Comments
Puzzled-Background-5 t1_iyc87mc wrote
It's an obsession with these types of people, pure and simple, and of no sonic benefit whatsoever in a playback environment.
Audio playback and the Digital Signal Processing involved in it have very light system requirements:
For example, I've stress tested my own music server by having it stream to 6 network players simultaneously. This involved running independent DSP profiles, which included convolution filters, for each of the 6, as well as transcoding the results of that processing to 24/48 flac for transmission via WiFi. The server's CPU never reached over 8% utilization while doing this and the sound was as high fidelity as anyone could ask for. I experienced no dropouts/glitching, either.
All of that was done on a Dell Optiplex 990 (i7 2600) computer that was built in 2011. It was running an "unoptimized" Windows 10 Pro install at that.
All the best... 😎
H3y8a83 t1_iyc9b98 wrote
That person has been spending too much time listening to bullshit artists. Most of the posters on that particular website are delusional idiots. The sane ones are ridiculed into silence and if that doesn't do it, silenced by admins and moderators. The Sound Science section is frequented by a few knowledgeable people who knows what they are talking about. But even there the good threads gets trolled hard every time by the ignorant majority. Overall it's a truly dogshit website.
Gofa_Kirselph t1_iyc9eu1 wrote
What is this pile of horseshit???
Orangutan_Ulti OP t1_iycbrgz wrote
It's added 'organic natural warmth' /s
Orangutan_Ulti OP t1_iycbvhl wrote
Looked up the software mentioned myself and Audiophile Optimizer does exists but all that came up for "Lemonade Elite 61" were a few energy drinks.
Gofa_Kirselph t1_iycfe4w wrote
Man, as if this hobby wasn’t esoteric enough. That’s why people think we’re insane
UnnecessaryMovements t1_iyci1wf wrote
That's the reason I never came back to Head Fi. Those pseudoscience and the Tyll and NwAvGuy drama.
aandres_gm t1_iyciw7v wrote
The PC gets thirsty at times, bro. Gotta let it sip on the lemonade.
GZoST t1_iyclvdd wrote
Bullshit on top of nonsense with a healthy dose of idiocy.
Sources, DACs and amps are solved problems as long as you buy stuff made by engineers who use measurements for validating their designs and not by audiophiles with golden ears.
Headphones and speakers are more problematic, especially since there are the headphone + head or speakers + room interaction. Optimizing this interaction makes sense. However, that's not with audiophile tweaks but EQ and, for speakers, room treatment (e.g. absorbers).
No-Context5479 t1_iycrqf3 wrote
Lol ... Thanks for the laugh
verifitting t1_iyctfwa wrote
Digital audiophile nervosa. Arguably the worst kind!
daballsman t1_iyd0vi4 wrote
“Memory jitter reduction” lol
TheFrator t1_iyd2h5r wrote
All forums have their bias (just like news sources) so separating the wheat from the chaff is what you need to do. Head-Fi has better discussions on specific headphones than Reddit given its typical forum layout. But that means it does have more audiophile woo woo like this. SBAF, Reddit, and ASR have their drawbacks too.
tekszi t1_iyd7c0z wrote
As someone who is a tester of a heavily customized Windows os used by thousands, I can tell you for 100% that the answer is no. You can achieve a lot lower audio latency but that doesn't mean better quality, setting CPU processor affinities to your desired audio player or driver (for example ASIO) could theoretically help but even though I've been testing this for months, it seems like a complete placebo when it comes to actual audio quality. I'd still recommend setting affinities if you are running lower audio buffers since windows has this tendency to focus most processes to core 0 and by making it run on a different core, processing audio shouldn't be as resource-heavy as it is typically. And even this is a very rare case that I can only imagine happening on 25-year-old hardware.
Regarding "optimization"/"tweaking" software, most of their code has been sourced out by information you can access freely, or most of it can be plain wrong or hardware dependent which means they may not even work. Please do not consider ever buying such products for audio, gaming or any use case where it could come to mind.
hallpdx t1_iyd8kil wrote
Another way I can tell: I can be recording 12 tracks of 24/48k wave with multiple plugins on each channel and my 5 year old system has no problems. Reproduction of a single stereo file is very very easy.
MachineTeaching t1_iyd965v wrote
I honestly can't tell if this is a joke or not. Memory jitter reduction?
Anyway, the short answer is, none of this really matters.
The long answer is found in the following link. Windows actually does some processing and if you want to be really anal about things you can disable that stuff.
It's unlikely that the perceivable improvement goes beyond placebo though.
PeetTreedish t1_iydbz3f wrote
That person has OCD. Not audiophelia. There are benefits to having quality made gear. There is also very limited returns on spending tons of money on even more expensive stuff. Sure using the best electronic parts that are made will have measurable results, but not with any human ear. None of them.
Nadeoki t1_iydc3aw wrote
iirc linux has crappy audio implementation (that's why you'd need some of these for instance.) And yes Windows Direct Audio sucks too. Not too sure about all of them but for Dolby stuff for example you specifically need some licensed software also. I wouldn't call it min-maxing obsession to use software designed to perform audio better than perhaps a general use driver that isn't well optimized for example to play DSD, SAC, Dolby Atmos 7.1, etc..
Nadeoki t1_iydcjrc wrote
Wondering why you benchmarked flac encoding and not something computationally advanced such as opus or e-aac3
Nadeoki t1_iydclv0 wrote
in wav. for sure. Tried a compressed codec?
Nadeoki t1_iydcvtf wrote
Asio and Wasapi are superior to Windows Direct Audio.
vincentquy t1_iydfecs wrote
Use a bunch of DSPs -> "Oh yeah! There is a bit more ORGANIC NATURAL warmth..."
LMAO, just LMAO.
spartaman64 t1_iydi58r wrote
yesnt https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/ending-the-windows-audio-quality-debate.19438/ but yeah the ways to fix it is different from what the headfi person is talking about
f3llyn t1_iydj9wn wrote
That's not a hobby anymore. This guy is tuning for things that will only be noticeable in the most extreme fringe of fringe cases possible and even then only if you have ultrasonic hearing.
And some parts he is just straight making up. "More organic natural warmth across the frequency range"? Sounds like what happens after getting baked and taking a quick trip to Taco Bell.
tekszi t1_iydjsj0 wrote
100% true, I feel that I may have worded my sentences so that it looks like I think otherwise but that is not the case
plumpudding2 t1_iydndd9 wrote
I kind of like HQPlayer myself, it uses your CPU horsepower instead of the chip inside your dac to do the music upsampling with much heavier digital filters.
For me the differences are subtle but nice, for 44.1khz content digital filters can have quite an impact as the nyquist frequency is so close to the audio band.
But don't believe my claims, you can listen for yourself! It has a free trial mode with the only limitation that it has to be restarted every 30 minutes.
juliangst t1_iydoops wrote
Nope, they’re not. You can simply measure the windows audio loopback and see that windows direct sound with its upsampling and dithering is as transparent as Wasapi/Asio
_Kai t1_iydoswj wrote
Two of those programs I am aware of can have legitimate uses:
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Process Lasso can manage which cores and core affinities a program uses, not unlike Windows' Task Manager, but also remember them. If the CPU is overly taxed by multiple programs at once, an affinity can be set to try to prioritize one over the other. This can help to reduce stutter and artifacts in live audio processing software by prioritizing it at the top with a high or real-time affinity. But with a strong enough CPU and good program management, this is unnecessary.
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Throttlestop is used for systems with Intel CPUs, usually laptops, to reconfigure the CPU's power (wattage, voltage) and speed. Intel even offers its own tool that does much the same, called Intel XTU (eXtreme Tuning Utility). Many laptops are incorrectly configured by default and will quickly overheat when stressed, causing the CPU to slow down which could be a cause for audio to not be processed correctly. By limiting the power or speed, or even setting a new artificial overheat point below the hardware's actual overheat point, it's possible to maintain an expected amount of speed.
RanaI_Ape t1_iydye1u wrote
The computer sends 1's and 0's to the DAC, that's it. None of this bullshit is making the 1's more one-y or 0's more zero-ey.
People are so dumb sometimes, it's almost painful. Honestly, the prevalence of this kind of absolute stupidity has made me lose interest and distance myself from "audiophile" communities. I might check this sub once a week tops vs daily like I used to and I never visit audiophile forums anymore. I'm satisfied with my gear, and stuff like this makes me feel dumber for having read it and generally just sours me on the audiophile hobby overall. It makes me feel like there is a large overlap between "audiophiles" and conspiracy theorists. You have to have a tremendous lack of critical thinking skills and large amount of confirmation bias to fall into these silos-of-stupid and I want nothing to do with any of it.
hallpdx t1_iydzgrr wrote
The processing requirements to render plugins doing multi band eq and compression in real time on 12 tracks at once are much higher than like, rendering an mp3 if that's what you mean.
abir_valg2718 t1_iye3ha7 wrote
Oh man, in 2000s I remember seeing the occasional post that FLAC/APE sounded worse than WAV files. These people seem... sane, by comparison.
Min maxing for low latency audio (i.e. music production) is a thing, Windows can absolutely have issues that you'll need to debug and fix, if possible. But regular media consumption? It's not a thing unless you just happen to have some serious driver issues, like having DPC latency spikes that cause audio buffer underruns even with stock Windows audio stack which has a huge buffer. You maybe, maybe want to add a resampler to foobar2000 if you can possibly be bothered, you 100% won't hear the difference, but just for shits and giggles it's like a minute of work, so might as well (and maybe Win10 made the resampler better so it's even more pointless, I don't actually know).
richardw1992 t1_iye5mgx wrote
I don't even understand what they are saying.
H3y8a83 t1_iye87vi wrote
>I don't even understand what they are saying.
Don't be alarmed, neither was the person saying it.
Nadeoki t1_iyea32c wrote
You called using asio over windows direct drivers "placebo" even tho noise from sample rate conversion has been demonstrated as audible.
Nadeoki t1_iyeb83r wrote
That has, in fact been done which demonstrates windows direct has noise in the audible range. While WASAPI does not. In fact, with WASAPI and ASIO, there's no need for sample rate conversion at all.
The difference between ASIO/WASAPI and DS is that DS always use the Win mixer.
All audio is dithered by the mixer.
If the sample rate of the audio differs from the one set in the sound panel, it will be resampled.
ASIO/WASAPI (exclusive) will bypass the mixer.
No dither and no resampling if the hardware is able to play the sample rate of the audio. This is about the protocol. The media player might do all kind of DSP like volume control + dither.
Nadeoki t1_iyebqz6 wrote
No I meant, why are you benchmarking with the computationally most easily decoded platform to test system performance when codecs like Opus, transcoding in real-time, into multiple streams does in fact require <some> processing power. I run a Plex server and all my Music is being transcoded to Opus C-VBR 150 to multiple end-users on the same PC I use as Daily Driver for gaming and rendering tasks.
Hail_LordHelix t1_iyedzy0 wrote
Wait until you see the thread in the summitfi subforum on headfi about the 3800 dollar 100mbps hifi Ethernet switch.
I shit you not it's there and there's actual people defending the product. There's tons of people there that buy into crap like that and in the screenshot from op's post. It's unbelievable how crazy some of the stupid shit is that people post on that website.
hallpdx t1_iyee4tl wrote
I'm not benchmarking, I'm just making the point that rendering audio well is very very very easy.
tekszi t1_iyegc6c wrote
No, I said that tweaking anything mentioned by the op's post won't help you get more out of using ASIO, WASAPI or even Windows Direct Audio , I never mentioned that either of those protocols were placebo. What I was talking about was the case of setting their process to a dedicated processor core and that affecting their sound quality.
Nadeoki t1_iyekcdp wrote
there's well and there's excellence.
vext01 t1_iyepo7t wrote
But the ones and zeros are better quality!
Gofa_Kirselph t1_iyf7631 wrote
I still browse head-fi from time to time, especially since they tend to have more information on higher end or obscure items. But then there’s posts like these where people go completely overboard. They’ll mod their headphones, amp, DAC, PC trying to chase those 1% improvements. I’m just like… maybe you need to change something else in your life and not your setup if you’re not enjoying it 😬
[deleted] t1_iyfe1kk wrote
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PolarBearSequence t1_iyc81ni wrote
Absolute nonsense. On the software side of things: the only job the OS has is decoding and pushing the digital audio towards the DAC (external or internal, doesn’t really matter). This is not a bottleneck on modern devices, and ignoring some fringe edge cases, it will end up being bit-perfect.
I’m quite confident all of that "optimization" software mentioned falls into one of three cases:
In fact, I can’t even find the last two programs mentioned, and TrustedInstaller is a windows builtin.