Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

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RE: Textbook

Posted by Jim F. (A) on January 13, 2009 at 10:13:49

In Reply to: Textbook posted by Dawnrazor on January 12, 2009 at 13:26:19:

> [W]hat is interesting is that Alan Kafton is one of the big
> proponents of the software being crucial. Yet he has one of
> those pro Firewire dacs with the great clocks (Rme Fireface 800)
> out of the computer, and still hears differences with players.

To wit:

> Posted by alan m. kafton (D) on December 5, 2008 at 11:02:10
>
> "It's the math"
>
> In speaking with various developers, it appears
> (from those discussions) that the algorithms used in
> software change the sound....there is no other plausible explanation.
>
> Vincent and I use professional-level, studio-quality playback
> software. We can readily hear the qualitative differences. My guess
> is that Foobar and others simply are not resolving enough.
> Having heard iTunes and Windows Media Player in comparison,
> well....there's no comparison. iTunes and WMP are left in the dust.
( http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=pcaudio&n=40814 )

I don't want to start a flame war here, and will respectfully
bow out of the argument at this point.

But I will say that if the job is to get data off the hard
drive and into the sound card without changing it, then there
is no "algorithmic" or "mathematical" possibility for Foobar
to be "less resolving" than, say, Wavelab (provided, as I
say, that they're not changing the data -- if there's some
sort of jiggery-pokery going on behind the scenes that
we're not being told about, a la the Windows KMixer,
then all bets are off).

**If**, however, you're doing any DSP (such as upsampling)
during playback by using a plug-in, then of course there **can**
be mathematical differences involved. (E.g., Foobar's
version of "Secret Rabbit Code" is still using an older
version of libsamplerate -- because Mr. de Castro Lopo
has not had the time or the inclination to update the Foobar
DLL, while cPlay uses libsamplerate 0.1.3, which is measurably,
and some say audibly, superior.)

Apart from introducing noise on the clock (jitter), then,
to paraphrase Mr. Kafton, there is "no plausible explanation"
for why two players, **if they are presenting identical
data to the sound card**, should sound different.

YMMV, of course.

> So what players have you compared??

Well, time is limited for playing with tweaks,
and I'd have to have convinced myself (as I did before going
to all that trouble to clock the system with the Apogee
Rosetta) that there'd be a worth-while result before
mustering the effort. (I have Wavelab, certainly, and
use it during the course of my off-line processing of CDs,
but the results of that processing are stored as lossless
WavPack 24/192 files, which can't be played in Wavelab.
I use Foobar, with no DSP other than the WavPack
decoding. And yes, FWIW, I use -- for old-time's sake,
I guess-- Foobar 0.8.3 with one of Otachan's ASIO DLLs.)

I would, however, suggest you try slaving your sound card to a good
clock, if you can muster up the equipment.

I see, BTW, that Mr. Kafton is also a fan of accurate clocks. ;->
See, e.g.,

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=pcaudio&n=36514
http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=pcaudio&n=29092

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Schiit Audio

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