- wonder what that's for. Maybe the digital code from the cd is going straight to the soundcard. Perhaps the soundcard needs the PCI bus to get a little attention from the CPU to get into the execute cycle so that your software player will run
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:06

Originally posted by cobb cobb wrote:

Huh, maidenrulez. I thought there was a cable that went directly from the cd rom to the soundcard- wonder what that's for. Maybe the digital code from the cd is going straight to the soundcard. Perhaps the soundcard needs the PCI bus to get a little attention from the CPU to get into the execute cycle so that your software player will run

That is simply just so you can play music directly from the cd-rom as you might have seen on some cd-roms there are buttons for both selcting song and play/pause. This means that you dont need a music program like wmp to play the music you can play it directly from the cd-rom

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:14
^^ that's not a good way to listen to music on the PC: It really produces jitterish analog audio which is then converted to digital on the soundcard and later on converted from digital to audio ... so basically a copy of a copy of a jitterish signal.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:16

Originally posted by MikeEnRegalia MikeEnRegalia wrote:

^^ that's not a good way to listen to music on the PC: It really produces jitterish analog audio which is then converted to digital on the soundcard and later on converted from digital to audio ... so basically a copy of a copy of a jitterish signal.

Yup it is not a very PREFERABLE way to listen to music and personally i have never done so, but thats whats its for anyway

Edit: And also if you listen to a cd WHILE the harddrive is working then it will also produce noise and jitter...that is why i hate to listen to CD,s on my PC

 



Edited by maidenrulez
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cobb View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:28
Originally posted by maidenrulez maidenrulez wrote:

That is simply just so you can play music directly from the cd-rom as you might have seen on some cd-roms there are buttons for both selcting song and play/pause. This means that you dont need a music program like wmp to play the music you can play it directly from the cd-rom



You are correct maidenrulez- I'll remove myself to the digitally unsavvy room as well
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:31
Originally posted by Snow Dog Snow Dog wrote:

One day I'll read all this and really absorb it!




don't get ill because of us!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:33
Originally posted by cobb cobb wrote:


Originally posted by oliverstoned oliverstoned wrote:



I don't drive...i prefer to travel with music.
You can have a very good system for 2000 dollars.



The music components of my computer system are a trivial $600. I would
need to pay at least 5 times as much to get a comparable hifi system.


For 1000 dollars, you get a whole system 10X better
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:37
Anyway i actually recommend to convert the stuff from your cd's to 192kb-256kb mp3 files, the average pc-speakers themselves are not good enough to deserve high quality streaming and it is alot less irritating that listening to music from the cd itself
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:39
Originally posted by oliverstoned oliverstoned wrote:


For 1000 dollars, you get a whole system 10X better


That's only heresay from the people who haven't heard my system....


Edited by cobb
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:43
Originally posted by maidenrulez maidenrulez wrote:

Anyway i actually recommend to convert the stuff from your cd's to 192kb-256kb mp3 files, the average pc-speakers themselves are not good enough to deserve high quality streaming and it is alot less irritating that listening to music from the cd itself


I'll save Mike the trouble- the thread is about plugging a decent amp and speaker set into a soundcard
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:44
Originally posted by goose goose wrote:

Originally posted by oliverstoned oliverstoned wrote:

Each component has to be "musical", which means hours of listening tests.
Wheras what should be happening is the component should be designed to playback what's on the medium as accurately as possible, and leave the "musicality" to the people recording it at the other end.
 
 
If there are only tube amps and transistor amps (and I may be wrong on that), how do you know that tubes are better if you only have transistors to compare it to? Maybe transistors are better and you just like the sound that's less like the original? How can you prove any different?

If you got a TUBE guitar amp and a TRANSISTOR guitar amp and you crank it way up to 11 Making it distort...then you would surely hear a huge diffrence between the TUBE guitar amp and a transistor guitar amp...The transistor one would undoubtly sound a bit harder and metallic distortion wich would not sound particualarly good in anyones ears while the tube guitar amp would distort much nicer and make for a softer transition that the transistor one. That is why almost ALL high end guitar amps include TUBES in either way

 

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:49

Originally posted by cobb cobb wrote:

Originally posted by maidenrulez maidenrulez wrote:

Anyway i actually recommend to convert the stuff from your cd's to 192kb-256kb mp3 files, the average pc-speakers themselves are not good enough to deserve high quality streaming and it is alot less irritating that listening to music from the cd itself


I'll save Mike the trouble- the thread is about plugging a decent amp and speaker set into a soundcard

As said before i have plugged my pc into my THULE amp and NAUTILUS 805 speaker(the best small speaker on the earth.) And played a cd on it and did FAR from receive the same quality of sound as i did get from using the THULE  cd player.

It is actually BETTER to not use the cd-rom and instead convert the files in to mp3's or wave and then play them directly from the harddrive.

Just posting a picture of the LOVELY Nautilus speakers

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 06:58
Well said!

And yes, BW is good (but greedy-need a bi amp to make them really work)

BW diamond tweeter



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cobb View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 07:03
That is indeed a lovely looking speaker maidenrulez, and looks like it might have a good price tag on it- but tell us, what happened to the other one?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 07:07
Originally posted by maidenrulez maidenrulez wrote:

Originally posted by goose goose wrote:

Originally posted by oliverstoned oliverstoned wrote:

Each component has to be "musical", which means hours of listening tests.
Wheras what should be happening is the component should be designed to playback what's on the medium as accurately as possible, and leave the "musicality" to the people recording it at the other end.
 
 
If there are only tube amps and transistor amps (and I may be wrong on that), how do you know that tubes are better if you only have transistors to compare it to? Maybe transistors are better and you just like the sound that's less like the original? How can you prove any different?

If you got a TUBE guitar amp and a TRANSISTOR guitar amp and you crank it way up to 11 Making it distort...then you would surely hear a huge diffrence between the TUBE guitar amp and a transistor guitar amp...The transistor one would undoubtly sound a bit harder and metallic distortion wich would not sound particualarly good in anyones ears while the tube guitar amp would distort much nicer and make for a softer transition that the transistor one. That is why almost ALL high end guitar amps include TUBES in either way

 

I know there's a difference, but I'm interested if anyone can actually prove they're better from an objective standpoint, or if it's just down to personal preference.
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Lindsay Lohan View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 07:08

Now lets take on the battle between cd's and vinyls

Now a standard cd is sampled in 16bits and 44,1khz normally a human would just hear sound in the spectre of 18hz to 22,05khz wich means that esentially the sampling frequency has been doubled to ensure that the sound signal sampled would be more accurate to the original singal.

Now for the analog singals to be converted to digital signals a number of spaces to make the sample now for 16bits there would be 65535 spaces to place and then there will be lines aligned between them. Now if you tried to made a normal sinus signal this way you would nearly get the round form wich appears on the bottom and peak values of its amplitude. HOWEVER it will never be as good as the original analog signal because it would not be completly round and therebefore sound a bit sharp yet.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 07:10
You can't prove it "scientifically".

It's just like proving that your favourite prog band is better than the last Britney spear record.

But when you hear a good tube amp versus a transistor, there's no need to explain. There's only music and emotion.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 07:11
This will probably lose any shred of credibility I may have with you guys, but I am happy to convert any MP3 I have back into audio CD and play them back through the computer- how's that for audiophile savy....
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 07:13
Originally posted by maidenrulez maidenrulez wrote:

Now lets take on the battle between cd's and vinyls


Now a standard cd is sampled in 16bits and 44,1khz normally a human would just hear sound in the spectre of 18hz to 22,05khz wich means that esentially the sampling frequency has been doubled to ensure that the sound signal sampled would be more accurate to the original singal.


Now for the analog singals to be converted to digital signals a number of spaces to make the sample now for 16bits there would be 65535 spaces to place and then there will be lines aligned between them. Now if you tried to made a normal sinus signal this way you would nearly get the round form wich appears on the bottom and peak values of its amplitude. HOWEVER it will never be as good as the original analog signal because it would not be completly round and therebefore sound a bit sharp yet.



I agree with the second statement: numerization of an analog signal will always lead to a loss of info.
And it ruins the music.
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Lindsay Lohan View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2005 at 07:13

The original NATULIS speakers...WOW

Apparetnly you need 4 high-end 225 amps to get this two up and working
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