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[Arbiter]

Hello. I decided to open a new topic instead of just posting a reply to Configuring Media Center's audio output [FEEDBACK WANTED] Because i would be completely off-topic.


In reply to:

We did a little work on the wiki page that the 'Help' button on Options > Audio links to.

And here's a little description of audio output modes:
http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Audio_Output_Modes

First of all, great job on putting all that info there, it surely is of big help to us! However at the bottom of the wiki article there's a note saying "The only way to prevent a Creative Labs X-Fi based card or Asus Xonar card from resampling all incoming audio is to use ASIO. WASAPI exclusive will not change the master clock of the card. " Now what i did know up until now by reading lots of threads in interact and in other audiophile sites, is that in almost all cases windows vista/7 WASAPI when used in exclusive mode (thus bypassing windows audio mixer), yields the best audio quality versus ASIO drivers, because as people say it sounds more "natural".

I'm a happy owner of Creative X-fi Titanium (despite creative's non-existent after-sales support) on windows 7 x64. Up until now, i've been using 2 Zones in MC. One set with WASAPI shared mode, so i could work on my pc while listening to music without locking the card and muting every other sounds and one zone set as WASAPI exclusive for when i would want to enjoy my music and crank my receiver's volume to the max But after reading the wiki article which states that the only way to prevent the card from resampling audio, is to use ASIO, i'm a bit confused again as to which of the two is the winner quality-wise.


I know that here applies the "Choose what your ears think is better" but i'm always trying to improve the sound coming out of my speakers and since i'm completely newbie in audiophile stuff, even the slightest bit of information, is valuable to me!


ps: I know there was an older wasapi vs asio post, but i felt it was too old for me to resurrect it.

[Matt]

I use an X-Fi for my home theater, and ASIO is the only way to get the card to change its master clock.  Previously Xonar cards were worse as they never changed their clock from a software request, but I think this has changed with newer cards and/or drivers if you put them in bit-matched mode.

You can see this for yourself with your X-Fi if you watch the Creative Console program while in Audio Creation mode and play 44.1 and 48.0 material.  Only ASIO (with bit-matched playback enabled) will change the clock.

I would say this is a clear argument for ASIO with these particular cards.

As a disclaimer, the resampling is good on these cards so it may not be a big deal.  Also, a future driver release could change the information above.  I think they should treat ASIO and WASAPI exclusive the same and switch the clock for either.

[Arbiter]

You're right indeed. Just tried it out. I could not get the card's hardware clock to change to 44.1khz by using WASAPI Exclusive, where as i could achieve it with ASIO even without bit-matched playback enabled. Does that mean that if i playback a 44.1khz file in wasapi-exclusive, the signal will get upsampled into whatever is set as master clock in xfi (let's say 96khz) and then downsampled back to 44.1khz or whatever is instructed by mc in DSP options? I think that would cause errors in the signal no matter how good the software resampler is. Speaking of which, i've found a nifty PDF showing how well the operating systems perform in resampling the signal (which can be found here) and according to that, wasapi does not do a very good job in terms of resampling.


I think i'm going to stick with Creative ASIO as my primary audio output for now,  although wasapi indeed feels "warmer" in my ears and i think i'm going to "trial and error" from there


By the way Matt, There's a nifty modified Driver Suite for X-fi based cards called PAX Drivers with the author of them claiming much better audio quality over the stock creative drivers, i think you might like to try them out.

[Matt]

Does that mean that if i playback a 44.1khz file in wasapi-exclusive, the signal will get upsampled into whatever is set as master clock in xfi (let's say 96khz) and then downsampled back to 44.1khz or whatever is instructed by mc in DSP options?

It's the other way around.

Media Center delivers audio to the card in the format you specify in Output Format.

If the card is running at a different frequency, the card will resample to the frequency of the clock before you hear it.

[mojave]

The X-Fi soundcards will resample (I think to 48 khz) when using either Gaming or Entertainment mode and I think this occurs even if using ASIO. It is hard to find hard evidence, but there has been quite a bit of "insistence" of this on various forums. It is only in Audio Creation mode that it will be bitmatched. If you have the master clock set to 96 kHz in Audio Creation mode and MC's DSP to 44.1 it will only be resampled once to 96 kHz. Since most music is 44.1, you could leave the master clock at 44.1. Then, even with WASAPI, it shouldn't be resampled.