Wow! Ogg is sounding _really_ fine these days. Waaaay past my ability to tell from CD on my crappy sound card, even at pretty low bitrates. Which leads to my question: there's a huge difference between what my sound card puts out and what my CD player can do (Rotel RCD-950 to Classe' Audio Twenty preamp to Acurus A80 amp to Epos ES-12 speakers, in case anyone cares). If my computer is feeding such a system, what's a good sound card to have? Requirements: * Has to work with Linux!!! * Not too expensive. This is fuzzy: I'd pay a few hundred for _really_ nice sound, but if I can pay $50 and get something that sounds pretty close, I'd rather do that, just because computer technology changes faster than audio technology --- I'm unlikely to have the same card in 5 years, whereas my stereo should be good for 20 (assuming, as seems likely, that 192KHz, 24 bit audio _isn't_ around the corner after all!) * Stereo is necessary, 5.1 isn't. This is for music, not movies. But if there's a great 5.1 sound card, I'll take that. If you email me directly, I'll summarise to the list. I'd also very much appreciate it if you tell me what kind of stereo you're running the sound card to... Cheers :) -Ben -- bwpearre@alumni.princeton.edu http://hebb.mit.edu/~ben -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: part Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 233 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis/attachments/20020912/65665007/part-0001.pgp
Well problematic though people claim they are... I have a SoundBlaster Live 5.1 "Gamer" (Europe name, dunno bout USA) and it works just fine under all versions of windows since 98, works perfectly under Redhat 7.0/.1/.2/.3 & SuSE 7.x and 8.0. I run it to my Sony amp and into a set of Wharfedale NXT "Loudpannel" wall hanging speaker's wit a sub unit, and in my opinion it sounds great. Also I have had not one problem with it. SBL's are pretty damn cheep these days so I'd venture that it is an ideal card. Just a side note for anyone paying attention, I've spent all week ABX testing Ogg Vorbis VS the original CD audio, I wanted to try and get Vorbis to match the sound quality of my MP3 collection (LAME --r3mix [96~256kbps vbr). I've been using some very stressful (on the codec) albums, all various forms of metal to push Vorbis as hard as possible. I am thinking right now that Vorbis q-6.20 is roughly where it becomes impossible (for me) to tell the difference between CD and .ogg, but even still I think there is a bit of midrange artefacts, I can clearly pick out quality 6.00 from .wav, and my mp3's are practically impossible. Any comments please? <p>-----Original Message----- From: owner-vorbis@xiph.org [mailto:owner-vorbis@xiph.org] On Behalf Of Ben Pearre Sent: 12 September 2002 21:31 To: vorbis@xiph.org Subject: [vorbis] Such a nice codec! Soundcard recommendations? Wow! Ogg is sounding _really_ fine these days. Waaaay past my ability to tell from CD on my crappy sound card, even at pretty low bitrates. Which leads to my question: there's a huge difference between what my sound card puts out and what my CD player can do (Rotel RCD-950 to Classe' Audio Twenty preamp to Acurus A80 amp to Epos ES-12 speakers, in case anyone cares). If my computer is feeding such a system, what's a good sound card to have? Requirements: * Has to work with Linux!!! * Not too expensive. This is fuzzy: I'd pay a few hundred for _really_ nice sound, but if I can pay $50 and get something that sounds pretty close, I'd rather do that, just because computer technology changes faster than audio technology --- I'm unlikely to have the same card in 5 years, whereas my stereo should be good for 20 (assuming, as seems likely, that 192KHz, 24 bit audio _isn't_ around the corner after all!) * Stereo is necessary, 5.1 isn't. This is for music, not movies. But if there's a great 5.1 sound card, I'll take that. If you email me directly, I'll summarise to the list. I'd also very much appreciate it if you tell me what kind of stereo you're running the sound card to... Cheers :) -Ben -- bwpearre@alumni.princeton.edu http://hebb.mit.edu/~ben <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
all- im quite impressed with vorbis...excellent codec and very compatible with players. however, im thinking of picking up a mp3-esque hardware player soon. i know none of them support ogg, but could one, perhaps, put oggs on a minidisc player the way one does mp3s? im not clear on how the mp3 transfer works, but if such a thing is possible, please mail! thanks will --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
On Fri, 13 Sep 2002 07:31, Ben Pearre wrote:> Wow! Ogg is sounding _really_ fine these days. Waaaay past my > ability to tell from CD on my crappy sound card, even at pretty low > bitrates. Which leads to my question: there's a huge difference > between what my sound card puts out and what my CD player can do > (Rotel RCD-950 to Classe' Audio Twenty preamp to Acurus A80 amp to > Epos ES-12 speakers, in case anyone cares).For typcial consumer grade soundcards, yes. Your Rotel uses a good quality power supply, DAC, and probably implements all the levels of CD audio error recovery. Typical cdroms and soundcards use cheap DACs and live inside an electromagnetically noisy computer case. Your Rotel probably cost five times as much as a cheap cdrom and soundcard, too :-)>If my computer is feeding > such a system, what's a good sound card to have?I'm using a cheap CMedia M6 card, and the digital output to my AV receiver, so the transport out of the computer is as good as it gets, and the sound quality ends up being wholly down to the quality of the DAC in the receiver (and everything else in the chain from there, on, of course).> Requirements: > > * Has to work with Linux!!!Most do, these days. Check out the ALSA soundcard matrix for what that driver supports: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/> * Not too expensive. This is fuzzy: I'd pay a few hundred for > _really_ nice sound, but if I can pay $50 and get something that > sounds pretty close, I'd rather do that, just because computer > technology changes faster than audio technology --- I'm unlikely to > have the same card in 5 years, whereas my stereo should be good for > 20 (assuming, as seems likely, that 192KHz, 24 bit audio _isn't_ > around the corner after all!)A few hundred US would get you a pro audio card or USB device, in the 2-6 channels of output range, I would think. That's what the Eridol ones where worth, last I looked.> * Stereo is necessary, 5.1 isn't. This is for music, not movies. But > if there's a great 5.1 sound card, I'll take that.Most of the new consumer cards are doing 5.1 in one form or another.> If you email me directly, I'll summarise to the list.Have a look at the reviews on digit-life: http://www.digit-life.com/sound.html Unlike typical reviews of PC soundcards, which tend to focus on game features, these reviews include tests of a lot of the interesting audio quality numbers, and they tend to look at pro audio gear, as well.> I'd also very > much appreciate it if you tell me what kind of stereo you're running > the sound card to...Right now, I'm using a CMedia M6 using the optical SPDIF output into the back of a Marantz SR4000 receiver, hooked up to B&W DM603s (S2), LCR 600 (s3) center, and some old Technics floor standing speakers as sides. Theres a B&W ASW 600 sub in there, too - digital output get's you AC3 (and DTS) passthrough, so I get good home theatre out of a $NZ70 soundcard :-) When Soundblaster Extigys get cheaper, or there's a successor or rival unit that does hardware DTS decoding, I'll ditch the receiver in favour of one of those plugged straight into some power amplifiers. John --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.