24-bit (FLAC) audio play back...

[VisualGuy]

I'm getting the Beatles USB drive. This contains all of the albums music in 24-bit (FLAC) 44.1 Khz form. The sound card that I have now on my PC seems OK with playing FLAC, but I know it plays it at 16-bit, because that's the limit for the Creative SB Live! Series (WDM).

Anyway, I went to best buy and the geeks told me to get the SB Blaster X-fi Surround 5.1. This has X-fi 24-bit crystalization. I enabled this external sound card and didn't notice any difference in quality when listening to FLAC files. In fact, the sound card changed the way navigation (clicks) sound in IE and in Windows Media Player.

I'm very discouraged right now...

I want to enjoy the music at it's fullest potential, but cannot figure out how to do it. Here's my current configuration.

- SBLive! 5.1 Digital (DELL), Driver vs.1.1.77
- 2.1 harmon/kardon speakers

I'm looking for experienced advice. If I want to enjoy my new Beatles USB with it's 24-bit FLAC music, what do I need...soup to nuts (hardware and software).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[tf1]

I believe that to get the max out of your music, you need to 'think out of the box'. By that I mean you will make staggering leaps by looking at the audio side.

Upgrading to much better speaker/amp will make a big improvement, but to go all the way, think of an AV amp with Hi-Fi speakers connected digitally (SPdif or co-ax) with the AV amp doing the decoding.

Once you are passing the undecoded audio digitally, you remove the need for high end audio cards: most recent graphics cards will pass the audio digitally to the AV amp either over the HDMI cable or by SPdif. Even the 'basic' integrated Realtek HD audio will pass a quality digital stream across SPdif.



Regards: Terry

 

[Nelviticus]

Unless you have incredible ears and you're listening on top-grade equipment in an acoustically-designed listening room, you're unlikely to notice the difference between 16- and 24-bit sound.

If you Google 24-bit audio there's a lot of information out there. If you scroll down the page on this one until you reach 'Should you record at a high Bit Depth and Sample Rate?' it talks about whether you'll notice the difference.

So really I'm just backing up Terry's post - the differences between 16- and 24-bit are so subtle that you really need to get the whole package right to appreciate it.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[Sympology]

Few things.....

The recording are half a century old. yes they've been remastered, but ultimately they will not sounds as clear (I DELIBERATLY didn't say "good") as modern recordings.

Next as you age, your hearing, especially top end, starts to fail and were not talking in your sixties, but well before this; even more so if you've been exposed to high levels of noise.

To be honest, it's marketing ********.

You only really need 24bit 96khz recording if your going to do a lot of work on the recording. Once it's been mastered, 16 bit is fine for 99.999% of people.

And as pointed out above, you can have the greatest sound card in the world, but if your amp is crap or your speakers are crap, your sound will be crap.


Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[goombawaho]

Likely the noise from your computer fans would do more to lower the quality of the sound than the 24bit would do to improve the sound vs. if the music was heard as played from a good home audio system using an "old fashioned" CD.

 

[VisualGuy]

I guess the concensus here is that I probably wouldn't notice the difference between 16 and 24 bit...which if you knew me, it completely true. I can remember when CDs first came out. I bought the debut Crowded House album. That was my first and I didn't notice the difference between that and cassette.

I am however confused a bit, because so many people out there say there is a significant difference and furthermore, I've been told that my 2.1 harman/kardon cofig is sufficient to hear that difference.

Should I just chill out and enjoy the Beatles 24-bit USB FLAC recordings on my computer as is?

 

[tf1]

Have you got a good set of headphones? If so, you could compare the quality of sound from the h/phones against that from the speakers. Plug the h/phones into the soundcard's h/phone output making sure to start at a low volume level until you know the sensitvity of the phones and output level of the soundcard.

Although your HK speakers may be good quality for computer speakers, I've yet to hear any that come anywhere near what could be considered even basic Hi-Fi.


Regards: Terry

 

[VisualGuy]

Terry,

Sound Blaster sells one of these head phones. Do you think that I need the new SB Blaster X-fi Surround 5.1 sound card, that I just purchased, for this to work properly with FLAC or would it sound just as good with the head phones, through normal 16-bit, hooking the head phones up somehow to the PC and listing to my existing 16-bit sound card?

 

[tf1]

Are you going to be happy wearing headphones or earplugs for long periods?

I was only suggesting that you try some so as to compare the sound quality against the speakers. Even a modest pair of headphones should beat the pants off a pair of PC speakers. This should demonstrate that even a modest integrated sound chip is capable of giving surprisingly satisfying sound quality given better audio listening devices. Going from 16-bit to 24-bit will have far less impact.

Another way to look at this is the 'bottleneck' in sound reproduction is the conversion of electical current into mechanical movement. That's the tricky bit where (up to a point) the best improvements can be made.

However, like everything in life, there needs to be overall balance. There's no point in upgrading one part to state-of-art if another part can't use it.

As I said in a previous post, even the Realtek integrated HD sound chip found on so many motherboards is actually capable of surprising quality sound with decent media and decent audio equipment. I'd look to improving the audio amplification and speaker (or headphone) side first and then when the source (the sound chip) is found wanting, think of upgrading the sound card then.


Regards: Terry