hi

can explain the differences between phono, line, aux and mic signals to me?
what is what and how can i combine the signals?

unfortunately i couldn't find any propper information on the internet!

bye fabian

On a regular amp they are all the same except phono. Phono will feed through a pre-amp to the amp because the signal from a magnetic carteridge is so weak.

hi

really? the signal from a microphone is also a line signal?
but why is there for example on the computer a line-in and a mic input?
and what does aux mean? what is it used for?

bye fabian

Aux (auxiliary) and line-in are two names for the same thing. A input that can be connected to a lot of different sources.
Mic has, just like phono, a higer sensitivity, but they are quite different. A phono input applies an eq-curve (RIAA) to the signal, while a mic does not. They are simply adapted to specific different sources.

Maybe the impedance of microphones is higher than the impedance of devices you connect via line-in, but I am not sure if it is true. AFAIK, you feed the line-in with a signal between 0.5 and 2 volts while the microphone signal has only a few millivolts. Therefore, the microphone signal needs to be amplificated.

The typical impedance of dynamical microphones with balanced outlet is ~ 600 Ohm, the voltage is about the same as from moving magnet pickups.

hi

thanks a lot for the fast and good answers.
so please tell me if i got all the information correctly or not.

line in = aux = for high level signals (all except turn tables and mic)
mic = line in with higher sensitivity
phono = for tuntables (needs preamp) but has nothing to do with a mic!

right?

another question that has emerged when i was reading about using a mic on a portable.

they were talking about active and passiv mics. where is the difference? does a activ mic create a line in signal? and a passiv is for the mic connector with the higher sensitivity?


and one last question. i use eac and for playback i use foobar.

1. question: if i use s/p-dif it doesn't matter what soundcard i use cause it's a digital signal and i don't use the D/A converter! right? or are there also differences in quality?

2. i asked because i wanted to buy an eq or such an dj mixer (is there an difference) but now i had the idea also to modify the digital signal (s/p-dif) on the computer and the get a modified s/p-dif signal! is this possible? when yes is there any loss of quality, is there any thimeshift and which software does this job?

bye, fabian

Should be:
phono = for turntables (has extra preamp)

This is the important difference:

So it changes in principle the form of the signal, not only its loudness.


I think an active mic has a little amp in it.

If the soundcard is capable of sample/bit-true input/output then there will be no difference at all, since "difference" is defined by "at least one different bit" I've heard that on winXP- systems there are problems with bit-true in/out. So among bit-true soundcards there are no differences. Feeding with spidf doesn't use converters until the very last step, right: You can't here a digital signal.

What exactly do you want to do ? Leading the signal digital to your soundcard, eq-processing it and then leading it out digitally or analogically to speakers, and the whole thing in real-time ? Maybe your driver won't accept this. But you can record, edit and then playback. Any sound editor will do the job, I think foobar and winamp also can have eq on playback.

hi

thanks for your answers

what i want:

playback from extracted files (44,1khz 16bit) equalize them on the pc and then i want the digital signal to be taken from the soundcard --> optical cable sc <--> amp.

and yes, in real time!

you have to know i don't have a digital output yet. so i wanna know if i need a special card.

bye fabian

Then many players have an eq like the one I mentioned. Cool Edit doesn't have one for playback, but I remember SEKD's samplitude offering a comprehensive real time mixer. I'll check if it has an eq.

There are many discussions about digital soundcards here on HA. I personally have a Typhoon card, it is bit-true, but the drivers are sh*t. Don't buy a Typhoon card.
I've heard that Terratec cards are the best audiophile cards (no gaming features, but low noise, spdif, etc)

Equalizing in real time causes no problem. You said that you use Foobar. There's an equalizer in it. You can try it.

For the quality of digital output, with Windows XP (it's not true for other OS), there are three categories of soundcards :

Soundcards that resample : Creative Labs, Integrated audio chipsets, Hercules, Turtle Beach... On music, the effect is marginal. Actually, no blind tests were performed on musical samples to see if there was an audible effect. There are killer samples for sure, however. Udial being the worst. Another example : you can't test your audiotion with such cards, because they are unable to play high frequency pure tones without audible distortion, even in the digital output.

The second category is the soundcards that don't resample. You can get Windows to play audio losslessly in their digital output, if you disable their mixer : some cards from Terratec, M-Audio, Midiman, Hoontech, Echo don't resample. However, Windows XP itself doesn't let the audio played by Foobar reach the soundcard unchanged. This time the sound damage should be inaudible. Also, if you use ASIO or Kernal Streaming instead of the standard audio output, you bypass Windows XP's drivers and get a lossless playback.

The last category is the soundcards that use MME drivers instead of WDM. They can play audio losslessly in their digital output, directly from the standard audio output. The player don't have to support ASIO or Kernel Streaming. Some RME and Marian cards belong to this category.
But it's impossible to play a recent video game with them.

hi

what does XP exactly change? can you be more detailed?
so what category is best to take? 2? or three? i just want to use the computer for music playback. and eac :-). no games as well as no office!

bye fabian

PS: as i have to work hard for school at the moment i'll dedicate myself to this topic again later. when i have extracted all my cds and finisched my media pc case. and have set up my pc.

Pio,
I still want to ask: Is there any way to generally disable XP's drivers so the in/out is bit-true ?
I installed XP and performed some tests, but couldn't get the input bit-true. I don't understand that much about driver-tech...
Since then I'm using ME, but I'm angry about this issue being the only reason.