I was wondering,

If you use a soundcard's digital out and tell it not to equalize/eax/otherprocessing, is the digital quality 'perfect'?

Case in point I have a professional DSP hooked up to my SB audigy's digital out. If I were to upgrade the audigy (not that I have the $$$ but for argument's sake ), would I get any improvement in the sound quality of my mpc audio playback?

Basically I hear some 'stories' from people that say 'yes' to the last question but I find it hard to believe that the digital ".wav" data from winamp would get distorted by the sound card that's hooked up to it. provided of course I don't use the onboard DAC's or some hardware DSP feature like resampling or spatialisation crap, but Im telling my computer to have all EQ's off and just play back the file.

Anyone know the answer here?

Digital should be, well, bit identical.
But..,
Some crappy soundcards, like SB Live (don't know about Audigy1 and 2) do resampling even on digital output.

then there is the kmixer and other filters that windows does.. or does it!?!?

I took the brave step of installing the kx drivers for the soundblaster family... they enable ASIO support which in theory is straight out.. I've gotten it working in foobar and would swear that i could hear a difference... not done an informal ABX test to that length, and i'm well aware that the big ugly placebo monster could be knocking at my door...

the kx drivers needed a full reinstall of windows to get in properly... there is a lot of complicated things in the drivers but on the whole its all working... I'd recommend it if you are up for a reinstall... after all its only another reinstall till you can reset it all

It's very difficult to get a perfect digital playback on a PC.
Most of the times, you play 44.1 kHz and get 48 kHz instead in the digital output. And the conversion is lossy.

You can rule out all soundcards by Creative, Turtle beach, or Hercules (exept maybe used with ASIO support, like jrbamford says). The 24/96 soundcards by M-Audio and Terratec support perfect digital playback in Windows 98/me. Not sure about 2000.

Things get worse with Windows XP. In addition of one of the above cards, you'll need a player and a soundcard supporting ASIO (and/or Kernel streaming ?).

I know that some people here have studied this matter deeply and they'll certainly complete or correct these infos.

FWIW, I've got a Marian Marc 2, surprisingly capable of playing perfect digital in WinXP (as advertised), but the drivers are, well, barely drivers. DirectSound support is broken, no midi, no CD input, no gaming possible... I've heard (in here too, but I'm too lazy to search the post) that a very good soundcard, by RME, has similar drivers.

The Creative cards don't do 44.1kHz even with Asio-playback. It's even worse: "...if the input stream frequency is already 48000, it is still resampled in order to avoid possible synchronization issues..." taken from http://kxproject.spb.ru/direct.php?language=en


Win2k is just about as crappy in that as WinXP. In Win2k, kmixer first appeared.


Yes, afaik only Marian and RME have this feature in their drivers (well, actually, they just rewrote part of the sound-interface of NT5).
Directsound is indeed very crappy with Marian drivers. But on my Marc2 there was a cd-input, actually...? (I sold it by the way, and got a Terratec 6fire at the same price ) Gaming isn't an option on RME cards either...

One question about this: I can say for a fact (my DSP says so) that the Audigy digital out is providing 44Khz.

Are you saying that inside the Audigy it is converting up to 48 for some sync reason, then down to 44 again?

apparently somewhere on avsforum there is a technique of embedding a DTS stream in a wave and playing it to verify whether its bit-wise identical.. ie.. whether your cinema processor is capable of decoding a DTS signal by the time the wave reaches it... i'll try to find links..

Patsoe.. arse thanks for the info.. i'd missed that.. that its resampled AGAIN even if its 48khz is annoying.. I will be jumping ship to another soundcard at some point i think.. i will have to be careful tho as along with occasional games (especially half-life 2 soon) i want perfect music, and perfect cinema sound.. by perfect i just want it working, no glitches, no lip sync issues etc...

I DO believe i can hear a difference between ASIO output of foobar and everything else.. BUT i also do wonder about the placebo of it all... but its enough to make me think that i'd like to have a card that leaves it untouched..

again some post on avsforum was talking about a soundcard which bypasses kmixer with waveout and directsound.. not sure how its possible... i will try to get the link for you more knowledgable types to digest

Bypassing kmixer is possible with DirectSound.
The soundcard just needs to support hardware mixing.

Kernel Streaming also bypasses kmixer.

ASIO bypasses everything and works great, but sound gets nuked on high HDD usage
regardless of buffer size
Also it emits noise when another application tries to use sound device.

@jrbamford: I was re-reading the link I provided, and noticed that it is explicitly about recording from SPDIF-in. Before, I concluded this would be so for all audio-streams on the board, but perhaps that's not true for the outputs...?

@pointless: what drivers are you using? If the DSP says its 44kHz, then it is, I'd think. Interesting.

[QUOTE=Patsoe,Jul 28 2003, 02:40 PM]@jrbamford: I was re-reading the link I provided, and noticed that it is explicitly about recording from SPDIF-in. Before, I concluded this would be so for all audio-streams on the board, but perhaps that's not true for the outputs...?
[/quote]
Indeed. I noticed that too.

Im already registring at the KX forums to ask this exact question

@pointless: what drivers are you using? If the DSP says its 44kHz, then it is, I'd think. Interesting.[/QUOTE]

Oh it is, no doubt about it. The only question is, is it 44 from 'winamp' to 'spdif out' or is the silly audigy coding from 44 -> 48 -> 44 -> out. Incidentally all standard audigy drivers have a the spdif hardware output setting window.. its in the eh.. well haha I forget the name (not behind my own computer right now) some audio control panel with a green print board as logo.

In that last case (44-48-44) it'll be smarter for me to set my DSP to 48khz...

puntloos.. if you can afford possible reinstall i'd say give the kx drivers a whirl.. i am very happy now... and enabling ASIO with foobar as i said i think helps the quality... i'll be interested to find out if the output is resampled.. hopefully not..

ASIO does nuke with heavy usage.. funnily too... occasional crackle but i actually got the music slowing down over 20 seconds when installing something the other day... how can you use ASIO with load with music packages if this stuff happens on playing to just 1 channel

Need to find out in foobar where the ASIO latency settings are.. programs like cubase allow you to get to the kx drivers latency window.. i dont know how to do this within foobar... latency being higher helps for stability and for just plain playback i assume latency can be fairly large.. i aint planning on any mixing..

Sorry, even setting latency to 512samples/sec (max - 12msec at 44.1kHz)
in my Aureon Space card control haven't solved the problem...
Reduced it slightly. (I get a buzz - higher latency = shorter buzz.)

It would be cool if you could switch between the two drivers without rebooting.....

Now I'm even more confused than ever because Terratec tell me my DMX 6Fire doesn't resample unless I enable Sensaura 3D, but hardware mixing is only available when Sensaura 3D is enabled.

-dave

Let me try and summarise (please correct if I'm wrong):

- All Creative cards resample their PCM bitstream digital output to 48kHz (or interim 48kz before outputting 44kHz). This cannot be circumvented with any drivers. DTS 44.1kHz is not PCM bitstream, it's raw and can be outputted 1:1 bit perfect on some Creative cards.

- On most cards, even 48kHz output data gets resampled to 48kHz causing jitter and requantisation errors (noise and distortion). This is due to the PCM data being fed through KMixer (on W2K or later). RME and Marian sound card drivers know how to bypass this. Kernel Streaming drivers for some cards know how to bypass this (?)

- Terratec DMX6fire can output 44.1kHz digitally bit perfect as 44.1kHz without resampling. I've tested this myself. Sorry! Can't remember if Sensaura was on or off (I *think* OFF, but can't be sure anymore).

Am I completely off the mark? I need to understand these too. I could test Audigy2, but lack proper cabling right now.

regards,
Halcyon

Waveout is bit-perfect on Win9X, given that the mixer sliders are set at max. On Win2K and WinXP, kmixer prevents bit-perfect output unless: 1) you use kernel streaming or ASIO. 2) you have a card that supports hardware acceleration and also set wave sliders at max. I haven't totally corroborated 2) yet, but there's some evidence from other people that this is true.

But all this is only true in case of non-resampling cards when playing 44.1 KHz data. Resampling cards will always mangle 44.1 KHz data no matter what you do.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....topic=5755&st=0

Bump!

(hah.. 3 year old topic..)

Guys, Im STILL struggling with this question, and since Im now trying to put together an audiophile stereo, this issue has gained a lot of importance to me.

therefore, the question rephrased:

What are the settings/drivers etc with which I can make my sound blaster audigy output an EXACT digital copy of the digital data winamp (or foobar2k) outputs. I do NOT want it to resample etc etc
add: if impossible, please suggest a soundcard that CAN do this properly

What are you doing with Quad speakers and an Audigy sound card?!

Am I missing someting?

I don't think you can from reading the other replies. ALL soundblaster cards resample in hardware.

Thing is a cheap card like the Chaintech AV710 will do bit-perfect. It has no ASIO drivers so download ASIO4ALL and use that as the ASIO driver...worked fine for me though for some reason occasionally it didn't click in but that was an old version of ASIO4ALL and I haven't had the card for a while now. Also it's only optical out if that's a problem? But it did work and you'll find various threads on here and avsforum about it.

BTW, I have an RME DIGI96/8 PAD, and I can attest to the no-resampling policy of the drivers. I can also say that the drivers kind of suck. They do not support standby or suspend/resume (the card loses all I/O if you go into standby), and they haven't been updated in like 3-5 years or so. Granted, the card is obsoleted, and the drivers are very minimalistically built, but still....

Yes. You're missing the 'I haven't tested this myself' bit. Id like to be SURE that the card does it properly before I buy it.


Well obviously Im not skimping on component quality but if the audigy does what it needs to do it is fine for my purposes. I have no use for audiophile DA convertors (or whatever) on the sound card, all I need is a bit-perfect digital out (and perhaps optimized, high-quality volume resampling.. but winamp can do that for me, right?)

Anyway in the end I would like to hear about a normal card with proper drivers that CERTAINLY does bit-perfect output. So far Ive heard quite a few 'possibly maybe hopefully'-s.. however those terratecs might be the way to go

(Im considering to put the new card next to the audigy btw, sounds like a useful plan to have one digital perfect card that only gets used for winamp, and having the audigy make 'windows sounds' ('DING' sucks at high volumes through my 989s )

I think all so-called professional or semi-professional cards can give you bit perfect output through ASIO. They can also output windows sounds. No need to have two cards.

Plus oh yeah the terratec DMX6fire isn't being sold anymore



Well no I mean I DONT want them to output 'ding' If I have 2 soundcards, I can tell windows to 'ding' on the soundblaster and have winamp(foobar) be the only app to send audio to the pro card and into my main speakers.

Could someone perhaps LIST us a few pro cards that don't need wonky ASIO drivers, work dependably, dont have 7.1 surround recording etc etc?

I need:
- stereo
- 24bits/192Khz
- Preferrably but not explicitly necessary: good DA convertors
- and the main requirement: bitperfect digital out

That's all. Assuming those demands are met, the cheapest possible card fits my bill.

Did everyone just ignore me? I mentioned a $25 card that does bit-perfect out....

I didn't ignore you, but you said I needed to download some weird ASIO driver to make it work...

On the other hand I think you are missing a pair of glasses!




But did you test it? LOL


If you already found your glasses, go to some obscure website called www.google.com and enter "ASIO4ALL".

No, that card is impossible to get (well maybe 2nd hand) - out of production.

Well it is mildly important.. is this 'direct passthrough digital' seems to be a fringe requirement that a lot of soundcard makers put in the feature list as an afterthought. I don't want to end up with a dud..

I never said I couldn't find it, I said the drivers sounded dicey, I prefer something that does what I want out of the box rather than depend on some 3rd party freeware project that might or not work. Are there no soundcards with drivers that 'Just Do It' ™?

Creative X-Fi cards let you select the master clock frequency, including 44.1 kHz, and also have a bit-perfect mode in "audio creation" mode.

Hmm that's a good tip, maybe I should just buy that one then.

I have been looking at the http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revo...on51-focus.html Revolution 5.1 from m-audio too.. it sounds capable...

krt. leave it to creative to be extra-super-fuzzy about what output formats its digital output module supports.

For one I would need the 'platinum' to even get digital out, but also (or the extrememusic with optional breakout module). But secondly while browsing the specs I get the impression that while the X-Fi's DACs do indeed support 192Khz, its digital out only reaches 96.


Plus the platinum is 2x as expensive as the m-audio..

Now all I need to do is find out 'for sure' that the m-audio does what I want, direct-audio-wise.

It does say 'ASIO 2.0 support'. Is that an automatic confirmation there? Or doesnt that mean anything for bit-exact output?

Yep ASIO 2.0 support. I have one. 192 kHz in two-channel mode. It's not low-latency however though. I don't really see why you would need a sampling rate that high anyway. 96 kHz is great for surround sound, other than that.



I wouldn't do business with a company that short changes people personally and let's keep it at that

Well yes but the high end audio formats of the future (DTS audio, SACD, DVD-A) sometimes do have 192Khz versions already. I don't want to be left in the lurch the moment those start becoming commonplace.

I tend to agree, creative isn't a company I respect that much. Every sound card they've ever brought out has some type of weird compromise, be it in the output (hiss on SB128) drivers (live) or in the hardware (48Khz resample - audigy)

Their whole driver arrangement blows too.. lots and lots of insane checks. You can only install upgrade X if you have drivers Y with setting Z.. Basically if you don't have your original driver CD you're out of luck for a LOT of features. Well.. this is kinda off-topic, sorry. End of Rant.

Of course. You choose this via the software in some way. For my E-MU card you have a wav (windows) input and an asio input and can direct these to whatever outputs you want and switch very easily between settings. Other cards will work in different ways.

Certainly the E-MU 0404 and 1212m will fit this well. Many others will also, but E-MUs are what I am familiar with.

Sadly, actually the 0404 does NOT have a 192Khz digital out, and the 1212 is very expensive..

Actually, I think there is officially no such thing as 192kHz SPDIF output.

If you look at RME's website, in some of their product descriptions they mention that they are the only company that provides 192kHz over SPDIF. I assume this also means that you can only make use of it when connecting to RME devices...

Nah, Ive been looking into this a bit, and I think that in theory there are no limits to the format, khz-wise. It is limited to 24bits, but that's fine. The 'clock speed' and 'data speed' are free to choose, all that needs to happen is that the receiving device can keep up of course. Fact is that the m-audio 5.1 does it, and also the e-mu 1212m.

I need to look closely at the m-audio since its 3x as cheap as the e-mu. It lacks a lot of inputs/outputs but it does have a fully featured spdif out, which is really all I want. Plus (obviously) it needs to be able to do the bit-identical thing we spoke about. Hotshot says he got that to work, so Im quite hopeful but Ill read up a touch more.. no need to rush.

No you don't But i definately agree with you that the specs are VERY confusing. Thing is, you get digital-out from the so called "flexi-jack" connector - Buy a mono minijack-phono converter, and you're all set! I'm sure even the cheapest models have the flexi-jack, but they hide it to promote the bigger models i guess. I have the fatality model myself.

Never mind. Didn't see the post above.

@puntloos:
Why don't you buy an ESI Juli@? This is considered a very good card with bit-perfect drivers that work without hassle with any audio player software. I use ESI drivers with my Chaintech AV-710 and I am very pleased with the performance. If you want coaxial digital out without a breakout cable you may choose the ESI Maya 44 instead of the Juli@. Both cards are around $100.

If my memory serve me correctly, the latest driver from EMU enable the support of 192kHz for 0404.


This statement is wrong. Please stop giving false information.

I am somewhat confused now - Pio said that Hercules do resample. So, my Fortissimo 4 resamples? Some people on these forums told me that this specific card does not resample. Also, the driver allows me to set the output frequency (44.1, 48, 96 and 192) - if I set it to 44.1, does this mean that the card still resamples?

Are you referring to this?



That was in 2003, there was no Fortissimo4 back then

Ah, right. Didn't they use Cirrus Logic back then?

I've recently received a mail from EMU support confirming your statement. the 0404 will now do 192Khz.

Personally I've just ordered the M-Audio revolution 5.1. I am assuming that it will do what I want. (24/192)

I do have another question though..

But I'll ask it in a new topic:
Perfect (digital) Volume Control?

I just tried to enable bit-matched playback on my X-fi (on x64), however i think theres a fault in the driver because I get 48khz output on every material i try to playback. I tried contacting Creative about this, but have not yet got an informative answer.

Well I've bought the M-Audio Revolution 5.1.

And weeeee have playback. Im fairly disappointed by the lack of controls though. The driver dates back to 2004 as well. Some things I noticed:

- To even enable the digital out, you need to select digital speakers.. fair enough, though it would've been nice if they would MENTION this somewhere in the manuals.
- There's no way to CONTROL the digital out. Im surprised it even chose 44K/16bits. I would like to be able to manually set, and check this.
- ASIO doesn't work. I'm using winamp's asio plugin, I can select m-audio asio (which came with the driver), it says it plays, but the digital audio doesn't actually leave the card. (also the VU-meters don't light up like they do with normal playback)
- ASIO4ALL doesn't improve things. It also gets confused about the m-audio, says its a beyond spec card, says its input doesnt work, says it works now.. *boggle*
- Curiously, when I played a 48Khz mp3 (hah i didnt even realise it was 48k!), the card stayed at 44Khz SPDIF mode, but the clock was skewed! My DAC's spdif sync led got very confused.. blink.. blinkblink.. blinkity... <black> .. blink.. at least it sounded fine.
- Tried with foobar2k, no joy. Didn't try foobar's ASIO plugin yet.

Again, so far Im mixed about the whole deal and the $80 I paid for the card.

You know all this bitperfect stuff?

While I agree that you don't want your soundcard mangling what's sent to it, I'm not sure bit-perfect output of 44.1kHz sampled content is the best you can do.

If you're as concerned about sound quality as puntloos says, surely it's much better (at least in theory) to resample to 96kHz 24bits using a high quality resampler (e.g. those in foobar2k) and send that to your sound card. (Obviously you want the 24/96 fb2k output to be transferred, bit perfect, via the sound card to your outboard DAC).

I'm not claiming an audible difference, but there's certainly a measurable difference. You get a very sharp anti-alias filter at 22.05kHz - much better than you'll find in any DAC, even those with serious oversampling included.


Sorry you're having trouble puntloos. The M-audio cards do integrate into windows differently from many other cards, specifically to allow propper control and bit-perfect output. On my audiophile 2496, it's all quite logical. You need to send output to the digital output to get digital output because it's a separate output. I don't have any further insights though - I haven't used ASIO.

Cheers,
David.

I have to make one admission here.. my DAC is the 'weakest link' in the chain, in one very relevant way: It only supports 44/48Khz. I am not quite sure but I do think it does supports higher bit depths than '16'. This is why I hoped I could change bitdepth somewhere in the m-audio controls.

For me the most relevant thing is that as 2BDecided said, I would like winamp to decode the mp3, then either:

1/ at 100% volume, pass it on to the output bit-perfect.
2/ if winamp is required to do stuff (attenuate?), immediately upsample, do 'some processing' and only downsample/dither at the last possible moment.

Oversampling DACs will reduce the effect of the anti-alias filter so much that I would doubt that there is a signficant difference in performance of the filter versus a software SRC algorithm. I really don't think you are going to gain quality by resampling in software if your DAC is well designed.