Digital Audio Myths - Listening on a PC

I think there are some important factors that influence the listening quality on a PC:

• The amp and speakers, naturally.
• Connection between PC and amp: analog/digital
• The format of the audio files: low bitrate mp3, high bitrate mp3, mp3pro, mpc, lossless formats
• The ripping method: analog, digital, digital with error correction (I'm not talking about interpolation here)
• The quality of the sound card: CD quality vs. 24bit/96khz.
• The routing of the signal: merely passing the CD audio through to the outputs vs. applying effects

What I'm getting at is that crappy sounding audio on some PCs doesn't mean that it's IMPOSSIBLE to listen to audio on the PC in good quality.

oliverstoned wrote: Be aware that in real hifi, the smallest details are important. With such a bad source, it cannnot work. Sorry.

Be aware that in the digital world it doesn't matter if the source is a CD player or a computer, if the bits are identical.

oliverstoned wrote: on such a transparent amp, and it'll reveal how bad it is

Please, don't make this a discussion tube vs. transistor either ... I actually prefer the sound of good tube amps to that of transistor amps. But they also have disadvantages. As noted in one of the documents I posted in the Big digital thread, tube amps actually distort the signal. This added distortion is often referred to a "warm", "analog" or "70's" sound. While pleasant to most people, it is not an accurate playback of the original signal. 

cobb wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: Edit: Please let's keep amp & speakers out of this discussion - the topic here is PC vs. top-notch CD player, both digitally connected to an amp. I don't get the point of your thread with this edit. Are you just asking whether you think the pc can act as the player connected to your lounge room hifi, just as well as cd player can? Sure, why not? Isn't this the whole purpose of the new media centre pc's?

Yes - I think that I can rip my entire CD collection to my PC in a lossless format and use Winamp to listen to the songs. Provided that the soundcard is connected to a really good amp & speakers using a digital interface, the music should sound identical compared to playing it on a HiFi CD player, which is connected to the same amp via a digital cable.

oliverstoned disagrees strongly, so I'm interested about other people's opinions about this.

oliverstoned wrote: "This added distortion is often referred to a "warm", "analog" or "70's" sound. While pleasant to most people, it is not an accurate playback of the original signal." We are at the heart of the issue.

I indeed consider the amp the heart of all sound problems. NOT the digital source.

oliverstoned wrote: True that tubes amps have higher distorsions rates on the paper than transistor ones. But this is NOT AT ALL a criteria for PERFORMANCE nad MUSICALITY. A GOOD tube amp like the one up reproduces the highs (the freq part that the human ear is the most sensistive to)with MUCH MORE ACCURACY than any transistor amp. The transistor makes ham raspe with the highs, which means it distors much more than tubes WHEN YOU LISTEN. ONLY RESULT MATTERS and i don't care about what is written on the paper. Distorsion rate is not the good criteria.

"distortion RATE" is indeed not the issue ... most tube amps have a higher distortion rate, but the distortion is more natural and pleasant for the ear. I actually agree about what you said about the better transparency of tube amps ... but that's not the topic of this thread.

oliverstoned wrote: I suppose you have heard about pair and unpair harmonics. Here's the explanation. With the amp up, well implemented, you can enjoy voices, flutes, violins, trumpets, etc... with an incredible clarity, openess, softness, transparency, precense, natural, MATTER, etc... and NEUTRALITY. A good tube is not colored at all. On another hand, tube amps are always a liitle "round" in the low and can lack of quickness in the low. The solution, which is the royal way, is the bi-amplification with a good transistor in the low and a good tube in the highs, and a good preamp (transistor, tube or hybrid, there's no rule). But that's another story.

Yes indeed, it's another story.

oliverstoned wrote: So, this statement: "it is not an accurate playback of the original signal" is untrue, considering a good tube amp like the one up.

Yes it is true - the playback might actually be more accurate than a good transistor amp (and MUCH more accurate than a cheap amp), but the added distortion still changes the signal. But I admit that this is not really a problem, because there is NO amp which can give you a 100% accurate reproduction of the signal.

oliverstoned:

Feel free to open a thread about the various types of amps ... it's an interesting subject. BTW: As a guitarist I have always prefered tube amps. Currently I use the Vox ToneLab SE, which simulates a tube amp + speaker environment by using a real (but slightly modified) tube. 

cobb:

While I think that the analog outputs of GOOD sound cards are sufficient, for the sake of this discussion I was talking about digital interfaces to rule out any possible signal degradation by bad D/A converters or electronic pollutions of the sound card circuits by the computer components.