i've wondered for some time... does a person's sound card (modern, not old or excessively crappy) really matter if all they use it for is listening to mp3s? the reason i ask is that i own a soundblaster live! value card, and i've always seen the references to it as being a pretty terrible card for an audio enthusiast -- but what about an average listener? i have decent monitor speakers that i run to a denon receiver, and from denon receiver -> sb live!

would i actually hear noticeable difference in sound quality if i changed sound cards?

Not much. It is difficult to ABX (recognize the difference in a blind test) an SB live recording from a direct rip.

Maby. Depends on your ears and what kind of mp3s you listen to as well as equipment. The sb live is not a very good card compared to whats in the market today. Take a Look at Chaintech AV-710, very good value for this card and excellent sound quality.

On headphone listening, a good soundcard offers a real difference (not fabulous of course, but consequent for sure). But for monitor speakers, I don't know....

Please use capitalisation. Not using it shows lack of respect especially to people whom you're asking for advice.

Very much. Going from an extigy (better than the live) to an M-audio transit (probably same or slightly better than the chaintech for line-out) was a very clear improvement, noticeable even with cheap headphones (koss porta-pro). At the low end of sound cards I'm sure there will be obvious differences with your equipment.

All this is very subjective. Some people will (and have) tell you that the difference is huge, some that it is minor, and some that it doesn't matter. You'll have to try by yourself.

ok. i s'pose i will probably stick with my SB Live for right now. i plan on buying a pair of decent sennheiser headphones in the near future, and when i do i'll try to test them with different cards and possibly replace the sb live! with something better. perhaps the chaintech you recommended, markanini.

in response to this:

i try to phrase all of the questions i ask as respectfully as possible. i don't know whether or not anyone else feels the way you do, but you have no business telling someone how to type. if lowercase text bothers you, that's something you should probably work on. also, steer clear of e. e. cummings.

- M.

Does it matter for surround speakers? I payed 150$ for mine....altec lansing something. Should I buy a new, or keep it?

That's hilarious M, but my comment wasn't about inaccuracy but rudeness. I don't think my lack of exactness with companies and products counts as rude, whereas omitting capitals at the start of sentences and for I does. Of course, my standards may be too low, but it's as if I criticized someone for having no clothes and you pointed out my lack of a hat.

No capitalization does not violate TOS #10, so let's get back on subject.

I'd say it's more like you pointing out a sign that says "Shirt and Shoes Required," whilst overlooking the fact that you're not wearing any pants. Companies (and their respective products) are recognized by name, and a name carries the weight of identity.

If I were a company representative, and saw someone improperly de-capitalizing my company/product name, it would bother me more if I saw that they were careful to capitalize other areas of their grammatical construction and self-identity. If they are uniformly lower-case in their typography, I would at least know that they are consistently lazy!

Now, to bring my post back on topic I would mention that the listener plays just as much a part in the process as the soundcard, regardless of the technical quality of the card. If you are accustomed to listening to FM radio, or enjoy the sound produced by inexpensive/boombox speakers (or you're simply not someone who focuses exclusively on your music as it is playing), you'll probably do just as well to stick with the soundcard you have. If you chose to replace it without doing a serious comparison of the audible characteristics of the card, I suspect you would imagine an immediate warm-and-fuzzy difference upon installation, but within a few days would be unable to remember how the old card sounded.

- M.

I have to say I'm surprised that anyone would doubt that some soundcards are better than others for audio playback. I'd bet even a cursory ABX would confirm this, particularly thru decent monitoring equipment.

I have a very basic M-audio Dio2448, which spdif's to an outboard DAC, the combo sounds very nice indeed.

However, the analogue line-out on the Dio is absolutely atrocious, completely desultory - confirmed when I ran some tone-sweeps thru it and it mangled them.. It's actually inferior to my PC's (very ordinary sounding) onboard AC97 device.

Apart from that, many basic sound-cards (including the various SoundBlasters)don't even keep 16/44 PCM streams at their native sample rate (which includes compressed CD-rips decoded 'upstream' in hardware), because they have only 48KHz DACS on-board.

Bottom line is that DACs and output devices, and their implementaion, have as much bearing on the sound-quality of a soundcard as they do in a CD-player or any other digital-audio hardware.


AB

Not for nothing that they call it the DIO.

ABX tests of digital rips vs analog copies through soundcards or CD Players are very difficult :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....indpost&p=70283

Hi Pio - sure, but the kind of ABX I meant would be a CD-track/WAV/MP3 whatever - the same source or file, listened to via the line-out of different sound-cards via good (subjective?) monitoring, ie. amp/speakers or headphone-amp/headphones.

I use a Creek OBH11 and Senn. 580's (not exotic or 'high-end' by any means, just good and competent, and they reward me when they're fed a clear, dynamic signal) and I certainly wouldn't want to spend much time listening via my Dio2448's line-out, I can tell you.

AB

Right, the test you propose is different, and should be carried out instead of what I linked to. But until it is, you can't be sure that Computer soundacrds sound much worse than CD Players. Or to put it in other words, you can be, as far as you're concerned, sure of it, but you know that you can't pretend that this is objectively true here.

I encourage anyone interested to perform a real ABX test between a good soundcard and a high end CD Player.
In order to avoid the computer noise, you may record the soundcard output into its own input, then burn the result on CD.
Then you just have to compare the original pressed CD in the CD player, versus the copy made from the soundcard recording. Since a recording, then a player playback operation are added to what would be the direct soundcard CD playback, the difference will necessarily be bigger than during a real test, yet the test should still be difficult.

Not sure how a CD player would help this discussion, which is comparing sound cards.
BTW is it possible blind-test discs on your CD player, or a sound card with a CD player, unless you had someone else there to help?

Looked at your link. Sounds like fun, competing to see who can ABX different things. Might give it a try when I'm reunited with my equipment. How good are other's systems? Mine is sub $1000, but I like to think my ears aren't so bad. Are others' systems out of my league, or would I have a chance, do you think?
Now if someone at Hydrogenaudio wanted to challenge someone like Iron Dreamer on Head-Fi to an ABX challenge, with bets, that would be entertaining!

An intersting exercise indeed, but to me the issue is simply whether a carefully ripped CDA track can sound as good or better when played from the hard-drive of an 'audio-server' compared to a 'high-end' CD-player .

I've had encouraging results on my lashed-up system. I've made a lot of effort to silence it (you can't hear at all until late at night) and I use a a dual-boot setup with a separate audio-only Win2000.

Indeed, some time ago ago when I finally got the Dio2448's spdif-out working properly, what I heard thru my trusty Sennheisers completely blew me away.

BTW Pio, by computer noise, did you mean mechanical, fans, HD etc' as I just mentioned, or electrical?

My hunch is that a well set-up PC server will match or even better the best stand-alone CD players. We'll have to wait and see.

Then of course there's the thorny issue of 'hi-res' (DVD-A, SACD), which the powers-that-be are doing their utmost to prevent being ripped to HD, but that's a whole new can of worms, I guess

What do you mean by 'hi-end' CD player? Price?



No rational reason modern equipment should sound any different in a properly controlled blind test that is level matched other then (1) poor engineering(noise, etc.)/defective [or] (2) frequency response difference that is whitin known human audibility thresholds.

In lack of proper analysis/measurement and blind testing, the audible differences you percieve are not reliable, since you are not accounting psychological factors.

-Chris

This is surely the case. If you put a bit perfect digital out through a jitter eliminator, you have the best possible transport, and then you have the whole range of DACs to choose from. Feel free to test particular computer set-ups against stand-alone ones, but I think the fact that a computer set up can be as good as the best stand-alone is not even worth testing.

Mechanical.

High-end? I suppose I mean 'very good'. My sincerest apologies for the lapse into 'audiophile' jargon.

Rainer.

If capitalization ( not capitalisation) bothers you, then please don't read the remainder of this post as I have taken the original post by 'aron' and run it through an English-to-12-Year-Old-AOLer Translator.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IVE WONDERED FOR SOMA TIEM.111!11!111!!!1!!! OMG WTF DO3S A PERSONS SOUND CARD (MODERN NOT OLD OR EXCESIEVLY CRAPY) RILLY MATER IF AL TH3Y USE IT FOR IS LISTANNG 2 MP3S????!? OMG WTF TEH RAASON I ASK IS TAHT I OWN A SOUNDBLASTER LIEV!11!! WTF VALU3 CARD AND IVE ALWAYS SEN TEH R3F3RENC3S 2 IT AS BNG A PRETY T3RIBLE CARD FOR AN AUDIO 3NTHUSIAST - BUT WUT ABOUT AN AEVRAEG LISTANER???!????! I HAEV D3C3NT MONI2R SPEAEKRS TAHT I RUN 2 A D3NON RECAIEVR AND FROM DENON RECAIEVR -> SB LIEV

WUD!111 OMG WTF I ACTUALY HAAR NOTIECABL3 DIF3RANCE IN SOUND QUALITY IF I CHANG3D SOUND CARDS?!?!?!! OMG WTF LOL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for sound cards, I do not think there is any noticable difference. I use nVIDIA's SoundStorm as it is integrated in my motherboard and the only problem I have had so far is with a game (Metal Gear Solid 2-Substance) which was flaky from the get-go.

I have a problem with Creative business practices: patenting trivial rendering algorhitims (like zfail) that they did not create, and blackmailing software developers.

Creative's recently tried to blackmail 'ID Software' by charging them royalties for using similar rendering algorithms in 'DOOM 3'.

ID has removed EAX support for 'DOOM 3' and, considering the number of games that will use the 'DOOM 3' engine, this will have a domino effect in the games industry and I suspect that more game developers will follow suit when writing their own engines.

Here is John Carmack's comment on Creative's attempt to blackmail 'ID Software':
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The patent situation well and truly sucks.

We were prepared to use a two-pass algorithm that gave equivalent results at a speed hit, but we negotiated the deal with Creative so that we were able to use the zfail method without having to actually pay any cash. It was tempting to take a stand and say that our products were never going to use any advanced Creative/3dlabs products because of their position on patenting gaming software algorithms, but that would only have hurt the users.

John Carmack
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more info visit http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.ph...c=14459&forum=9

Huh? I thought you all were honorable experts at hydrogenaudio. This shall be the forum where I do refer all my friends for their music compression- and cdda-questions to? Whatsoever, please welcome Mr & Mrs. Itrybuticanhardlyproof Ontopic:

I was surprised how much better that powerbook i got sounded - compared to my old sb live. Maybe it just works better with my linn keilidh speakers, but i got only an old marantz in-between so my audio-setup is far from being audiophile or hi-end. Whatsoever, i ran extensive testing which was not blind but i consider myself objective enough not to favor some company's shiny little style-over-substance (nah, freedom of choice (for consumers not developers), rather) propaganda over my beloved old personally customized little tower.

I could never find differences between old and new cd-players (like that hifi salesmen always tried to tell me into getting rid of my 16 year old sony cd player... while there might be a difference i never really felt like it would be significant for me) but i always noticed differences between mp3s direct off the sound card and audio cds - even if that cdda has gone through cd > mp3 > cd conversion before. oh well, my advice (take it or leave it, it's up to you):

If you never noticed any difference between cd audio and mp3 you will most possibly not benefit from a better dac but for me i chose to use my powerbook instead of my server for audio output, even if that means that i'm not that mobile while listening to music (I do very rarely sit down in a perfect listening position, just about 1-2 times a year, and that is just about as often as i'm visted by my friend mary jane, too bad we both can hardly concentrate and focus on one subject).

Sorry for all those lower case letters, i prefer their readability. I don't make much points anyway but I hope the paragraphs are nicely set for a better consumption. Please also note that i wouldn't have posted this if it wasn't a question i've been wondering about for months, i do still admire/esteem the most of you.

That's not the point. Thinking that you are objective doesn't prove that your hearing is unbiased. On the contrary, all really biased opinions necessarily come from people who think they are objective. Otherwise, they would not make clear unconditional statements.



That's not sure, because one can have a very fine hearing but being completely untrained about hearing MP3 artifacts.

I hate to state the obvious, especially for something as silly as this that wasn't even on-topic.. but "capitalisation" is the proper British spelling of the word, while "capitalization" is the American variant, as go all words with -ise/-ize suffixes. So, if you're going to be snooty about something, at least be right.

Maybe you guys could do us all a favour and stop this silly capitalisation issue for now and please stay on topic of this thread.

I really think that we have heard enough about this now and this whole discussion is simply turning extremely childish.