AV Rant #351: Good Vibrations
Are you one of those people that wishes AV Rant episodes would never end? Do you base your workouts on how long the podcast is? Well crack a beer or grab some extra water and advil because it is our longest show ever! Yes, there was a terminal lack of news this week but our listeners asked so many questions that we just couldn’t keep this one to an hour. First, in the news, underwhelming announcements from Apple and Tom’s preliminary review of OS X.9 Mavericks. Is 4k here to stay? CE Pro thinks so and the AV Rant crew agrees. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have problems with their reasons. We have some headphone news including one from Oppo, Tom lets us know about his forthcoming review of the Emotiva Stealth DC-1, and Liz admits to liking a Monster product. Tom gives a preliminary review of RHA’s MA750 in-ear headphones. Tons of listener questions and comments including a discussion of the Tekton speaker offerings, Herbie’s Audio Lab, and more. This week’s in-depth topic: Vibrations. Thanks for listening. Now, don't forget to:
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Some great clarification about the Windows Mixer from AVRant listener Efrain! Thanks so much, Eli! 😀
— A comment on what Rob said about the software bypassing the Windows Mixer… Windows has a default format for outputting sound using DirectSound. If you go to the mixer and see the properties of your default audio playback device, you can setup the default audio format. Usually that format is 16bit/44.1khz, but you can change it to whatever and everything is resampled to that default you setup……Now If you have a nice 24bit/96khz or 24/192khz album in WAV that you bought from HDTracks and play it through iTunes/Windows Media Player, it will be resampled or reclocked to that default, potentially eliminating the benefit of the extra sound data you paid for….Now this only happens on applications that share the sound mixer. With JRiver (and now iTunes oddly enough) you can use WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) which allows the software to take exclusive use of the sound device (be it the internal soundcard of your computer or your USB DAC or your AVR through HDMI), allowing it to bypass the Windows Mixer and playing back the audio file in the proper format be it 16/44, 24/96, 24/192, etc without any extra modifications. Some also call this “Bit-perfect” audio playback because the file is played natively. Another alternative used in many USB DACs is ASIO, but the manufacturer of the playback device has to develop an ASIO driver for Windows to support it. This is one of the things that have allowed high end computer based audio systems to be a reality as can see from the growing number of audio shows that use a computer as music server instead of just using CD/SACD players, etc.
I hope this can help those who listen to the podcast and are a little confused by this topic. —
Here are the links recommended by our AVRant Listeners!
– Paul recommends the DigitalHome.ca Forum for Canadian AV enthusiasts: http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/
– Michael recommends TVMOBili Media Server: http://www.tvmobili.com/
Check ’em out! And thanks so much to our listeners for all the great feedback!