Quote:
Originally posted by The General
0n0z! Not teh 44.1!
Dude, I don't even care what the number are, what it does, how it works, resamples or not. Nothing technical like that matters with a sound card, the only thing that matters about a sound card is WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE.
AUDIGY SOUNDS GOOD.
DSP, resampling, 44.1khz, 24-bit, 128kbps, I don't know what the ****. All of this technical talk is pointless, we all agree that the soundcards sound good, so pointing out design flaws and technical crap is not going to change our possition. There is no reason for you to keep talking about this. |
Out of all the replies from people who have tried to argue my point, this has got to be the most ignorant, and ill-informed of all of them, and the fact that EricB automatically quotes it, agrees with you and throws me another back-handed insult, all with poor grammar really says something about him.
In fact, the only person here who seems to have any hint of a clue about what they are talking about would be Crysalis.
OK The General, lets go with what you said just for kicks:
So you think the Audigy2 sounds good. That is all fine and good. Everybody has a right to their own opinion. HOWEVER. It sounds good compared to
what? An iPod? Onboard sound? I'm just going to go out on a limb and assume you have never compared it to or even heard for that matter a real sound card in the same pricerange. For example, an E-MU 0404 or an ESI Juli@. Even a Chaintech AV-710 (when configured properly), which costs about $20. Now, lets say you have heard these sound cards (and configured them properly) and you still thought the Audigy2 was better. Guess what? That would still be fine and good because everybody does have their own opinion. But you have not heard any of those cards, and it is unfair to make a comparison and claim that the Audigy2 is the best when all you are comparing it to are things like an iPod or onboard sound. This is the same mistake everybody else seems to be making as well.
Now, let me try to explain on an easier level what exactly the Audigy2 does wrong that 90% of other sound cards in it's pricerange do not do.
Here is the problem. CD audio and a lot of other computer-audio is recorded at a sample rate of 44.1KHz. Do you understand what I am saying so far?
Now, when you play back that 44.1KHz audio on the Audigy2, here is a breakdown of what happens on simple terms. The 44.1KHz signal passes through the DSP. But the DSP on the Audigy2 can not process a 44.1KHz signal. It can output a 44.1KHz signal, but before that is done the signal is resampled to 48KHz so it can be processed, and then resampled again back to 44.1KHz, and then it is sent to the DAC and converted to analog and then played back through your speakers. Still with me?
So what exactly is wrong with that picture? The problem is that the DSP must resample the signal to 48KHz before it can be processed. Once it is resampled and processed, it is resampled again back to 44.1KHz, because this was the original samplerate. Still on board with what I'm saying?
Now, when the DSP resamples the 44.1KHz signal to 48KHz, an extra 3900 samples-per-second (which will now be abbreviated by s/s) must be added to the signal. Now, as Crysalis already pointed out, these extra samples are most likely past the audible frequency spectrum, which is probably true depending on the resampling algorithm that the Audigy2 uses. Are you still getting this?
So, now we have these extra inaudible 3900s/s added to the signal. This alone is not good because it's basically like having blank samples in the signal.
Now here's where it gets worse. The DSP will then resample the signal back to 44.1KHz before it is sent to the DAC.
Well, what exactly is the problem with that you might ask? And the answer is this. When you go back down to 44.1KHz, 3900s/s will then have to be removed from the signal.
But they won't be the same samples that were added when the signal was resampled to 48KHz, because the DSP does not know that it used to be a 44.1KHz signal. So now what happens is that 3900s/s of actual audio data are removed from the signal.
So if you've been following along, you will see that the signal has been "distorted" in two ways. 1. The addition of "blank" or inaudible samples. 2. The subtraction of actual audio samples.
Now for this all to click into place, you need to know what exactly a sample is. You all know what FPS stands for, right? Frames per second. And you all know what a singe frame is, right? A still image. When these still images are all played back in order you get the actual animation, whether it be a video or a game or whatever.
A sample can be thought of as a still "frame" of the audio, and when they are all played back in order you get "sound". If you like, the samplerate can be thought of as the framerate (fps) of the audio.
Is it all starting to make more sense now?
To think of it another way. What would happen if a number of blank frames were added to a video and a number of actual frames were removed. What would that look like? Not good, thats for sure.
Now, it would be much more pronounced on a video or a video game, because they range from 30 to several hundred FPS. If you think of samplerate as framerate, audio would have an fps of 44,100, so it would not be as pronounced in the audio, but it is still there and the negitive effect is has is audible none the less.