Re: Hi-Fi soundcard

[Radium]

> Also.. for compressing music.. mp3 or wma? I have created a whole bunch
> of 192 bps wma files, and they sound all right, but with some background
> noise in my sennheiser headphones. I am not impressed with the level of
> background noise, it sounds like a tape recording made without dolby on
> normal bias tape. I am not sure if it's the wma compression scheme, or
> the sound card at fault.

WMA sucks. Don't know why they even invented it. MP3 is *much* better
in SNR. WMA is notorious for its background quantization noise.

[Sathyan Sundaram]

Max Holubitsky > wrote in message >...
> Hopefully this isn't as controversial as my turntable question.. but
> what are you all using as a sound card?

I use a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz - which is great (does 4-track
recording too!). But if I was buying today I would get M-audio
Revolution or for a bit more M-audio Audiophile 2496.

I have been using the one that's
> built into my motherboard, but it just doesn't cut it when hooked up to
> quality headphones. (or, I expect, to my stereo, which I intend to hook
> it up to).

will you be using the stereo's DAC or the DAC in your sound card?

>
> I am looking for a 2 channel PCI sound card, with no special features,
> other than a good S/N ratio, and low distortion. Price should be
> reasonable too, as I am just experimenting with this whole computer
> audio thing.
>
> Also.. for compressing music.. mp3 or wma? I have created a whole bunch
> of 192 bps wma files, and they sound all right, but with some background
> noise in my sennheiser headphones. I am not impressed with the level of
> background noise, it sounds like a tape recording made without dolby on
> normal bias tape. I am not sure if it's the wma compression scheme, or
> the sound card at fault.

As a matter of principle I will not use WMA with its builtin DRM and
lack of (easy) convertibility to WAV.

I rip CDs with Exact Audio Copy (EAC).
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
For lossy compression I use MP3 - LAME encoder (with the RazorLAME
GUI) with these options "-b 256 -m j -h -V 4 -B 320"
http://lame.sourceforge.net/
http://www.dors.de/razorlame/index.php


For lossless compression (my preference) I use Monkey's Audio at the
"normal" compression level.
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

If recording from analogue (I use RipVinyl for recording WAVs;
CoolEdit for editing; then compress afterwards) make sure to watch
levels to avoid clipping.

Sathyan

[Arny Krueger]

Max Holubitsky wrote in >

>Hopefully this isn't as controversial as my turntable question.. but
>what are you all using as a sound card?

Everything listed at http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/compare/index.htm at
one time or another.

>I have been using the one that's
>built into my motherboard, but it just doesn't cut it when hooked up to
>quality headphones. (or, I expect, to my stereo, which I intend to hook
>it up to).

Motherboard soundcards used to be pretty uniformly terrible, say 3-5 years
ago. Recently they've improved to mediocre or slightly better. I have yet to
see one that holds a candle to say a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

> I am looking for a 2 channel PCI sound card, with no special features,
> other than a good S/N ratio, and low distortion. Price should be
> reasonable too, as I am just experimenting with this whole computer
> audio thing.

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz seems to be a good choice for the money. Lots of
people rate it highly myself included.

>Also.. for compressing music.. mp3 or wma?

MP3 can be pretty good, but you get the best results if you don't compress
at all. As hard drive prices drop, storing .wav files gets more and more
feasible. You can get an 80 GB drive for under $100 if you look around. It
can hold at least 2,000 tracks or something like 80 CDs. That $1.25 per CD.
Depending on the physical layout of your PC, you can put 1-8 such drives
into its case.

>I have created a whole bunch
>of 192 bps wma files, and they sound all right, but with some background
>noise in my sennheiser headphones.

The noise is probably due to your PC's sound card. The audible degradation
due to various perceptual coding schemes (that's the more formal description
of what MP3 and WMA are) is typically more subtle than that.

>I am not impressed with the level of
>background noise, it sounds like a tape recording made without dolby on
>normal bias tape.

Listen to a .wav file of the same CD track to compare. I'll bet that you'll
hear the same thing.


> I am not sure if it's the wma compression scheme, or
>the sound card at fault.

More likely its the sound card or the original CD.

[Ronny V. Vindenes]

"Arny Krueger" > writes:

> Max Holubitsky wrote in >
>
> >Also.. for compressing music.. mp3 or wma?
>
> MP3 can be pretty good, but you get the best results if you don't compress
> at all. As hard drive prices drop, storing .wav files gets more and more
> feasible. You can get an 80 GB drive for under $100 if you look around. It
> can hold at least 2,000 tracks or something like 80 CDs. That $1.25 per CD.
> Depending on the physical layout of your PC, you can put 1-8 such drives
> into its case.
>

flac <http://flac.sourceforge.net/> is a very good alternative for
storing your cd collection with an average compression rate of about
0.55, no loss of quality and hw support on the way (Kenwood's Music
Keg already supports flac).

--
Ronny V. Vindenes >