I have a question about the sound quality of sources.
1. Using the computer with a sound card
2. Using a DVD player with CDs

I would like to know how these would do for sound quality and how they
would compare to a dedicated CD player. I use these run into an external
amplifier. I read some articles about ABX tests for CD players. Are
there any tests for these? I tried searching for some, but was
unsuccessful.

Thanks.

Your question is a bit like "is a car fast and comfortable" or "is an animal big".

I would be very interested to pursue this question further.

An example, the guide on this forum describes how to use EAC to create FLAC files. But what is the point if the drive on your pc is cheap junk? Surely this will affect the quality of the file produced. I know that EAC does two passes to compare the read data, but a cheap drive could easily read things incorrectly two times, and do that over and over again.

Have you actually tested this or are you just guessing?

Another question: Did you actually read the first post? I think the OP is asking about something different than the extraction of digital data.

What do cheap drives not do that expensive drives do, besides basically reading 1s and 0s? In any case, off-topic.

PC sources (internal soundcards, integrated soundchips) suffer from electromagnetic noise pickup within the PC casing. However, if you run a digital or optical output from the soundcard into your amplifier, that's going to make it technically better than a dedicated DVD player, barring all the possible quirks of digital/optical outputs which I am ignorant of.

If the DVD player cannot run an automated ABX script or software, just get a bloke (dude/guy/buddy) or two to help out with an afternoon of testing. One guy switches the inputs (or pretends to switch), the other listens.

Computer "sound cards" run from soup to nuts. If you got the bucks (and it is no longer that many) you can obtain a sound card that is as good as any dedicated CD player because it will have less residual noise and distortion than the theoretically best possible CD.

The audio interface that comes on most PC system boards used to be crap, but now the better ones are about as good as a dedicated CD player.




As do a great many people, some of whom are very sophisticated and picky.




I have probably done as much ABX testing of CD players as anybody around.



Back in the 80s and 90s people found that the better CD players sound essentially alike. I've revisted the issue a few years back. I found that you have to pretty well scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a CD player that sounds appreciably different or bad.

Not true. Every DAC has to have a digital interface, and so it is cheek-to-jowl with the same noisy signals whether it is insde a PC or a separate dedicated box. Some of the quietest audio interfaces that exist are on PCI cards. Example: LynxTWO.



Not true, its all the same, just turning around the argument I presented above.



The key things about comparing optical players are level matching and time synchronization. Level matching is relatively easy, but time synching can be tough.

The nature of programs such as EAC is that they either put out bit-perfect transcriptions of the data on the audio CD, or they tell you the reason why. I don't know of any brand new drives that are so junky that they won't rip a typical PC with absolute perfection. The junky ones many be slow, or they may take longer or balk on a dirty or damaged CD.



Actually, EAC makes as many passes within reason, as it takes for consistent results.



Again that is not how things actually work out in most cases. One of the signs of a failing drive is that the data it puts out is inconsistent. The tolerances are so tight that it is usually improbable that a drive will return the same wrong answer twice.

Now there are exceptions to everything that I said, but 99%+ of the time you'll run EAC with whatever hardware you have, and you'll either get nothing, or something that is perfect, or know the reason why.

Drives can easily interpolate wrong data the same way twice. This is the reason that some of the DAE developers have striven (successfully, I might add) to improve upon EAC. This is still off-topic, though.

Thanks for the responses.

My sound card:
Creative Labs model CT4810
02:0a.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 06)

Is this a good card?

My computer:
Manufacturer: Compaq
Product Name: Evo D500

Will this be a limiting factor?





Will this apply to a DVD player as well?

Sorry if this has been answered.

Thanks.

> Is this a good card?

This question should be: does this card audibly degrade the sound?

The answer is that I do not know and, since the collapse of any meaningful audio consumer publications, I do not know how one would look it up. Most cards these days do not audibly degrade the sound but a few do. For example, the one in my portable does if I use an analogue signal but the one in my desk computer does not (or at least does not in a casual check - I normally use a digital signal from the computers).

> Will this be a limiting factor?

Audio does not put much load on a computer but the electrical environment inside a computer is hostile for low level analogue circuits. Cheap audio circuits are substantially better these days than they were a few years ago but it is probably still wise to extract only a digital signal from a general purpose computer and perform the digital to analogue conversion and amplification in a purpose designed box. A bit of noise on a digital signal does not change its value (i.e. 1.1 or 0.9 is good enough for 1 and 0.1 or -0.1 is good enough for 0).

> Will this apply to a DVD player as well?

A few years ago now, Pioneer brought out a cheap universal DVD player (i.e. one that supports the higher resolution audio formats as well as CD and DVD movies). Quite a few audio buffs bought this device mainly to play movies but also the odd high resolution audio DVD that they may acquire. Naturally they compared the CD performance with their expensive dedicated audio CD player only to discover that they could hear no difference.

However, like the cheap sound cards, this does not necessarily read across to all cheap consumer DVD players and I am aware of no reliable consumer publications for guidance. In your position I would probably only look at DVD players that also play high resolution audio disks to increase the chances the audio circuitry has received adequate attention.

Yes.

I believe that soundcard resamples everything to 48KHz? It might be worth seeing if you can notice the difference (ABXing again ) between using a good software resampler and just allowing the sound card to do it?

Thanks for the input.

What would I need to upgrade my computer for better sound?

Would appreciate any suggestions.

I use a stereo amp, so I don't think I can run a digital signal to it. I don't
really want to go with an external DAC.

Thanks.

Sound quality is not related to the general "quality" of your computer.

Exceptions:
- replacing a motherboard which has bad (noisy) onboard soundcard with one that has a better onboard sound card will improve sound quality if you use onboard sound.
- in rare cases an old/slow/poorly designed system may cause dropouts or skipping. I experienced it a little with a 3.5 year old Dell with onboard graphics card, big monitor and USB audio interface. It appeared (I may be wrong) that the onboard video required to much resources to handle the big screen to allow USB (or ASIO) to work always smoothly.
- if your computer produces much acoustical noise (from fans, HDDs, etc), changing to a more quiet one will likely improve perceived sound qulaity.

My first answer was incomplete - your sound card is the CL version of the Ensoniq PCI which was one of the very first audio interfaces that IMO was technically adequate. If memory serves, it does not resample. The computer's audio interface is not a problem as such.

This is a legacy product, maybe 5-7 years old?

When you say you want better sound, please tell us whats wrong with what you've got?



Again, what do you hear that is not as it should be?

Wonderful discussion!!! My on-board audio has died so I wanted to check out audio cards. You have confirmed what I thought. Sound card might have been 'rocket science' 20 years ago but not now. It was a plesure reading such a thoughtful and expert discussion.

I can add something to the discussion. I do not use EAC although I do have it installed on my computer. I intend to start using it when my subscription to dbPoweramp Converter expires. EAC now can use Accurip which my ripper uses. It is a an extrenal database to measure the read quality of a CD. I assume it contains some kind of check sums for each block of each track & album. It will let you know if the read is off. It will let you know if your drive is 'iffy'. It is best to read new or unblemished CDs first, until it 'certifies' your drive.

AccurateRip calculates one checksum for each track and compares that to the database, not each block.