Test your soundcard for clipping, with this sample Options

[Jan S.]

For everybody fighting with occasional clipping (or perfectionists wanting to test everything) you should try the attached sample, udial.

Testing:

• play the sample in your favourite player (decoded or not, having disabled all DSPs and EQs that can interfere)
  
• if the output sounds weird at any time you should:
  • lower the output vol. in your soundcard config (should be the speaker icon in your system tray).
  • For some soundcards 48kHz is better (audigy 2 etc.).
  • lower the vol. till the sample doesn't sound weird at any time.

The output will sound really weird if your settings clip.
Your output can occasional clip without you knowing/hearing it. But for us perfectionists this will theoretically give a better quality output.

ATTENTION: Play this sample at a low volume anytime, even if you hear nothing special! It can be very harmful to equipment and/or your ears.
It's strongly recommended to use some very cheap (PC) speakers if you want to test this,
otherwise you might really ruin your tweeters (it has happened several times already).

Attached File(s)

 udial.zip ( 217.55K ) Number of downloads: 19626

 

[Moitah]

When using Winamp's DirectSound plugin (v2.2.6, included with Winamp 2.90), I hear the weird 'alien' sounds. This is effected by changing the sample rate conversion quality in Control Panel, so this means Windows is resampling? When I use the Wave Out plugin it sounds fine. Also, the DirectSound output in foobar2000 sounds fine (as well as playing it thru Windows Media Player 9, which I assume uses DirectSound). Why is this happening with the Winamp DirectSound plugin?

(Turtle Beach Santa Cruz w/ latest beta drivers, Windows 2000 SP3)

EDIT: Found out from reading Halcyon's post that it's the "Allow hardware acceleration" checkbox in the plugin. To allow the card to do the resampling, this has to be checked, and the "Hardware acceleration" slider in Control Panel must be on at least the 3rd notch (Standard or Full acceleration).

This post has been edited by Moitah: May 29 2003, 19:45