Sound better in Windows 7.

[DM]

Am i imagining things or do music/films sound better in Windows 7 than XP?

 

[Nick1881]

Maybe updated drivers?

What sound card do you have?

Can't say I noticed any difference from Vista to W7.

 

[DM]

Its just an Asus Xonar with logitech THX surround speakers, probably imagining it then

 

[Uriel]

Have you installed a multichannel version of powerDVD or anything on Windows 7?

 

[DM]

No iv not installed anything at all sound related in W7 other than the Asus beta driver. Iv just booted up XP again and then W7 straight after and im sure sounds are clearer in W7.

Bahh its probably in my head.

 

[hohum]

That's because W7 (and Vista) have a new audio mixer that provides noticeably better quality audio (and virtually no distortion). The new audio mixer uses a 32-bit floating point algorithm, as opposed to XP's 16-bit fixed point algorithm.

This is why a lot of people on XP tend to use ASIO or kernel streaming plugins for media players, so as to bypass XP's mixer for better audio quality (whereas in Vista/7 you'd realistically not be able to hear any difference at all when bypassing the mixer).

 

[DM]

Nice one thanks for that.