Sampling rates for sound cards...

[Aynjell]

For a bit of backstory on this inquiry:

For that past few weeks I've been listening to my ipod more and more, and when I'm at home my trusty CMOY is driving my MDR-V6 cans. After only a few short days I started hearing a major inconsistency in the enjoyability of my music.

:confused:

My sound card emits 0 noise. I've done every last thing I can to prevent noise, and I've done a good job at it. The EMI shield on the card works, and on top of that I've got some anti-static plastic on the inside of the card to further prevent static passing to the card from my GTX260 directly below it. In fact this is causing my shopping experience for i7/i5 to be painfully expensive as all the boards that allow for this type of setup are prohibitively expensive or incapable of meeting my other needs. Seems eVGA is the only company that truly caught on to this, with the majority of their boards allowing for this setup.

So it's not noise.

Then I started doinking around with the sound settings, and I think I found my problem... I had my sound card set to 96000khz sampling rate and 24 bit, I changed it 44100khz mid play back of a song I know well enough to test with... and BAM, right there, the things I enjoyed about my iPod came rushing in. Apparently those elitest psychos at head-fi (I mean that in the most endearing way possible, I'm becoming more and more a head-fi geek every minute of every day with enjoying music being equal to gaming in my life these days)...

So, here's something I'm curious about: Has anybody noticed an issue with using 44100khz playback in games? Should I be switching back and forth? Is there benefit?

[Freezer7Pro]

There's no gain in running 96kHz if you aren't listening to 96kHz/24bit files. In fact, it can hurt quality quite a bit if your software doesn't do a good job at up-sampling it.

As for games, most just have their sounds in 128kbps mp3s, so there isn't really anything to lose there.

[Aynjell]

There's no gain in running 96kHz if you aren't listening to 96kHz/24bit files. In fact, it can hurt quality quite a bit if your software doesn't do a good job at up-sampling it.

As for games, most just have their sounds in 128kbps mp3s, so there isn't really anything to lose there.

I noticed this phenomenon, I noted it in my post.

[johan851]

People at Head-Fi recommended you change your card's settings to 96kHz, 24-bit with an X-Fi? That would surprise me. It's recommended to use the high sample rate mode on the AV-710 because it enables a different DAC, but that's not the case with the X-Fi.

I upsample my audio on my desktop to 96kHz, but that's because I'm using optical out to feed an external DAC. Unless you have some setup where you need to upsample, you should leave it alone.

I suspect that enabling those settings made your card upsample the 44.1kHz it received from the OS to 96kHz, then downsample it to 44.1kHz to send it to its onboard DAC. That would do bad things to sound quality.

[johan851]

People at Head-Fi recommended you change your card's settings to 96kHz, 24-bit with an X-Fi? That would surprise me. It's recommended to use the high sample rate mode on the AV-710 because it enables a different DAC, but that's not the case with the X-Fi.

I upsample my audio on my desktop to 96kHz, but that's because I'm using optical out to feed an external DAC. Unless you have some setup where you need to upsample, you should leave it alone.

I suspect that enabling those settings made your card upsample the 44.1kHz it received from the OS to 96kHz, then downsample it to 44.1kHz to send it to its onboard DAC. That would do bad things to sound quality.

[Mjolnir]

...How can you enjoy music from an iPod? Lol (in terms of quality, ipod just lacks so much..). Interesting find/issue though.

I remember how much of a pain it was when i was configuring an after effects file, where i hadnt set the project settings to be the same as the compilation settings, and the audio file was different still! (44.1, 48, etc.). And I had sound issues when I rendered it out..

While on the topic of sound cards... Do they really make that huge a difference? I enjoy quality sound myself, and although I can tell the onboard audio isn't the best.. Is the jump like 'WHOA' or is it more a 'oh ok, yeah i can tell the difference...'

Also: 96khz. Why? Does this significantly increase quality of an audio file? Will anyone but an audiophile be able to notice the difference between 44.1 khz vs 96 khz? I've got no experience comparing them properly with pre-sampled sounds, but i'm curious.

[Aynjell]

...How can you enjoy music from an iPod? Lol (in terms of quality, ipod just lacks so much..). Interesting find/issue though.

I remember how much of a pain it was when i was configuring an after effects file, where i hadnt set the project settings to be the same as the compilation settings, and the audio file was different still! (44.1, 48, etc.). And I had sound issues when I rendered it out..

While on the topic of sound cards... Do they really make that huge a difference? I enjoy quality sound myself, and although I can tell the onboard audio isn't the best.. Is the jump like 'WHOA' or is it more a 'oh ok, yeah i can tell the difference...'

Also: 96khz. Why? Does this significantly increase quality of an audio file? Will anyone but an audiophile be able to notice the difference between 44.1 khz vs 96 khz? I've got no experience comparing them properly with pre-sampled sounds, but i'm curious.

iPod --> Homemade CMOY --> MDR-V6. it works great!

People at Head-Fi recommended you change your card's settings to 96kHz, 24-bit with an X-Fi? That would surprise me. It's recommended to use the high sample rate mode on the AV-710 because it enables a different DAC, but that's not the case with the X-Fi.

I upsample my audio on my desktop to 96kHz, but that's because I'm using optical out to feed an external DAC. Unless you have some setup where you need to upsample, you should leave it alone.

I suspect that enabling those settings made your card upsample the 44.1kHz it received from the OS to 96kHz, then downsample it to 44.1kHz to send it to its onboard DAC. That would do bad things to sound quality.

No, the exact opposite, 16 bit 44100.

[johan851]

Also: 96khz. Why? Does this significantly increase quality of an audio file? Will anyone but an audiophile be able to notice the difference between 44.1 khz vs 96 khz? I've got no experience comparing them properly with pre-sampled sounds, but i'm curious.
To answer this, and the OP's question about a higher sample rate being better in games, the answer is that no, 96kHz won't sound better.

From a signal processing standpoint, the sample rate only determines the maximum frequency that can be stored digitally. The Nyquist sampling rate theorem states that an analog signal stored as a series of of samples can be perfectly reconstructed if the sampling rate is equal to or higher than twice its frequency. For standard audio at 44.1kHz, this means that everything in the original sound below 22kHz can be captured. Humans can't hear above about 20kHz, and most teenagers and adults can't hear anything higher than 20kHz.