INTERACT FORUM

Devices => Sound Cards, DAC's, Receivers, Speakers, and Headphones => Topic started by: Pjotr on December 06, 2008, 09:58:44 am

Title: Output format questions
Post by: Pjotr on December 06, 2008, 09:58:44 am
Hi,

I am using an Asus Eee PC 901 hooked to an E-MU Tracker USB2 soundcard/DA-converter for a music system. The E-MU can handle SR up to 192 kHz and BD of 24 bits. I want to take advantage of the up-sampling capabilities of the DSP. The soundcard is driven by the ASIO driver.

Can you explain how the up-sampling works? Is it worth to try and gives it any advantages, that is to say, how does it interpolates? Does it do linear, or more advantaged interpolation like spline or sin/x interpolation?

When I set the SR to 192 kHz I get regular dropouts with a rate depending of buffer size. System monitor showed no particular processor and memory overloads. Although processor load is a steady 50%. Setting bit depth between 24 bits and 32 bits makes no difference.

When SR is set to 176.4 kHz it works fine without dropouts. But system loads differ not much from the 192 kHz setting.
Title: Re: Output format questions
Post by: Matt on December 06, 2008, 10:28:44 am
Media Center uses very high quality resampling.

However, in my opinion, there's no real advantage to oversampling the audio as long as you're sending it to a high-quality DAC (and it sounds like you are).

Resampling inside Media Center is most useful for times when you're trying to avoid the resampling that a cheap soundcard might do later.  Good soundcards (and even most motherboard soundcards now) can run their native clock at differing speeds to avoid resampling.

I would also recommend using ASIO or WASAPI (MC 13 only) for high quality output.  Set the bit-depth as high as the card supports.