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windows and audio drivers

andreasmaaan

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Hi, When you say analog systems if you are referring to the use of the optimizer software mentioned, I would not call it distortion. The feature set is much larger than the few posted here for the usual scrutiny.

Actually no, I was referring to your saying that one of the advantages was "analog sound quality rarely heard before on computer audio systems".

I took your inference to be that analogue sound quality is superior to the sound quality of most computer audio systems.

So I was curious as to what you think makes analogue sound quality better?
 
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rebbiputzmaker

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Actually no, I was referring to your saying that one of the advantages was "analog sound quality rarely heard before on computer audio systems".

I took your inference to be that analogue sound quality is superior to the sound quality of most computer audio systems.

So I was curious as to what you think makes analogue sound quality better?
People tend to use the word analog vs bad digital to describe sound quality. I have no problem with digital, but I have heard plenty of bad digital that lack analog like qualities. Much of the music we listen to starts its life from an analog source. IMO good sound is good sound regardless of the medium. YMMV
 
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rebbiputzmaker

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"not for argument"? Are you stifling discussion as you have bemoaned other posters.? :facepalm:
If you are going post a quote you should not leave out words in the middle, that can be considered rather unbecoming.

"not for AN argument" is what I said.

For clarity, I will explain my thought process for you.

I did not put up the information for the purpose of AN argument.

Please try and be civil.
 
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John_Siau

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Let's test if you want to learn.

A common assumption in these optimizers is that less is more. In other words, the less activity must somehow make the DAC perform better. Let's say the DAC is poorly designed such that it eats up the computer noise. You have two choices:

1. 1000 times a second something happens.

2. 1000,000 times a second something happens.

Which is better? Lay assumption about audio says #1. Less is more.

Wrong! 1000 times a second generates a frequency in the audible band. It can for example create clock jitter to the tune of +- 1,000. So your 2 Khz note now has a sideband at 1000 Hz and another at 3000 kHz. Compare that with the 1,000,000 time activity. It is occuring so fast that it will appear as noise. Noise is much more benign than generating correlated distortions as #1 does.

Remember, I test all of these DACs using my laptop that is also driving the audio analyzer. The analyzer software for APx555 is a huge CPU hog, so much so that it cooks my laptop. It uses tremendous amount of CPU cycles and lots of traffic on the USB bus. Yet, we are able to achieve measurements that are unbelievably clean with well designed hardware. No audio tuner is needed or necessary.

Anything that is designed to plug into a computer must assume that it has unknown ability to interfere with the DAC. Design the DAC well and what the computer does is immaterial.

None of this is known to people who don't know how DACs work, psychoacoustics, signal processing, etc. They are using lay assumption of making things quieter in the PC with no confirmation I might add, to make decisions that are just wrong.

The tuner software cripples the computer from functionality point of view making it much harder to use. All for misguided reasoning.
I fully agree with Amirm on this.

If the DAC is well designed, the only requirement is that the computer deliver the original data with bit-for-bit accuracy. This can be done, but it doesn't always happen automatically (especially when the device is not operating in an exclusive mode). The only 'optimization' that is necessary is to force the output device into an exclusive mode with the sample rate matched to the file sample rate and with the gain set to 100%.

The tuner software is messing with many things that have no impact whatsoever on the audio quality but may have negative impact on the operation of the computer.
 

Ron Texas

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A few thoughts:

Some people believe cutting down on CPU cycles improves SQ.
Some people believe upsampling to DSD 512 at the cost of heavy CUP usage improves SQ.
Those two beliefs are at odds with each other.

If your computer has a fan, keeping the CPU load light will keep the fan from spinning up, but I can't think of another reason why it matters.

Most difficulties with driver installation are on Windows 10 which requires signed drivers. Some manufacturers don't get their drivers signed. There is some kind of obscure workaround for this, but I believe it disables a major security feature.

For reasons unknown, I found my computer to be more stable with manufacturer's ASIO drivers installed when using it with a Grace M9xx DAC. I have since moved the grace to my Macbook Pro for headphone use with it's very powerful headphone amplifier.

I also have an Audioengine D1 which suffered from clicks and pops on my Win 10 machine when playback was with JRiver. ASIO4All solved that problem. If you are having some wonky USB issues with WASAPI, try ASIO either from the DAC manufacturer, or ASIO4All. The D1 worked fine with Foobar2000 and WASAPI.
 
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rebbiputzmaker

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I also have an Audioengine D1 which suffered from clicks and pops on my Win 10 machine when playback was with JRiver. ASIO4All solved that problem.
Could have possibly been fixed by changing buffer settings in JRiver, did you ever give that a try?
 

Ron Texas

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Could have possibly been fixed by changing buffer settings in JRiver, did you ever give that a try?
Slight improvement going from 100ms to 250ms. No sound at 500ms. IMO, USB on the D1 is wonky. It worked great on a Macbook Pro with toslink, even did 192k, but the headphone jack is barely enough for HD650's
 

amirm

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There was really nothing, no tone, or nothing meant other than trying to present some info. Nothing personal.
Nothing personal? What was this:
When it gets to this level of computer audio, some might consider you a "layperson. YMMV.
You don't tell your doctor he doesn't know anything about medicine. He can say that about you but not the other way around.

Core part of my professional expertise is operating system development. Everything you listed in that post are things that I have actually worked on in the Unix Kernel. I have taught classes on it and have author a book on the topic of optimizing Unix/OS:

1532023241509.png


All of this is listed in my signature on my background.

Then you proceed and call me a layperson?

It is disrespectful and incorrect.

You need to turn around your contributions on this forum to be constructive instead of protesting everything we are about in thread after thread.

You also ignore the answer to everything you bring up. You talked about learning being critical. Yet demonstrate no interest in learning from someone whose professional career was about the topic you are bringing. I asked you to explain what any of the bullets you listed mean. You did not address a single bullet explaining how it improves audio.

Ultimately as I said, you are acting like a lay person who takes anything called "optimizing" as being a good thing for audio. You are not alone. Countless audiophiles do that and it is natural. The topic is very advanced and no person not schooed in both audio and computer architecture can understand what it all means. So they go for the natural lay intuition to believe. They then do some faulty subjectively listening with that pre-bias and declare the work effective.

Do as you say, and try to learn and know more than them. Ask questions instead of asserting and then running away from the discussion. You won't get a better opportunity to understand the intersection of computers and audio than here. Use it instead of fighting us for the sake of fighting us.
 

amirm

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As I'm typing this text my notebook is playing a 4K video file with video bitrate of 51Mb/s and audio bitrate of 2.7Mb/s. My notebook is Lenovo Ideapad 700-15ISK, so it's not really a powerhouse. It has latest version of Windows 10 64 bit with no optimisation done whatsoever. It's fetching video file from a NAS over a 5GHz Wifi network using ASUS external WiFi USB stick. And not a single glitch. Playing 4K video with DTS multichannel 48kHz audio is much more demanding than playing 2 channel PCM or even HiRes audio, so yeah, none of those things you listed really matter.
This is the key point. Vast numbers of what is listed is only useful if your computer is falling behind in playing audio -- something you know instantly because there will be a glitch. If your music is playing continuously, then there is no need for any tweak.

What helps immensely is that computers are so many orders of magnitude more powerful than what is required to play music. The load barely registers on the system.

With advent of multiple cores, then other cores are ready to take up background tasks, substantially improving the real-time response of the system to playing music.

Yes, you can get a pause if you really push the system, perform lots of CPU intensive tasks like DSP on audio, etc. But then you will know it. Whether this software can deal with these situations is not clear either as you may just need a faster computer.

Ultimately no one buys these optimizers because they are getting glitches. They are buying them because they think they improve sound. And they just don't. They can't. They are not in the pipeline of audio. And if you get anything half decent as far as a DAC, then what the computer does is immaterial.
 

gvl

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Heck, my 15 y/o Thinkpad can play all sorts of audio with barely any CPU load registering on the performance monitor. It struggles with DSP naturally, but snake-oil PC audio optimizers would not make any difference either. This reminds of all those PC performance optimizers back in the days, running one was always a crap shoot between it making no difference and completely screwing up your system.
 

Ron Texas

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I play audio on an N3700 NUC and watch 1080p video. That's hardly a powerhouse. The video chip will only do 4k @24hz, but I don't have any 4k content.
 

RichB

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Does ASIO support exclusive mode?

- Rich
 
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