Impressive fidelity from your unimpressive soundcard

[Pandovski]

Way to go Winamp! Those are very nice options they made for the winamp wasapi. :yes:

I think AIMP2 is also very good fidelity wise. http://www.aimp2.us/ Some folks seem to swear by it.

 

[atarione]

I wish there was some kind of WASAPI mode for Spotify. I'm slow to actually acquire/burn music :/

This is turning into a helluva night. I've just been kind of doing other things to the tune of background music. I think I actually need to sit down and really, critically, listen to this!

i mentioned it in a previous posting but there is a beta 3rd party app that has both WASPI and ASIO options you can use to stream with spotify premium

Fidelify
http://www.fidelify.net/

it sounds good ...but if i'm honest the beta is buggy as heck..but when it works it sounds good.

 

[RamblinE]

i mentioned it in a previous posting but there is a beta 3rd party app that has both WASPI and ASIO options you can use to stream with spotify premium

Fidelify
http://www.fidelify.net/

it sounds good ...but if i'm honest the beta is buggy as heck..but when it works it sounds good.

Wow. Thank you for realizing my complete and utter lack of attention.

No really, if you hadn't mentioned that I might not have noticed it. I'm giving this a try, thanks!

 

[RamblinE]

The way Fidelify is laid out I'll have to make a lot more playlists because it's just not really as search-friendly as Spotify is.

 

[atarione]

The way Fidelify is laid out I'll have to make a lot more playlists because it's just not really as search-friendly as Spotify is.

yeah... you'll love the sound quality and wish it had the UI / functionality of the official client

perhaps someone can convince spotify to add ASIO and /or WASAPI to the official client but i'm not holding my breath.


supposedly according to their site a update for Fidelify is coming they have been saying that since june or so but the mid oct update gives hope and all.

 

[sKiZo]

I've been hearing good things about Windows 8 having some seriously improved native sound handling without having to jump thru a bunch of hoops. The WASAPI engine is completely recoded to eliminate internal conflicts and streaming issues, and is fully integrated, bit perfect, and the next best thing to zero latency. Plug and play without having to resort to ASIO or other such kludges for effortless USB DAC goodness.

One bit of strangeness - if your DAC is 24 bit native, and your source material is 16 bit, the new W8 kernel will build up the data to 24 bit by adding nulls. The DAC will ignore those and read the incoming stream as 16 bit, so ... no harm, no foul.

W8 also has a completely new DirectSound engine with greater precision and fidelity that makes for major improvements in sound quality. It's resampling and anti-aliasing is now virtually perfect also.

I'll stick with XP on my "work" machine, but I'm thinking I may have to pull the trigger on the new OS for my HTPC. That's currently running XP MCE SP3 et all. Only thing I haven't figured out yet ... there's a Media Center edition also, and not sure if you get all sound handling improvements with the standard edition or not. W8 just hit the market yesterday, so I guess we got time to figure that one out. <G>

PS ... not to derail the thread ... I started a new one in the server area for W8 discussion. I'll go away now ... <G>

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=477434

 

[Rick Vestal]

By default, Foobar has some processing settings enabled by default. Add those to the list of things to check...

Edit: also, this is a great tutorial. onboard sound doesn't have to suck, and it doesn't suck if you dig into settings a bit...

 

[Pandovski]

not to derail the thread ... I started a new one in the server area for W8 discussion. I'll go away now ... <G>

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=477434

Not a problem sKiZo.:thmbsp: Currently polls say people prefer Windows 7 over Windows 8 by 2 to 1 still. So a mini tutorial for those who listen to music on their PCs and run Vista or Win7 learning about how to use WASAPI by manual install is useful.

I installed Win8 Evaluation version on my desktop PC and sound is great. But the Metro interface annoys me, several programs wont install and it already crashed once. WTH? It did the same thing on my laptop previously but it took him few days to act out. I have no idea why it does that. Maybe when they have a Service Pack 1 I'll try to re-install.

 

[1TUFSS]

Just be sure to automatically free your sessions whenever you're not listening to music... other applications won't be able to use the locked hardware at all while a session is in progress.

 

[GeoKost]

For the Mac.

Try using Audirvana Plus. Lion and Mountain Lion took away the ability to use Hog mode, but with the Beta release of Audirvana Plus, you can access Hog mode, or what they call Direct mode.

My understanding, Snow Leopard can still access it with Audirvana Plus.

I am running Lion and the Beta release of Audirvana which is working fine.

 

[Pandovski]

Thank you 1tuffss and geokost for sharing advice.

Also I dig up this for the folks who use external DAC while playing from their PCs

"event-style" wasapi is only supposed to enable the DAC to pull the data stream from the computer instead of the other way around ensuring that the external DAC is the one that is doing all the synchronizing and not the usb host computer thus eliminating the aforementioned issue.

Source: http://www.pinoydvd.com/index.php?topic=142075.30

 

[sKiZo]

At the risk of going off topic yet again, couple items maybe worth mentioning ...

In my own experience, the quality of the onboard sound (Realtek) wasn't the big issue. Problem was all the RF noise generated inside the computer. That rode out along with the digital media and made for quite the ruckus. I also tried an Asus Xonar sound card and even dug out my trusty old Creative E-mu with the same horrid results - surprising as I'd heard rave reviews of both. The E-mu is more of a pro card with better shielding and actually sounded better, but the supplied software suffered severe suckage ... no amount of tweaking was able to make that play nice. Bypassing it didn't help - even uninstalling it and trying a generic driver didn't clean things up as it had littered the registry with all sorts of nonsense. I ended up rolling back to a restore point set prior to the installation of the card. In either case, both the Xonar and E-mu were noisy, so definitely a motherboard issue.

Lesson learned, I went with an outboard DAC (Maverick TubeMagic) and am now a happy camper. Best of all, I just built a new HTPC and rather than having to jump thru a whole new set of hoops to make it work again, all I had to do was enable S/PDIF output.

Short version ... a LOT depends on the motherboard and onboard sound you're using.

PS ... Asio4ALL is worth trying if your card doesn't have it's own dedicated ASIO driver, BUT ... be sure to uninstall it if you decide to go another way. Asio4ALL is VERY aggressive and will try to take over all sound functions whether you <think> it's disabled or not, making for all kinds of interesting results, mostly bad ...

A word on USB Audio if you're trying an outboard processor and having "issues" ... My new HTPC build sounds truly excellent on S/PDIF (both coaxial and optical), but ... tried the USB Audio, and it had some serious crackling going on. WTF?? USB Audio sounded fine on the old build, so yet another head scratcher. Did some digging, and that's normally an indication of resource competition between USB audio and other USB devices. A fairly common solution is to add a USB expansion card which creates a whole nuther bus and hub. Plugged in the card (Vantec UGT-PC341 if anybody's taking notes) and attached just the outboard DAC to that (All my other USB devices are attached to the original USB ports), fired it up, and wahoo! ... it worked! Clean and absolutely quiet. I chose the Vantec because it pulls juice directly from the power supply - better isolation and no brown outs on the attached devices.

 

[ipman]

What a difference!

Just want to thank Pandovski and everyone else in this thread. I downloaded foobar2000 and wasapi - music sounds great with the external dac. I then found this thread and did a few of the recommended tweaks!

 

[Dr. Morbius]

I thought I'd give this a try so I went to download the plugin and it said "Windows Vista SP1 or newer required." I'm still using Win XP.

My motherboard has an optical out so that's what I use directly to my V-DAC II so I don't know if it would make much difference anyway.

 

[Pandovski]

I thought I'd give this a try so I went to download the plugin and it said "Windows Vista SP1 or newer required." I'm still using Win XP.

My motherboard has an optical out so that's what I use directly to my V-DAC II so I don't know if it would make much difference anyway.

You don't need it. :thmbsp:

Others with XP should try with ASIO4ALL as an alternative to the WASAPI. Results should be the same.

Easy tutorial: http://www.audialonline.com/kmixer/

If you are unsure still try the ASIO Dr.

 

[Dr. Morbius]

You don't need it. :thmbsp:

Others with XP should try with ASIO4ALL as an alternative to the WASAPI. Results should be the same.

Easy tutorial: http://www.audialonline.com/kmixer/

If you are unsure still try the ASIO Dr.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

I like XP. It's "vintage."

EDIT: I tried that and it didn't work. Couldn't get it to show up in Window's Mixer and it cause a bunch of static. I'm using TOSLINK anyway, not USB.

The "Realtek HD Audio Output" shows up in mixer. The volume slide has no effect on volume anyway so I have to assume I'm bypassing the Windows kernel anyway.

EDIT #2: Well, I was mistaken. The Master Volume under Windows Mixer doesn't do anything, but the WAVE volume and L/R do. Not sure how to pursue this. I'd like to get as much Microsoft stink out of my music as possible.

 

[Pandovski]

Thanks. I'll check it out.

I like XP. It's "vintage."

Thumbs up for XP. It still rocks. :thmbsp:

 

[Pandovski]

Did you follow this procedure exactly? I think you need to be more persistent to get it working properly.

Windows ASIO4ALL Setup :

Introduction (Recommended only for advanced users.)

ASIO4ALL creates a direct pathway for the data in your music files to reach your USB D/A converter in bit-perfect fashion. It is a DLL (Dynamically Linked Library) that is only activated when specifically called up by your music player software.

ASIO4ALL appears to your computer as an ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) driver, and therefore has direct access to the audio data stream at a very low level inside your computer. It bypasses the KMixer, re-injecting the audio data via kernel streaming. Some users find that this technique improves the sound quality slightly compared to using the standard Direct Sound interface.

Instructions

There are three steps to setting up kernel streaming with ASIO4ALL:

1) Installation of the ASIO4ALL driver on your computer. The latest version of ASIO4ALL may be downloaded from ASIO4ALL.com.

After you have downloaded the application, run it by double-clicking the file where you have downloaded it. It will install a DLL file in the Program Files directory where your music player application can access it. It will also create an entry for ASIO4ALL in the "Start - Programs" menu of your computer which will include the Instruction Manual as well as an Uninstall button.

2) Setting up your music application to use the ASIO4ALL driver, which will be explained in the setup procedure for each music player software program.

3) Once your music player is installed and configured properly to use ASIO4ALL, the ASIO4ALL driver must be configured. Access the ASIO4ALL control panel as explained in the setup procedure for your music player on this website.

NOTE: If you are using more than one music player program, the ASIO4ALL DLL must be separately configured from within each program. Changes to the settings made from within one program do not carry over to any other program.

After you installed the ASIO4ALL drivers for the WindowsXP, you need to install the plugin for the Foobar2000. http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_out_asio

To install the ASIO Support component copy it to the Foobar "Components" folder (default location C:\Program Files\foobar2000\components).

MORE TUTORIALS! http://www.perreaux.com/blog/index.cfm/2012/8/8/How-to-Setup-USB-Audio-in-Windows-XP

 

[Bozzmonster]

I'd previously used ASIO4all on my Win XP rig that I retired last year and really liked it. More accurately, it retired itself! I upgraded to a HP Core i7 unit running Win7 and an external Musical Fidelity V-DAC I picked up off of BarterTown. The internal audio wasn't doing it for me.

I tried installing ASIO4all, and it didn't play nice. Running the OEM audio processing, I still could hear something was missing. Just installed the WASPI plugin to Foobar2000. Now, I hear audio like I did via the ASIO plugin previously. For instance, cymbals have a pure sound rather the slightly 'sampled' sound even playing back a WAV or FLAC file previously. You're the best!:thmbsp:

 

[Dr. Morbius]

Did you follow this procedure exactly? I think you need to be more persistent to get it working properly.



After you installed the ASIO4ALL drivers for the WindowsXP, you need to install the plugin for the Foobar2000. http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_out_asio

To install the ASIO Support component copy it to the Foobar "Components" folder (default location C:\Program Files\foobar2000\components).

MORE TUTORIALS! http://www.perreaux.com/blog/index.cfm/2012/8/8/How-to-Setup-USB-Audio-in-Windows-XP

Yep. Read the instructions a couple of times while doing the install. It could be because I'm using the optical out from my computer instead of a USB cable. These tutorials do specifically state they are for USB DACs. I'll mess around with it some more this evening.

Thanks!