 Audio
Quality is the topic, how do we get the best sound from dAP? First lets
start with audio file formats, most popular is mp3 however if you have
128Kbps mp3 files you are most likely listening to 'radio quality' audio.
For some people that is fine, but that is not what this section is about,
it is about quality, ever heard Microsoft brag that Windows Media Audio
(WMA) delivers CD Quality at 64Kbps? pull the other one!, in my
book the only CD Quality files are ones that are identical to the CD, not
something that has thrown away 19/20ths of the audio!
Introducing two formats of audio - Lossless
and Lossy:
Lossless first - think of them as
WinZip for audio, exactly the same audio comes out as went in, nothing
is lost. You cannot get a better audio format than lossless, but
there is a price to pay and that is the size of audio files - an
uncompressed audio CD weighs in at a hefty 700MB - compress this
losslessly and you can only get it down to 300MB at best, or around 25MB
per audio file (allot more than a 5MB mp3 file). If you have a large
hard disc then use one of the Lossless
codecs (it needs to be said, a
mp3 file that has already lost audio quality cannot be recovered, only
Ripping (recording) from the original audio CD gives the quality when
creating a lossless file), personally
I use Monkeys Audio.
Lossy, where parts of the audio
have been thrown away, hopefully parts of the audio that are in-audible,
but all lossy codecs are not equal. Bitrate determines the ending
quality, a higher bitrate yields better sounding audio, but larger
files. If I was forced to use lossy I would go for a bitrate of 192Kbps,
that would give 'near CD quality' depending on the codec used. The
general consensus on audio codec quality when using 192Kbps is:
- Mpc (also known as MPEGplus)
Highest Quality
- Ogg Vorbis (use the
variable bitrate mode VBR),
- Mp3 (Lame is best with
Alt Preset Standard setting [Advanced Page in dMC]),
- Windows Media Audio
Lowest Quality
Onto audio hardware, if you were planning
on buying a HiFi, one that costs $5 might not appeal, if your computer
plays audio through an on-board sound card then you might be effectively
getting that a $5 HiFi and the quality that goes with such. These days,
cream of the crop consumer wise are DVD audio specified sound cards
- 24 Bit audio @ 196 KHz, [ Sound Blaster Audigy 2, Terratec
7.1 Space and M Audio Revolution].
Got yourself a nice sound card?, it is a
good idea to have an audio card output its signal to a HiFi, using one of
the line inputs on the HiFi, why? pound for pound you cannot beat HiFi's:
5.1-Mega-base-super-surrond-sound speakers for PCs tend to be just that,
speakers designed for games. Best possible quality would be a HiFi with
optical inputs and a sound card with optical outputs.
Coming soon...silence that noisy PC
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