ASIO / Bit perfect Help

[Don927]

I have a Topping E50 that I use primarily with my Wiim Mini connected Toslink, sometimes with a Windows 10 laptop connected USB. Currently I have my laptop audio settings at 24/192 which matches the highest resolution for Amazon Music. Is there any real degradation when the source material is less than 24/192 (16/44 etc), and is it really worth the bother using some ASIO interface so that it is bit perfect? I have the Topping driver installed but can't figure out how to activate ASIO. What is the best freeware solution to interface with the ASIO driver?

Thanks!

 

[JoeESP9]

ASIO is considered to be obsolete. WASAPI is the latest iteration of schemes to bypass Windows mixer. All of the players I've tried support WASAPI and add it automatically at install.

I have a Topping D-10. The WASAPI driver came with the application (MusicBee).

 

[Don927]

I have MusicBee also but my Topping doesn't run bit perfect with it, only with my Wiim. Will WASAPI make my DAC run bit perfect with Amazon Music? Will this be noticable at all beyond just leaving my laptop settings at 24/192? How do I run / install it, and does it only run when the DAC is plugged in USB, leaves normal Windows audio native when not plugged in? Thanks for your help.

 

[JoeESP9]

Start Music Bee
Click on Music Bee (top left)
go to edit
edit preferences
player
for output select WASAPI (I recommend and use exclusive)
under sound device select your D to A converter.

I also set Windows to play files in their native bit rate. No up sampling allowed here.

If your DAC is not connected the system will default to whatever onboard audio chip and its driver you have.

WASAPI and ASIO are always connected to a player application.

 

[Don927]

I give that a try. Thanks for your help Joe! Much appreciated.

 

[Don927]

Music Bee was set with WAPSI, but Amazon Music still runs at the Windows audio setting of 24/192. How do I get my DAC to run from Amazon Music bit perfect? It does from the Wiim through Toslink using the Amazon Android app. Topping references ASIO in their info. Maybe it's not possible as the Amazon Windows 10 app only allows selecting Windows Audio?

 

[JoeESP9]

Music Bee was set with WAPSI, but Amazon Music still runs at the Windows audio setting of 24/192. How do I get my DAC to run from Amazon Music bit perfect? It does from the Wiim through Toslink. Topping references ASIO in their info.

Using WASAPI is player related. AFAIK you have to tell Windows to playback files in the format they are native to. Players have nothing to do with bit perfect. Bit perfect is in the "ripping". I use EAC for ripping CD's and FLAC for file type. It does bit perfect rips and tells you when it has a problem.

Some use WAV files with the thought, no compression means bit perfect playback. FLAC files decompress to bit perfect copies of the original. Plus, they save some space.

A couple of buddies and I did an AB test of WAV files versus FLAC. We unanimously though that neither sounded exactly like the original CD. However, we thought the FLAC file sound closer to the original CD.

 

[Don927]

I think the problem is the Amazon Music Windows 10 App only allows selecting Windows audio. The Topping always runs at whatever the advanced speaker settings at set at in Windows.

 

[wyn palmer]

ASIO is considered to be obsolete. WASAPI is the latest iteration of schemes to bypass Windows mixer. All of the players I've tried support WASAPI and add it automatically at install.

I have a Topping D-10. The WASAPI driver came with the application (MusicBee).

Is that entirely true? ASIO is used extensively in the pro market- for example my RME ADI-2 PRO FS R BE uses proprietary ASIO drivers for windows.
Sweetwater describes the differences quite well, I believe.
The Difference Between the ASIO, WDM and MME Drivers | Sweetwater

I use EAC for ripping CD's and FLAC for file type. It does bit perfect rips and tells you when it has a problem.

Some use WAV files with the thought, no compression means bit perfect playback. FLAC files decompress to bit perfect copies of the original. Plus, they save some space.

A couple of buddies and I did an AB test of WAV files versus FLAC. We unanimously though that neither sounded exactly like the original CD. However, we thought the FLAC file sound closer to the original CD.

I've conducted several evaluations, with and without other participants, of the output data streams from CD, WAV, and FLAC and all are indeed "bit perfect". If there is an audibility difference (I hear none) it lies in the post processing (i.e. playback) stage not in the data creation stage. This is entirely consistent with theory.
I first copy the original CD material onto a CD-R using EAC in high error recovery mode, then use that for the extractions and comparison.

 

[dcgibby]

I have a Topping E50 that I use primarily with my Wiim Mini connected Toslink, sometimes with a Windows 10 laptop connected USB. Currently I have my laptop audio settings at 24/192 which matches the highest resolution for Amazon Music. Is there any real degradation when the source material is less than 24/192 (16/44 etc), and is it really worth the bother using some ASIO interface so that it is bit perfect? I have the Topping driver installed but can't figure out how to activate ASIO. What is the best freeware solution to interface with the ASIO driver?

Excuse me for posing this dumb question, but it doesn't appear from your post that you understand how audio resolution works. Your audio player software can only play music at the resolution it was recorded unless you are upsampling. Setting your windows audio to 24/192 won't change a 16/44 file. In addition, the CD standard of 16/44 was developed to be able reproduce the entire range of human audio capacity (20-20khz). The trend of so-called HiRez music is a little bit of snake oil. Do I have a lot of HiRez music? Yes I do because I'm a sucker. Can I hear a difference between 16/44 and 24/96? No. But I can hear the difference between a track that's been well mastered and well recorded and one that has not. I thing that's the difference, not the resolution of the file.

 

[wyn palmer]

Excuse me for posing this dumb question, but it doesn't appear from your post that you understand how audio resolution works. Your audio player software can only play music at the resolution it was recorded unless you are upsampling. Setting your windows audio to 24/192 won't change a 16/44 file. In addition, the CD standard of 16/44 was developed to be able reproduce the entire range of human audio capacity (20-20khz). The trend of so-called HiRez music is a little bit of snake oil. Do I have a lot of HiRez music? Yes I do because I'm a sucker. Can I hear a difference between 16/44 and 24/96? No. But I can hear the difference between a track that's been well mastered and well recorded and one that has not. I thing that's the difference, not the resolution of the file.

And yet there is some psychoacoustic evidence to suggest that frequencies higher than 20kHz do make a subjective difference, and that the nature of the reconstruction filter can also make an audible difference, and it is certain that the human acoustic range is >16 bits, closer to 20 bits. All this suggests to me that at least a 48kHz, 20 bit system should have been adopted, or to make the filtering certain not to be audible, 96k/24 bit. That doesn't mean that a CD can't sound excellent, but in this day and age why not just push the boundaries beyond any plausible limits? Besides, modern recording is usually performed at 192k/32bits or 384k/32 bits to allow for processing, so why not an easy decimation/truncation to 96k 24?

 

[JoeESP9]

And yet there is some psychoacoustic evidence to suggest that frequencies higher than 20kHz do make a subjective difference, and that the nature of the reconstruction filter can also make an audible difference, and it is certain that the human acoustic range is >16 bits, closer to 20 bits. All this suggests to me that at least a 48kHz, 20 bit system should have been adopted, or to make the filtering certain not to be audible, 96k/24 bit. That doesn't mean that a CD can't sound excellent, but in this day and age why not just push the boundaries beyond any plausible limits? Besides, modern recording is usually performed at 192k/32bits or 384k/32 bits to allow for processing, so why not an easy decimation/truncation to 96k 24?

I agree with you about higher bit rates. There are quite a few 24/88 and 24/96 recordings in my collection. We have to remember that when Phillips invented the CD 16/44 was stretching the envelope. Phillips wanted to use 14 bits. That's why all the early Phillips chips were 14 bit and oversampled to simulate 16 bits.

When Sony came on board they required 16 bits and the disc had to have enough capacity to contain a specific version of Beethoven's 9th that was Akio Morita's favorite.

We're stuck with the 16/44 standard for commercial CD's. Anything other than a RBCD won't play on the billions of CD players in circulation. Maybe there will be more DVD-A's (audio up to 24/192) released. And then, there are Blu-ray music discs. They can support multi-channels and just about any bit rate and sampling frequency commonly used.

We can't forget dsd/dsf files. I've downloaded a few and they all sound superb.

As for ASIO vs WASAPI:
"Does WASAPI sound better?
WASAPI can be bit perfect and even in shared mode it uses high quality resampler. Generally speaking though, when it comes to pure quality, it can't get any better than what exclusive WASAPI can offer. Not entirely sure how Direct Sound is handled in Windows 10 but it's either equal to WASAPI shared mode or worse.Mar 13, 2019".

I'm aware that pros mostly use ASIO. I think part of the reason is ASIO already does what they want. So why change?

I moved to WASAPI early on. I always had little niggling problems with ASIO. Half the time it wouldn't install properly. Now it's all moot as the major music player programs offer both. Everyone can try both and decide for themselves what they want to use.

I have a dedicated laptop as my music player. All files are FLAC on an NAS and WASAPI is used in exclusive mode. I went with FLAC early on because wav files did not support meta data. You could use a "sidecar" file with the meta data but it was a real PITA to use. I've been told that currently wav files natively support meta data. No matter, I'm happy with FLAC.