DJ-CHRIS said:
It isnt really the bit rate, most of what I run is still 16bit if it's digital, and except for the mixer everything is audiophile, and I use one of the worlds best sounding CD players (without tubes)
However the SB Live's are complete utter garbage, however luckily not bad enough to hurt my ears. I am using a Live! X-Gamer right now unfortunetly till june, because my turtle beach from like 97' doesnt work in this PC
Man you don't like SB do you?
If you use the spdif or optical out function, it doesn't make a difference on sound quality. They all sound the same. Your digital processor (usually your DD receiver) is doing the work, not the sound card. ItÂ’s is merely sending the digital data to the processor.
Another thing. Those world best cd players are a waste of money. they sound every bit as good as any good 24 (120+ Signal to Noise Ratio) bit cd player and to 90% of the world, they sound as good as any 16bit (90=S/N ratio) cd player. If you got Coaxial or Optical out on a cd player (16 or 24 bit) and you have a 24 bit DD receiver, There is no difference in sound either.
A dog could probably hear the difference, but not us. Nobody I mean nobody that human can tell the difference in something that has a s/n of 125-130 db from something that has 115-120db. There is no music out there to exploit this difference anyway. Only those spectacular CDÂ’s.
Now most humans can't tell the difference in sound if the signal to noise ratio is greater than 85 DB's. True audiophile's can tell the difference in something that has an s/n of 120db compare to 90db.
No here where it get complicated. Some people claim they can here a difference and they really canÂ’t. It is just their mind having them think, that they can, because they know it is an improvement, so they think they hear a difference.
Other tricks by the industry is to have that super CD player changed inside in certain ways. Like internally in that CD player. They will boost the lower midrange (400-600 Hz), cut the mid high range (1-4 kHz where our ears are the most sensitive to loud sound) sound, because they know that, that this new sound will be an improvement. They will also boost the preamp output voltage, because to most people, louder is better. They will also put an expander / compressor in the loop, so people can hear the difference. Guess what. ThatÂ’s cheating. Because if you do that to the 16 bit CD player it will sound the same way.
Denon is notorious for cheating. They play at high end. Most of their product donÂ’t even make spec when you test them. You might not even have what they say that they put in it.
