Some Sound City Guidance

[DRZ]

I don’t often come in here but when I do, I cant help but notice a general lack of understanding when it comes to purchasing sound equipment for your PC. This thread is to help you guys out when deciding what to do

A PC is an electrically “noisy” place and as such, isn’t the best at producing pure HiFi unless you opt for an outboard sound card and/or use a digital output. Having said that, unless you are really into your hifi (which you probably aren’t if you are reading this) that extra bit of noise probably wont bother you too much.

So, you have choices to make:

Do I stick with my onboard sound card?

Almost certainly not! If you can afford to do it, get yourself a decent sound card! From spending just a little more on your sound card, the jump in quality is immense!

What card should I buy?

A good question and one that is certain to be argued over. All I will say on the matter is that if you avoid ANY creative product, you shouldn’t go wrong. Creative are good at marketing and not at all good at making sound cards. Look towards better cards such as M-Audio or E-MU. There are better on the market, but at least they aren’t Creative!

Once you have picked a sound card, you then have the trickier part – the minefield that is the world of speakers. There are an awful lot of threads where people are going out and spending £240 on speakers believing they are good value for money – they are not!

As a surround sound system, they are barely capable of producing a convincing sound stage and for music reproduction they are woefully inadequate! For the same money or less you can purchase a separate hifi system that will beat any PC speakers hands-down. Admittedly, you will find it impossible to get a surround setup for the same money but the gains to be had as far as stereo is concerned are more than enough to make up for that. Indeed, some posters here have done away with surround sound systems costing several thousand pounds to focus on stereo reproduction that rivals that of the old surround system!

What is an amplifier? Why does this make a difference?

An integrated amplifier takes a signal from a sound source such as a PC or CD player and amplifies it to a signal capable of driving a pair of speakers. There are a few different types of amplifiers on the market these days but the ones that are primarily used in HiFi amps are transistor amps varying in power between 30w/channel and 500+w/channel. The two other types of amplifier are valve amps (old technology but sounds different and some people prefer this) and digital amplifiers. Digital amplifiers, for the most part, are absolutely terrible and are what you find in cheaply made things like PC speakers.

Power isn’t everything! A speaker has a sensitivity – this is how much sound it produces for one watt of input power, measured in decibels. Typically, this is between ~85 and 90dB. A “normal” listening level should be kept below 94dB to avoid hearing damage. It takes double the power for an increase of 3dB. From this, you can see that for normal listening you aren’t going to need more than just a few watts from your amplifier before you get to a point where you are going to begin to damage your hearing! Disregard power almost completely when deciding on an amplifier! I cannot stress this enough!

Lots of factors can affect sound quality from an integrated amplifier. “Integrated” means that it contains both parts of the amplifier – the preamp stage and the power amp stage. A preamp basically lets you adjust volume and choose an input whilst the power amp just takes one input (from the preamp) and amplifies that by a fixed amount to drive the speakers. The quality of both of those stages are important and ultimately decide how good the amp is. The components used by more expensive amplifiers often have a better frequency response (and hence sound better).

That’s the basics of a normal stereo amplifier – a surround sound amplifier/receiver is basically the same but with more channels on the power amp stage and a decoder in the preamp stage to take a digital signal and turn that into 6/7/8 signals to be sent to the power amp & subwoofer. If you want a surround sound system, you need one of these types but they do cost a lot more pound for pound – a £600 A/V amp generally sounds about the same as a £200 stereo amp for music!

So, what do I get for £240?

Well, you COULD go and buy a “THX” certified PC speaker system. George Lucas grants the THX certification to anything, it is a meaningless standard that does not require the product to be of a high quality at all.

If you want an easy solution or want surround for that kind of money no matter how poor the quality, the above mentioned speaker packages are for you!

If you wish to purchase something a lot better for the same money, carry on reading! Buying new (a wise choice for a fledgling in the world of Hifi without some “expert” guidance) a trip to somewhere like Richer Sounds throws up a few possibilities, such as getting a Cambridge Audio A1 at £79.99. Whilst to many Hifi enthusiasts, this amp is considered “poor”, compared to the amplification offered by PC speakers, they are an entirely different league.

This leaves you £160 to buy speakers and speaker cable…

At this point, its no longer a case of what is “better” than the other – it is down to what music you listen to and what you like to hear from a speaker. Everyone is an individual and people do have preferences but I would nominate these three:

Mission M70S - £79.95
Mourdant Short 902 - £99.95
TDL KV1 - £99.95

Then throw in some Gale XL cable, £1 a metre and you are away, saving yourself up to about £70 in the process too! You might want to invest in some stands for the speakers to put them on, but if you don’t have space for that simply blu-tacking them to your desk should be sufficient!

If your PC is the centre of your lifestyle at home, the chances are that you will benefit massively from this upgrade!

Another point that I just want to make quickly before the end:

Turn off ALL equalisation settings!

Turn them off and leave them off – I would suggest you totally forgot they were there. If you must, turn them back on after a week of not using them and I am fairly certain that you will leave them off for good.

ALL of the best kit comes totally devoid of any sort of equalisation/tone control because its not “the music” as it was intended, you are tampering with it and it generally sounds rubbish for it too.

 

[DRZ]

I've been trying to tell people a more condensed version of this every time someone buys and X-fi and Z5500 combo. It's good that someone has written something more official. However, my advice normally falls on deaf ears, I just hope people listen to you!

Probably not, but rather than type it out each time you have something to link to

I forgot to add that its not the definitive guide by any means - there are a lot of omissions and approximations that dont bear heavy scrutiny but as an introduction, its not bad

 

[DRZ]

I don't think you should be so biased against Creative.

The X-Fi has several sound enhancing features designed with the sole intention of improving PC SPEAKERS. I noticed quite a big improvement and I'm on a Hi-Fi.

I would like that to be the case, but its simply not true Anything in the signal path that changes the signal is unwelcome. I want the exact information from my CD or MP3 to reach my ears with as little change as possible - this means as little noise and "enhancement" as possible.

By emphasising certain frequencies it is possible to give an untrained ear an impression of quality without any actual substance - it is noteworthy that BOSE are masters of this - if you have a look at the frequency response of their equipment you will see that huge areas of actual information are totally absent from the output!

To give you an example, Creative on one of their cards (and I forget which) gate the output and then quote their impressively low noise levels after the gate!

For the amount of money they cost, you can do significantly better.

Obviously as an X-Fi user this isnt exactly what you want to hear but its my opinion formed after a long while in the game and one I am not about to change readily

 

[DRZ]

!Controversy alert!

I conducted a blind test - MP3 against CD.

Over 90% of those tested could not tell the difference between a properly encoded 128k MP3 and the original.

Poorly encoded MP3s sound rubbish no matter what the bit rate - well encoded ones do not.

Before anyone says "but I can hear it! I can hear it! How dare you question me" then I will say this: PROPERLY blind test yourself - where you do not know what is playing and THEN you can give answers that you know are true. If you are even slightly aware of what you think are the "correct" answers the test is useles!!

 

[DRZ]

What were you playing the CD's from?

Original audio track, compressed (in a few different ways) and then an ISO made. Burned to CD and played in any CD player of choice. I actually put the ISO on the web and let people download it and give me the results back.

Shocking how many people got it wrong!

 

[DRZ]

128kbps MP3s are crap. Everyone knows that.

I have done scientific research into this and you come along and rubbish it with a one-line post containing absolutely 0 fact, research or any apparrent thought whatsoever.

Please, if you want to enter into a discussion with me about this, please educate yourself and come back with some semblance of a respectful demeanour.

 

[DRZ]

I myself am no audiophile, but I have spoken time and time again with people like yourself; all say that compressed audio - in any form - is nothing like the origional source recording when played back on a decent Hi-Fi. A lot of information is lost in 128kbps MP3s, and there's no denying that - hence the term compression.

No, the term compression doesnt imply losing anything at all. When you zip (a form of compression) a word document, do you lose half of it? Nope.

There are two types of compression, Lossy and Lossless - Lossless is clearly superior to Lossy mathematically but if the Lossy method uses a good algorithm, it is rarely discernable by the human ear.

For what its worth, Lossy compression uses techniques to remove things that are deemed to be imperceptable - done well, this is the case, you just cant hear it.

A lot of "Audiophiles" are very quick to just jump on the "MP3s are rubbish" bandwagon and are quite suprised when they are unable to correctly tell which is which

Honestly, get someone into an anechoic chamber and start REALLY testing thier beliefs and 9 times out of 10 it all falls apart and they leave unhappy people.

 

[DRZ]

i believe it was DRZ who conducted a blind test on these forums, where something like 6 samples of a piece of music were post at various encoded rates, and we had to try and guess which was which. the results were nothign short of stunning. Virtually nobody got it right, and very few people could tell the difference between them.

It was me, yes - and IIRC, you were the ONLY person on this forum that was tested that got it consistently correct at low bit rates.

Many "audiophiles" with significantly superior equipment to yourself have failed many times to accurately tell me what was what.

Yet I still have people with PC speakers telling me it is abundantly clear which one is the low bit rate.

 

[DRZ]

@james.miller: I can see how that test would be difficult.
- Are the users told which track is uncompressed? Familiarity with the track help in those tests.
- It is one thing to tell appart the difference between two track (something I would expect someone be able to do when the difference is between 128kps and uncompressed), and to tell how they are encoded.

It was the same 30 second sample. Nobody but me knew which was which

I used 96k, 128k and 192k CBR, WMA lossless and some 220k+ VBR compression rates, MP3s encoded using the fraunhoffer algorithm IIRC.

Suprisingly, across the 3 tests I have done, more people picked the WMA as the original than any other of the tracks

 

[DRZ]

Wait, doesn't that suggest people can tell lossy and lossless appart? o.O Or am I misreading something (do you mean the VBR ones are also WMA?).

Nope - the way blind tests work are that there is a requirement that the subject gets everything right for it to be considered reliable. If they cant tell the difference between a 220vbr and the original yet think the WMA is better than the both, its obvious that they didnt actually know at all or it was a guess, therefore they didnt know at all

I had to go through all of this when trying to find the JND and JNND for a test of the smallest perceivable difference in SPL. I ended up binning most of the results because they were total garbage.

It is amazing how people would rather say they can hear a difference rather than admit that they cant!

 

[DRZ]

I've stunned everybody who has listened to my setup, not only because i'm 'only' using an av amp to power the main speakers, but also because im using a custom built 12" subwoofer (well, 2 of them) which always stays on with music. Apparently i do everything wrong but in the end it just works, while everybody with their high end equipement has left here in amazement.

The main thing to remember is dont believe what you read in the magazines or on forums. Blind testing will bring almost everybody down, and a proper lame encoded mp3 is hard to fault, whatever the equipiment you use

Anything reasonable that is well set up delivers staggering results 7 times out of 10. Buying expensive kit is easy and letting the dent in your bank balance (or pride, should it turn out to be rubbish) convince you that it is amazing is even easier.

Setup is absolutely critical and from your general posting here I would hazard a guess that is all on the button.

Again, you are correct about blind testing. Putting someone in the true unknown and forcing them to make a decision really sorts the men from the boys. I found my first blind test in proper conditions to be quite distressing actually. Having your assumptions turned on their head is something you dont forget in a hurry!

*snip*

Well, from what I have read, EAX is just some fancy reverb effects unit - if thats what you want your sounds to go through, then so be it Maybe games designers use that so they dont have to spend quite so much time making things sound good and thats why it sounds better.

Im not clued up on it enough to enter into a detailed discussion, I am not a gamer and so that side of reproduction doesnt bother me. I will stand by my assertion that a proper surround sound receiver is significantly better than any 7.1 PC speaker rigup though

 

[DRZ]

that's because your re-encoding a lossy format. there is always a drop in quality. It's better to encode from the original @ 192k than it is to re-encoded 320k to 192k. If you know your music that well, i'd invite you to have a go at a DRZ blind test special

Im not sure I still have the ISOs any more, but I would be more than happy to go through the whole process again to create one, it only takes a couple of hours

 

[DRZ]

You misunderstood what I said there.

When I quoted you, I bolded the terms [WMA lossless]. You followed up by saying that people favorered WMA to other format (which I assume you mean other lossy format).. If that is the case, then it suggest people can tell the difference between lossy and lossless.

However, I would definitely fail the ABX test between FLAC and WAV because there is not difference. If what you did is compare lossless (WMA Lossless) to another lossless (WAV) then all you proved is that people use their pinky to guess when they are not sure if there is a difference. Not the most exciting findings IMO. I still think it is more interesting to simply compare the various lossy format to a lossless format to see how good the lossy format really are.

What I was trying to get across but obviously didnt is that people thought that the original CD track was compressed and that the WMA lossless file was the original track.

Hence proving they didnt have a clue.

 

[DRZ]

Well, my reply to the 2nd part stands then. Just replace "WAV" with "CD Track".

You've shown that when cornered, people resort to guesswork. It is not something I consider particularly surprising nor interesting.

What I would find more interesting, is how often people would be able to tell a difference CD track from a 128kps out of 20-30 trial. CD track from APS setting. CD track from APE setting. APS and APE setting. etc.

Obviously, someone who get half right is clearly relying on luck. But someone who get 18/20 probably is hearing a difference, and the 2 off could be due to fatigue and other reasons. Foobar take this into account when you do the ABX test.

Im not sure I follow you - there was a 128k track, a 96k track etc on the CD image I made. I did the test three times, all with different types of music.

Are you trying to say that when these people got it wrong (when they couldnt tell me which was better than the other) they were probably hearing a difference but just... wrote down the wrong answer? If there was a difference, a clear and discernable difference of which they were absolutely sure (see Tommy B's post above) then why cant people get the same difference right twice in a row?

 

[DRZ]

I see where you are coming from, however it is a misunderstanding at the crux of your point.

The first test was a peice of classical music. 6 tracks on the cd, 5 were compressed and one was the uncompressed original. All I asked was for the tracks to be ordered in terms of quality (bit rate). This was only done correctly on two occasions out of the sample (which was about 20)

The second test was using an original file supplied by someone familiar to it. Again, in this instance, only a couple got it correctly (and not, I might add, the supplier of the file!)

The third test was pairs of tracks, a compressed track vs the original. Subjects were asked to tell me of the pairs were different or not. Results were similar to the first two.

The subjects did not know what the bit rates were (or in fact if any compression was used at all, though they no doubt assumed that for themselves) and so werent allowed to be "forced" to make a choice. They were told explicitly only to note a difference if they could hear one and if they werent sure, there wasnt a difference.

Note I was not looking at individual comparisons to make a judgement on whether they could tell a difference or not, I was looking at consistent errors in their results. Simply put, they were totally inconsistent with the results you would expect from someone who could tell the tracks apart at any given bit rate of 128k or greater.

 

[DRZ]

I don't know. This is not what the title of the thread suggest.

It only says Sound City Guidance... But the guide is geared perhaps more to would-be audiophile than people who are looking for getting better sound for their gaming PC.. Which I suspect outnumbers the former.

*Shrug*

It does seem to have gone a bit off topic, I agree.

Anyway, if anyone has a more down-to-earth question, I will gladly try and answer it for you

 

[DRZ]

*snip*

That Sir, is an excellent post.

As soon as I am able, I will create another ISO. Two problems - I dont currently have either my CD collection or my copy of Adobe Audition with me, which is a problem. A short car journey is required, which I wont be able to do before Friday probably. However, I will make sure I get it done as soon as I can and will start a new thread here in Sound City. I predict a lot of head-scratching when the results come in