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Having owned both, the X-Fi is clearly head and shoulders above the Audigy 2 in every respect. It has a better DSP, better opamps, and it has the crucial ability to play true 44.1KHz audio, whereas the Audigy series resamples everything to 48KHz, which mucks up the sound considerably.to clear it up, X-Fi is a multi-room technology, for SQ (sound quality) you'd be better off with an Audigy 2.
Any class of amp can be rather punchy, the main thing is how much current its putting out. Higher current amps make more bass. Alot of the low end amps out there have a hump in the 20Hz to 60Hz range, so your perception is that the "bass shakes the house".The biggest thing to effect sound quality is the DAC (24bit/96k sampling, and the speakers ofcourse) is a must. that being said, someone brought up D-class. yes it amplifes the hell out low frequencies
Class T amps are made by Tripath Inc. They have nothing to do with Texas Instruments or Pioneer. Class T amps are actually class D, to add to the confusion. Theyre just called T amps because of the company who makes them, Tripath Inc. Solid state amps can be class A just as tube amps are. Class A solid state amps sound better than A/B solid state, but not as good as class A tubes.for overall SQ you'd be better off with an A/B class (most recievers), or T-class (texus-instruments/pioneer). If you're a real junky, class-A (vaccume tubes) amplifiers give the best SQ, but get hotter than hell.
I think the term is EMI, electro magnetic interference. I always use coax, and only use optical if I have to. Optical is very susceptible to jitter, more so than coax is susceptible to EMI. Lower quality sources will almost always introduce a fair amount of jitter over TOSlink, but hardly any EMI over coax. Ive never had any interference on a coax connection, and I have lots of electronics strewn about my house.As per the original post toslink vs Coax, spdif... Coax is effected by EMR (electro-magnet Radiation [ie noise caused by neon light ballests or computers/cellphones]), whereas toslink (fiber-optic) isn't.
If optical is so much worse than coaxial, why is gigabit (and above) internet service almost always delivered using fiber instead of much cheaper coax? Why would there be any reason at all to use expensive, fragile fiber instead of copper wire? The truth is, fiber pretty much always gives better signal integrity. If you want a quick way to check signal margin, loosen a connection and see how loose it can be before the signal drops out.I think the term is EMI, electro magnetic interference. I always use coax, and only use optical if I have to. Optical is very susceptible to jitter, more so than coax is susceptible to EMI. Lower quality sources will almost always introduce a fair amount of jitter over TOSlink, but hardly any EMI over coax. Ive never had any interference on a coax connection, and I have lots of electronics strewn about my house.
The digital side is just data. Onboard works every bit as well as a sound card or any other interface.In terms of audio setups with computers, the trick is to isolate your audio interface from the rest of your computer as much as possible. The ideal setup is to have a PCI (or PCIE) USB card that does not share bandwidth from anything else. Then connecting an external interface to the USB card. This external interface than should either output a digital signal via Coaxial or Toslink (my preference is Toslink) to a separate DAC, or if this interface has a good enough DAC simply connect the interface to your preamp via RCAs or XLRs depending on your setup. XLRs only make a difference over long runs.
The digital side is just data. Onboard works every bit as well as a sound card or any other interface.
The digital side is just data. Onboard works every bit as well as a sound card or any other interface.
Pretty impressive setup there.I didn't even know people used upgraded IECs for computers. I only use them on audio equipment. www.signalcable.com are the power cables I use. Good value, won't break your wallet.
Yea, I use fiber optics whenever possible, but in ideal conditions the performance is exactly the same as digital coaxial. Toslink is a fail safe IMHO. However, people who use heavy duty digital coaxials with BNC connections swear by them, I've just never owned any gear that use em.
Although you are correct that phono signals, such as that from a turntable, require low cap cables, line level benefits greatly as well.
Speaker cables absolutely make a difference. If your speakers are transparent enough and have high enough resolution, they make a huge difference. I had some pretty decent shielded cables on my Vandersteen 2ce speakers, replaced them with bi-wired Morrow Audio SP3 and I was blown away at the improvement.
This isn't the only example that I've experienced. I have a pair of ADS 780/2 and a pair of Paradigm Studio bookshelves. I A/B'd both of them with another pair of Morrow Audio cables, a pair of Audioquests, a pair of Anti-Cables, and my generic shielded cables which actually are pretty good for the no-name. The Morrows were by far the best. The Vandersteens saw the biggest improvement with the bi-wire Morrows as they are the most revealing and transparent speakers I own. Some speakers are just far more sensitive to your gear upstream like my Vandys.
For full list of my testing gear, I used...
---ANALOG---
Completely custom Thorens TD-160 w/ SME 3009 & SAE1000E cartridge
ART DJ Phono Pre & Jolida JD-9 Phono Pre (I'd swap them to see both results)
---DIGITAL---
Seagate Constellation 1TB HDD in an external enclosure for digital files (mostly hi-res Flac) hooked up to a Squeezebox Touch via USB. Squeezebox to DAC via Toslink
Grant Fidelity TubeDAC11 w/ Amperex tube
Completely recapped and restored Marantz 3250 preamp
Completely recapped and restored Marantz 170dc poweramp (LOVE this amp)
Vandersteen 2ce, ADS 780/2, Paradigm Studio 20 v5