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y splitter decrease sound quality?

K

kamal007

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2006
Messages
1,172
will it decreases the sound quality? i bought a belkin ones and can hear a slight decrease in the volume and a little bit in the quality..is it true or my ears is lying to me?

btw im using hd 595 with p2av2 amp...
 
It will decrease it although it shouldn't be a huge difference. Simply increasing cable length will decrease the quality. Also keep in mind if the sound card has to amplify a pair of headphones for instance the volume will likely be dropping, possibly clipping if the card can't push both headsets.
 
let say if the wires are kinda long..will it have a major impact in the sound quality..can u hear the difference?
 
kamal007 said:
let say if the wires are kinda long..will it have a major impact in the sound quality..can u hear the difference?
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It could. Cables make more of a difference than one would think. I used to think people who paid over $100 for cables were crazy... and now I am one of them... but I can definatly hear a difference.

Why do you need a y-splitter? Is your PC tucked away where you cant get to it easily or something?
 
im using the back panel of the sound card for the speaker and headphone..mostly i used the headphones but sometimes i use the speakers as well..i dont like using the front panel cos its kinda messy for me..

and should i also be going for the wire upgrades for my hd595 or they should be fine?
 
In that situation, there should be no tangible loss of quality. What you're doing is sticking unbalanced cabling into a line level output. If you're only using headphones, your amp is receiving the full line level signal, so the amp doesn't have to push as hard, so you're getting less noise and coloration (though you might actually want this if you like the amp). If you're driving both speakers and headphones at the same time, you're effectively halving the line level, which can be a pretty big problem.

It's possible some other things have changed. If you're running power cables near your audio cabling, you're going to reduce the quality of your signal. If you can, try and run your audio cables as far away from power cables as possible, and if you must cross them somewhere, cross them perpendicularly.
 
Any extra connection will create a contact resistance that will effect sound quality..

The splitting of the signal will also cause a signal to noise ratio loss, you will have a lower signal amplitude (volume) and more interference or hiss noise in the sound.
 
will it be significant enough to realize the difference? or we can just neglect them?
 
I tried a Y adapter for headphones and speakers once and I thought it sounded pretty bad. What you want is a soundcard like the Santa Cruz that has a Versa jack (use in headphone mode) and speaker inputs and the software allows you to switch between the two. I was using the X-Fi but it didn't suit my purposes for this reason so now play music off my other computer that has the Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz sounds better to me for music playback than the X-Fi anyway. Only problem now is that Ubuntu has no way to allow me to choose the Versa jack so am stuck in Win2K for music over the headphones.
 
wow..i never knew that santa cruz sounds better for music..ppl always say that go for x-fi if u listen to music..

btw the x-fi doesnt have headphone jack at the back right?
 
Everytime I have used a splitter like that, I have noticed background noises. I don't like it and therefore try to avoid using them at all costs.
 
kamal007 said:
btw the x-fi doesnt have headphone jack at the back right?
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According to my ZS documentation, the lef/right line output doubles as a headphone jack, so it's probably the same on the X-Fi.
 
It doesn't have a dedicated headphone jack, the jack is the same one used for the front channels.
 
Do a double-blind test. If you can't identify it, then don't worry about it.

Audio stuff makes it very tempting, for some reason, to get swept up in serious "golden ear" bullshit.
 
Hey, I've got golden ears and my bullshit says the Santa Cruz is a better soundcard for music. :)
 
Bah! Unless you can detect a 0.2 dB change in a 50 Hz frequency band, you don't have golden ears :)

That's a typical engineer response, though, and one I'm not so sure I agree with.
 
phide said:
Bah! Unless you can detect a 0.2 dB change in a 50 Hz frequency band, you don't have golden ears :)

That's a typical engineer response, though, and one I'm not so sure I agree with.
Click to expand...

did u mean the 0.2db is when using y splitter, the santa cruz sound card or longer wires?
 
phide said:
Bah! Unless you can detect a 0.2 dB change in a 50 Hz frequency band, you don't have golden ears :)

That's a typical engineer response, though, and one I'm not so sure I agree with.
Click to expand...

Yea, engineers go strictly by the numbers, which is BS too, IMO. Maybe there is something that makes a difference that they can't measure, or learnt to measure.
At one time engineers swore the earth is flat.
 
well..im a junior doing civil engineering..but didnt know nothin bout this..lol..should i change into headphile engineering? lol
 
mikeblas said:
Are you sure that wasn't the church?
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Pretty much so since I have never seen anything in the bible that said the earth was not round.

Now the church's figure heads, back in time...thats a different story.
 
It was the church. They disgraced and (I believe) killed Gallileo after he discovered the world was actually round since they considered him a heretic.
 
Zero82z said:
It was the church. They disgraced and (I believe) killed Gallileo after he discovered the world was actually round since they considered him a heretic.
Click to expand...


Who first came up with the theory though? Is it something that the church devised... or did scientists of that time come up with the theory, and then the church simply accepted it as fact?
 
No idea, though we'd better get back on topic before the mods get pissed ;).
 
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