Sasha

iTrader: (10)

No, the card is that good, and everyone who loves their music in high quality should experience what they dont know they are missing. This card blows every other card under $1000 out of the water.

Grimmis1027

Folks, it's not the sound card that does the digital encoding to disk, it's your CPU that does almost all of the processing, however when you play it back, it's your sound card that does the analog to digital processing to convert it to sound.

Most of the sound cards available are of the gaming type, they all have dedicated onboard CPU's and DSP's for processing sound while playing games, while some of them sound pretty good while playing music, be aware that since they were designed to play games, they can't really be high performance audio cards.

I looked at the Xonar cards today on the ASUS website, most of these cards lean more toward audio performance than game sound.

The exception was the Essence card, which is designed for audiophiles, with an impressive set of specs to match...

Grimmis1027

$ 230 at NCIX.com...

NCIX.com - Buy ASUS Xonar Essence STX PCI-E1 SPDIF Sound Card 124DB SNR W/ Headphone AMP - XONAR ESSENCE STX In Canada.

Sasha

iTrader: (10)

I was saying other cards that cost up to $1000. And yes audio performance, we were not talking about video game cards.

veeman

iTrader: (3)

that's the point I was going to next...just been too busy. The cpu and the software do the lossless and lossy rips. While there may be differences in the lossy side from software to software...the lossless is all the same. That's the point I was trying to convey. Denonite's mixed track is comprised of lossless portions and lossy portions. The lossless portions are lossless, and the lossy ones are lossy, therefore someone with a better sound card should be able to "hear" the differences much better than someone with a not so good sound card. Assuming that Denonite isn't trying to screw us around (by switching between two identical copies), and he ripped a lossless track from the cd and then made a 112 kbps rip from the lossless as he states, then the digitally mixed track should stay bit for bit accurate and the lossless portions should remain identical to the source cd.

Sasha

iTrader: (10)

I am signing off this thread. It's not going anywhere.

emperorjj1

im gonna try this out but i dont want to read anyones posts and be less subjective... id like to see what if i can figure it out

Denonite

iTrader: (1)

yeah...go for it. It's a pretty simple idea, though not easy to do. listen to the track and try and pick out the times, approximately, that the quality changes. Just so you don't have to re-read everything. Track 1 is ripped from the cd to apple lossless, then a 112 kbps track is ripped from that lossless track, the two tracks are then synchronized using a digital mixer (all processing off and levels normal) and are switched randomly. If the quality difference is easily audible, it should be easy to hear when they are switched.

Denonite

iTrader: (1)

update:

over 200 people have taken the challenge and no winners. This includes many audiophiles, children, regular listeners, and musician friends.