is their a significant difference in sound qaulity

Curio · 4 Jul 2006 at 17:00

james.miller said:
i thought we'd discussed this when i made the comment about people failing blind ABX mp3 tests. Thats people not being able to tell the difference between 192k mp3's and the original wav. file, or not being able to pick the two out of a group of 5 or 6 samples?

nothing is going to beat a cd player and amp, i never said otherwise. its just some people seem to think there is a massive difference between cd/amp and pc/amp. There isn't, not unless you are spending hundreds on the cd/amp combo.

I hear what you're saying. I guess I'm assuming people who care that much about pure sound quality will have a nice hi-fi setup anyway (my Marantz CD/amp combo cost about a grand...) in which case the difference in quality is pretty huge. I would easily be able to hear the difference. However, I mainly listen to music while sitting at my PC now (more convenient for me) and I'm more than happy to use the crystalizer or EQ to give MP3's a bit more life.

Curio · 4 Jul 2006 at 17:04

Curio said:
I hear what you're saying. I guess I'm assuming people who care that much about pure sound quality will have a nice hi-fi setup anyway (my Marantz CD/amp combo cost about a grand...) in which case the difference in quality is pretty huge. I would easily be able to hear the difference. However, I mainly listen to music while sitting at my PC now (more convenient for me) and I'm more than happy to use the crystalizer or EQ to give MP3's a bit more life.

Codmate said:
If an M-Audio Audiophile 192 (or even 2496) is good enough to master commercial albums on (and they are), then it's good enough to listen to music on.

I've never heard an M-Audio card to be fair. I toyed with the idea of getting one, but decided I'd rather have the X-Fi because I play a lot of games. I am eager to hear one tho.

TooNice · 4 Jul 2006 at 19:19

Strictly speaking, the component used for mastering music and music playback is not the same. I won't argue that the M-Audio are fine sound card, but people don't go dedicated DACs for the sake of forking out more money (okay, some may, but those business wouldn't survive just on people randomly splashing lots of £££ for something that does not improve over a relatively affordable sound card

).

sinister_stu · 5 Jul 2006 at 09:01

TooNice said:
Strictly speaking, the component used for mastering music and music playback is not the same. I won't argue that the M-Audio are fine sound card, but people don't go dedicated DACs for the sake of forking out more money (okay, some may, but those business wouldn't survive just on people randomly splashing lots of £££ for something that does not improve over a relatively affordable sound card ).

I'm a bit confused by that... which component is different? The DAC? There would be no point in having a DAC for music playback and another that's used when mastering, it would just cost more to produce. I'm not disagreeing with you, dedicated DACs do have their place.

Codmate · 5 Jul 2006 at 09:48

TooNice said:
Strictly speaking, the component used for mastering music and music playback is not the same. I won't argue that the M-Audio are fine sound card, but people don't go dedicated DACs for the sake of forking out more money (okay, some may, but those business wouldn't survive just on people randomly splashing lots of £££ for something that does not improve over a relatively affordable sound card ).

As mastering involves lots of playback I'm not exactly sure what you mean here.

Sure, you don't master using mp3s - often it's done at 24/48 (or higher if you're posh and have the disk-space for 24/96, or even 24/192 wavs), but it's still the same card being used for playback.

It's often done using a different API (in many cases Steinberg's ASIO), but that shouldn't affect the sound quality AFAIK - it's still the same card rendering the sound.

Yes - many professional studios use *much* higher end gear than M-Audio cards, but many people are also doing this job very competantly in their homes using lower-end gear, including stuff that ends up being commercially released.

Of course the final rendering of the 16/44.1 files is often done in software, or through a combination of outboard hardware and software.