Post by Julien September 26, 2007 (1 of 13)
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Hi guys,
I want to buy a decent sound card for my computer, maybe even one of the best out there why not? Any advice?
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Post by Cojle September 28, 2007 (2 of 13)
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Julien said:
Hi guys,
I want to buy a decent sound card for my computer, maybe even one of the best out there why not? Any advice?
Seems like AV-710 sound card from Chaintech might be a good choice -- extremely inexpensive, good quality DAC chips
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Julien said:
Hi guys,
I want to buy a decent sound card for my computer, maybe even one of the best out there why not? Any advice?
Julien,
I have something called a cardDeluxe which I read first read about in stereophile maybe 5 yrs ago. It will record 24/96 from an analog stream.
http://www.digitalaudio.com/digitalaudio/myheadline.asp?S=75&P=5187&PubID=4401
With this in conjunction with my Goland Audio DVD Creator software I can make 24/96 DVD copies of my LPs should I desire.
Bruce
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Post by Julien October 1, 2007 (4 of 13)
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Thank you very much.
I have another concern recently: I've started to rip many of my CDs into my computer using Windows Media Player. I keep the files in the wav. format anyway, and so far I haven't noticed any problem, but is there any damage possible to the files doing it this way? Should I use some other software?
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Julien said:
Thank you very much.
I have another concern recently: I've started to rip many of my CDs into my computer using Windows Media Player. I keep the files in the wav. format anyway, and so far I haven't noticed any problem, but is there any damage possible to the files doing it this way? Should I use some other software?
Damage to the files? Don't even know what that's supposed to mean.
You might want to look into converting to FLAC to save disc space though: http://flac.sourceforge.net/
(or any other lossless codec really, just that FLAC is the most widely supported and it's open source)
-Joshua
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Post by Julien October 1, 2007 (6 of 13)
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What I mean by damaging the files is a little bit similar to what I hear on poorly done mp3, like a lot of scratching or dirty sounds. Can it happen when I transfer CDs through windows media player to .wav without compression? I'm afraid that after a few years the files are not as clean.
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Post by synthy October 1, 2007 (7 of 13)
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Julien said:
What I mean by damaging the files is a little bit similar to what I hear on poorly done mp3, like a lot of scratching or dirty sounds. Can it happen when I transfer CDs through windows media player to .wav without compression? I'm afraid that after a few years the files are not as clean.
If the file gets corrupted somehow it can get glitchy, but that's extremely rare, and I think more common with compressed formats. I have thousands of wave files on my computer that have gone from hard drive to hard drive for about 8 years now, and they're all fine.
In terms of a sound card, check out Lynx Studio Technology. www.lynxstudio.com
Their L22 card might be just what you need, and I have nothing but good words about Lynx's support and sound quality. I use an AES16 with Aurora converters, but their internal cards are probably just as good. Watch out for whether you need a PCI or PCI-E card, though.
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Julien said:
What I mean by damaging the files is a little bit similar to what I hear on poorly done mp3, like a lot of scratching or dirty sounds. Can it happen when I transfer CDs through windows media player to .wav without compression? I'm afraid that after a few years the files are not as clean.
Ok....you seem to be a bit confused.
Discounting issues that happen when you actually rip the music (usually related to the disc itself having issues, or the computer being overloaded during the process), any file you make is an exact digital copy.
What this means is that two years or two decades, they will be exactly the same. A simple example, say the write the letter 'd' on my screen, as I just did. Then I use the copy function to create another 'd' with paste. There is absolutely zero difference between the two. That's what happens when you make a copy of a file. Only if the storage space itself is corrupted would you have to worry.
The problem with Mp3s is the encoding caused by compression, and again, sometimes a computer overload when the process occurs. .wavs have no such issues, as they aren't being compressed. Lossless compression, as I mentioned above, also doesn't -- it's the musical equivilent of making a .zip or .rar file. Any sonic issues will be related to your player, or what you would have heard on the CD in the first place.
-Joshua
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Post by Julien October 2, 2007 (9 of 13)
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TerraEpon said:
Ok....you seem to be a bit confused.
I was. Not anymore.
I was also thinking that logically there is no way a pure copy of 1 and 0s gets damaged, but since I had heard some problems before I wanted to be sure. Maybe the computer was as you say overloaded while copying or the player not stable. On the other hand, I for sure have some old mp3s that I just cannot listen to with my Shure 530 earphones.
Thank you very much for your lights Joshua, I already started to use FLAC through Winamp, which was an opportunity for getting rid of the Windows Media Player I hate, and since you seem to know about all that do you know of one equivalent of FLAC for the ripping of DVDs? How can I do that?
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Post by Julien October 3, 2007 (10 of 13)
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I think this might be what I need:
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/m-audio-Audiophile-192.html
After a lot of review reading, this one seems to be more up to date than some older and more expensive models, with thus a good value for the money.
Lynx is obviously superior, but I'll narrow my budget down here because all I'll use as speakers will likely be 200$ computer speakers by Klipsch (Promedia GMX A-2.1). And the rest of my computer is an ordinary Dell model from 2 years/half ago.
I'm still hesitating between the M Audio Audiophile 192 and the Digital Audio Deluxe Windsurfer has. My guess from what I read would be that the latter is slightly better in sound transparency. Then it is clearly more expensive and is only 24/96 (though I doubt 192 will be of any use for me).
Anyway if the Digital Audio offers some important possibilities that the M Audio doesn't, I might buy it.
Could anyone help me on this further matter?
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