OK, so I've come to the conclusion I'm doing it all wrong

[Aieee]

If you hadn't mentioned ASIO I never would have known anything about it. It was just some little control panel I didn't understand. Figured it was for some device I didn't have.

Doing a little research there's a plugin for windows media player as well, but I went ahead and tested it. It bypassed the Xonar DX audio center and the signal going into the speakers became much stronger and apparently cleaner than before. There is a telling difference in the bass, though I can still hear a noise on the speakers when they're at higher volume. The noise remains when I unplug the line-in, so I suspect I know what's the offending party there.

When I get the new speakers hooked up maybe the difference will be more obvious, since the Bose setup with its built-in amp seems to be causing a lot of interference.

 

[complexx]

I guess I came in late to the party on this one. I also heard good things about your speaker choice but I cannot comment on the amplifier. Hope everything works out.

 

[Impulse]

The people that frequent this section of the forum seem to have something against them.

Not really.... I've seen them recommended a lot.. Thing is, they're good speakers for their size, but far from the best value at their price point.

 

[Impulse]

If you are using your PC as a serious music playback source, you NEED to make sure the playback is bit-perfect. What this means is that you will need to use either the ASIO or WASAPI interface - put simply, you will need a decent soundcard and music playback software such as JRiver Media Center. iTunes will not cut it as the recent versions do not support the ASIO/WASAPI interface.

Without bit-perfect playback it is useless to dump money into your speakers/amp/DAC...garbage in, garbage out remember?

I have a mid-range hifi system hooked up to my PC (Asus Xonar DX) and the difference between using ASIO/WASAPI and Directsound is night and day. In fact, the relatively cheap Asus Xonar DX with JRiver MC + ASIO is comparable to my 1000USD dedicated hifi cd player. Take out ASIO/WASAPI from the equation and you will notice that the highs and not highs, the lows not low...you get my drift.

If you need to dig deeper into this topic, check out computeraudiophile.com.

Hope this helps you fellow audio enthusiasts out there...

I seriously doubt you'd hear a night and day difference if you did an honest to goodness ABX comparison... Its not really the absolute necessity you make it out to be with the Vista/Win 7 audio stack. People like to blow things way out of proportion when talking about this tho, as with most things in the audio world.

 

[barkingpig]

I seriously doubt you'd hear a night and day difference if you did an honest to goodness ABX comparison... Its not really the absolute necessity you make it out to be with the Vista/Win 7 audio stack. People like to blow things way out of proportion when talking about this tho, as with most things in the audio world.

The difference is easily discernible with decent equipment and a keen ear. I actually agree with you there is a lot of snake oil when it comes to audio (e.g. 500 bucks cables/interconnects etc), but the improvement you get from using ASIO/WASAPI over Windows Kmixer is real. Best of all, it costs nothing to try if your soundcard/DAC already supports it.

Most of the folks over at computeraudiophile,com swear by ASIO/WASAPI once they have made the comparison...personally the improvement even warrants a switch from my favorite music player iTunes to JRiver Media Center, purely to achieve bit-perfect playback. That's how good ASIO/WASAPI is to me...as with many things in the world, YMMV

 

[barkingpig]

If you hadn't mentioned ASIO I never would have known anything about it. It was just some little control panel I didn't understand. Figured it was for some device I didn't have.

Doing a little research there's a plugin for windows media player as well, but I went ahead and tested it. It bypassed the Xonar DX audio center and the signal going into the speakers became much stronger and apparently cleaner than before. There is a telling difference in the bass, though I can still hear a noise on the speakers when they're at higher volume. The noise remains when I unplug the line-in, so I suspect I know what's the offending party there.

When I get the new speakers hooked up maybe the difference will be more obvious, since the Bose setup with its built-in amp seems to be causing a lot of interference.

Hi Aieee, yes you will notice a difference in the sound using ASIO. The Xonar DX has a very good DAC, so feed the signal to your Bose Companion 5 using Aux Input instead of the USB connection. If you are looking for serious music rig, I'd suggest you look into a dedicated amplifier and speakers.

Here's what I'm using atm and loving it!

Dali Ikon2 Bookshelf speakers
Arcam A18 Stereo Amplifier
Asus Xonar DX (make sure if you have the latest drivers, earlier ones have glitches with the ASIO interface)
JRiver Media Center v17 + ASIO

 

[Q1DM6]

I actually agree with you there is a lot of snake oil when it comes to audio (e.g. 500 bucks cables/interconnects etc),

I don't even know how this stuff can exist. There can't be sales enough to justify cables at the prices we see for this stuff. You'd think the pricing model would collapse on itself.

 

[matteos]

I don't even know how this stuff can exist. There can't be sales enough to justify cables at the prices we see for this stuff. You'd think the pricing model would collapse on itself.

You'd be surprised at some of the idiocy that people waste money on.

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm

 

[Godmachine]

I don't even know how this stuff can exist. There can't be sales enough to justify cables at the prices we see for this stuff. You'd think the pricing model would collapse on itself.

You wouldn't believe how many people spend that kind of money on snake oil audio products per month. Honestly all you can do is feel pity for them , huge waste of money for a self contrived difference.

But its like that for much of the audio/video market.

 

[Godmachine]

If you are using your PC as a serious music playback source, you NEED to make sure the playback is bit-perfect. What this means is that you will need to use either the ASIO or WASAPI interface - put simply, you will need a decent soundcard and music playback software such as JRiver Media Center. iTunes will not cut it as the recent versions do not support the ASIO/WASAPI interface.

Without bit-perfect playback it is useless to dump money into your speakers/amp/DAC...garbage in, garbage out remember?

I have a mid-range hifi system hooked up to my PC (Asus Xonar DX) and the difference between using ASIO/WASAPI and Directsound is night and day. In fact, the relatively cheap Asus Xonar DX with JRiver MC + ASIO is comparable to my 1000USD dedicated hifi cd player. Take out ASIO/WASAPI from the equation and you will notice that the highs and not highs, the lows not low...you get my drift.

If you need to dig deeper into this topic, check out computeraudiophile.com.

Hope this helps you fellow audio enthusiasts out there...

Absolutely nonsense. You don't need ASIO/WASAPI/KS or anything of the like. Its been proven time and time again with blind tests that you simply can not tell the difference. Your brain is working against you in this regard , it filters information according to priority and that priority is always going to be to cherry pick information that is most relevant to your own perception. You can "claim" there is a difference but you are simply convincing yourself of this.

Audiophiles are an unfortunate group of people that seem to really believe that spending thousands of dollars on a cable and thousands more on a power supply filter for a $500 headphone amp and a $800 pair of cans will result in sound quality that equals or exceeds recording quality done live in the studio. The information being streamed to your PC through the windows mixer is already as good as its going to get and its extremely debatable if you can even tell the difference between 44/16 and 96/24 even with high end equipment.

The time the audio difference is truly different and individually driven is by the headphones themselves. If you want different audio experiences or improved quality then that's where you should blow your money , stop worrying about the cables , the amp , the dac and the ported source type. Get a nice clean recording and a decent quality pair of headphones and you'll have all that you need. This is the only acceptable part where individuality truly comes into play and each one of us will have varying opinions that are neither right or wrong.

There is no way you could prove in a blind test that any of the supposed "bit-perfect" streams produced by ASIO/WASAPI/KS will result in better and more faithful audio reproduction. In fact enabling those separate streams can result in delays to the interface and audio "clicking" and "popping" sounds just using those separate streams.

 

[spaceman]

The things I have found that change the sound, a short list.

1. Different headphones/speakers. Duh.
2. Different types of amplification. Tubes vs SS.
3. Different types of recording. POP BLASTIN TUNES vs a real recording that isn't boosted into the hemisphere.
4. Rewiring a headphone or speaker. Not changing the speaker wire or headphone cable but actually rewiring and or changing parts inside the enclosure.

Don't mess with the sound. Just play it in foobar as is and there you go.

 

[Aieee]

As of today the amp and the speakers turned up. I spent quite a while setting it up.

However there's a problem. It...doesn't work.

Nothing seems to have been damaged in shipping, but the A-100 mini amp isn't working. Even with nothing connected to it, it's little status light is blinking orange. The same occurs with the speakers connected to it. The manual says this indicates some sort of connection problem like a short or ground problem.

I've submitted a ticket into Emotiva about it, but I'm at a loss as to what's wrong or how to fix it. I'm suspecting there's some problem with the amp itself, but the manual's pretty light on details and I haven't been able to find any online references explaining why.

 

[atarione]

As of today the amp and the speakers turned up. I spent quite a while setting it up.

However there's a problem. It...doesn't work.

Nothing seems to have been damaged in shipping, but the A-100 mini amp isn't working. Even with nothing connected to it, it's little status light is blinking orange. The same occurs with the speakers connected to it. The manual says this indicates some sort of connection problem like a short or ground problem.

I've submitted a ticket into Emotiva about it, but I'm at a loss as to what's wrong or how to fix it. I'm suspecting there's some problem with the amp itself, but the manual's pretty light on details and I haven't been able to find any online references explaining why.

lame... are you sure the voltage switch is set correctly on the back? it isn't set to 230V by mistake is it?

 

[Aieee]

Despite offering a reply within 48 hours, Emotiva tech support responded mid-morning today a couple hours after their office opened.

There wasn't even a discussion on the query. They're shipping me a new amp with a label to repack the current one and send it back at no expense to me. No idea what's wrong with it, but it's not the obvious things. They only indicated there had to be something wrong with it internally.

So while the amp's a bust, I have to say their customer service is really good.

 

[Impulse]

That's nice, I've always said that a company's response when something goes wrong is way more important than the fact that you may have gotten a lemon or DOA product from them.

 

[matteos]

Despite offering a reply within 48 hours, Emotiva tech support responded mid-morning today a couple hours after their office opened.

There wasn't even a discussion on the query. They're shipping me a new amp with a label to repack the current one and send it back at no expense to me. No idea what's wrong with it, but it's not the obvious things. They only indicated there had to be something wrong with it internally.

So while the amp's a bust, I have to say their customer service is really good.

That sucks, there's nothing worse than setting something new up ready to enjoy it and there's a problem, at least they are taking care of you.

 

[Aieee]

OK, the replacement amp arrives and everything is working. I spent quite a while testing and I think we have arrived at better sound, though the quest is not over.

This little system has quite a lot of power, however I have a resonance problem. Having the source of the bass on my desk is causing parts of it to vibrate loudly on low notes and I'm struggling to find a way to fix it. I suppose getting a sub to put on the floor is an option, but that means more money. Playing with the mixer I've found that the vibrations are mostly caused by frequencies below 120 Hz.

I'm also struggling a bit to find the best settings. I can still hear noise sometimes, though I don't know why. I've been fiddling with settings trying to find the combination that works best. I'm thinking it has more to do with the quality of the input and the settings, since I can tell there's a difference in the noise when I play a 128 bit rate piece as opposed to a 900+ bit rate one. It also seems to matter how strong the input signal is compared to how high the amp is turned up. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[atarione]

OK, the replacement amp arrives and everything is working. I spent quite a while testing and I think we have arrived at better sound, though the quest is not over.

This little system has quite a lot of power, however I have a resonance problem. Having the source of the bass on my desk is causing parts of it to vibrate loudly on low notes and I'm struggling to find a way to fix it. I suppose getting a sub to put on the floor is an option, but that means more money. Playing with the mixer I've found that the vibrations are mostly caused by frequencies below 120 Hz.

I'm also struggling a bit to find the best settings. I can still hear noise sometimes, though I don't know why. I've been fiddling with settings trying to find the combination that works best. I'm thinking it has more to do with the quality of the input and the settings, since I can tell there's a difference in the noise when I play a 128 bit rate piece as opposed to a 900+ bit rate one. It also seems to matter how strong the input signal is compared to how high the amp is turned up. Anyone have any ideas?

well thank goodness the replacement amp works...bummer about the orig one but it seem emotiva handled the doa as well as anyone could.


as far as the vibration you can get speaker isolation pads for the bookshelf speakers

something like

http://www.amazon.com/Auralex-MOPAD-Monitor-Isolation-Charcoal/dp/B0002D0B4K

but that is $30




I have my RTi4s on a shelf i built that sits on my desk ... i have a bit issue with this also (at high volume) I just sat the RTi4s on a could $3 mousepads... doesn't isolate them perfectly but does a good enough job for me. cause I generally can't (wife) run my speakers that loud to start with.



what if found also moving from logitech multimedia speakers to my current set up.... low quality encoded stuff...really winds up sounding like ass with better speakers


I basically have been going back through my cd's and ripping them to .flac sounds great... actually 192kbps or higher mp3s generally are passable but anything i had that was 128 just sounds terrible.

 

[Impulse]

Another option for isolation stands:

http://audioengineusa.com/about/Accessories_2/DS2-Desktop-Stand-Pair

Looks plastic but they're actually hard rubber (think tire rubber or TPU), not any cheaper but you might prefer the angling depending on your desk/positioning. Also wider I think so it might fit some speakers better.

I used binders filled with a slab of foam for the longest time before I bought those.

 

[christpunchers]

Sorry for bringing up this thread.

But if I have the following equipment, what's the best way to configure them to get the best sound?

A soundcard (Asus Essence STX perhaps?)
an interconnect
DAC1 Pre
Headphones

1) For games? Should I use the soundcard's analogue out? Or have the soundcard output a digital stream into the DAC1 and use the DAC1?

2) How about for movies? If I were to use digital out from the soundcard to my DAC1, what can I do enhance the experience? Are there any options on the Asus cards worth trying?

3) For music?

 

[MrCaffeineX]

but there was a noticeable amount of interference (The static hum without music is much more audible)

I had a similar problem when I switched from using a set of Logitech PC speakers to an older AV receiver I had lying around. My solution was to get a Ground Loop Isolator (I think it was about $10 at Radio Shack). It accepts the 3.5mm input and offers either 3.5mm output or stereo RCA jacks via adapter and that static hum disappeared on my setup.