Hi Jam,
Thanks for responding.
In general, how do you find the output quality of the system using MC? Have you compared it to regular CD players?
1A. MC's volume is just a driver's master volume. Therefore, how it works is depend on the sound/audio card driver. e.g. Digi96/8 has no master volume, so that MC has no volume too.
I'm not sure about DSP part. I think if I turned off DSP, MC plays the original sound. However, I'm not 100% sure.
Are you using the REM Digi96/8?
Cool. That makes sense. I didn't know how it dealt with the volume.
Is that because MC has this setting:
Optimize volume: By default, Media Center is set to optimize the volume on startup. This maximizes the "Wave" volume slider and turns the master slider (the one Media Center runs) down by the corresponding amount. This gives the best S/N ratios possible at a given volume for most cards. (From their Help)
2A. It's also depend on driver. Some card has problem with DirectSound, so comparing among them is good idea to find the best. ASIO should be the best, but it might be too heavy to acheive its low latency. So, again, try them out is the best idea. I'm using WaveOut.
So, if the card had all three output methods, ASIO would be the cleanest because it is the most direct path to the card, however, it can use up more system resources? Then comes WaveOut, where MC takes whatever input it has and generates a wave output which it sends to the sound card. And finally, direct sound. Where the output is left up to the mercy of the driver and windows internals?
3A. If you want to the original wave data, don't touch it. If you want to convert data to better format (e.g. wanna do oversampling), try it out. I think it is possible to use DSP to get better sound quality. However, it's depend on DSP component. Moreover, how better is depend on how you feel. So, again, the best idea is to try them out. Personally, I'm not using any of DSP for now.
I guess that I am of the opinion that most of the time, dsp settings, generally degrade the quality of a good recording. If there were more complicated Room Correction software, then I'd be more interested in them. However, just simply playing around with a ten band graphic equalizer seldom seems to generate better sound.
It would be great if there was a DSP that was written that could do Room Correction like this device:
http://www.tactaudio.com/RCS22X/index.htmlBut I haven't seen any so far (I hope that I've miss it, and that there is one available.)
4A. I don't hear any differences between Crossfade on and off at the middle of song. So, I'm using it. Cross-fade (aggressive) with gapless is the best crossfade I've ever heard. This crossfade is my primary reason of using MJ/MC.
Yeah, I really like the cross-fade from MC, particularly when just casually listening. However, I'd give it up in a second for serious listening if it resulted in sound degradation during non-fade periods.
Thanks
kiwi