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might be but probably isn’t DPC latency, or the audio would probably have cut out too. but that could be checked.
it could be the CPU switching speeds, see if you can disable any power saving modes etc in the GPU. make sure you have the latest GPU drivers directly from the manufacturer NOT the oem (in other words if the GPU is by Intel and you got your computer from Dell, get the driver from Intel), etc.
what also could be happening is some process is running that does something for 1 second every now & then with a much higher priority than Breakaway’s GUI. see which processed are using CPU when it happens. does the CPU use spike at all when it happens?
yorkie gives good advice. especially the sound quality you don’t lose by decoding with Winamp.
exStreamer 200 & 1000 have digital outputs, but I’m guessing you have the original, 100.
just add a resistor/s in serial on the cable. this will "pad" the output of the soundcard so that you can run the soundcard with more gain. not sure if that will fix the problem 100% tho.
No matter what, the output provides voltage, and the input provides a load in the form of impedance.
If two devices are made for the same impedance & voltage, to have the proper current flowing to stay within the operational window, then great. If you put two devices together that are not made for working with each other in terms of impedance, the load…. then you’ll get situations where you have to limit the current a lot (i’m thinking in the case of your soundcard), or that you’ll have to provide more current than the device can give (not enough gain before distortion).
What the output of your stereo coder’s specs is saying… is that it’s expecting to be connected to an input with an impedance of less than 50 ohms.
The soundcard on the other hand is expecting something more around the 10,000 ohms area. So the output is way hotter (voltage) than what the input expects, in other words. So the soundcard has to be set to have a very very low output level compared to the maximum that it can do. Am I correct here? Throw us a bone iguman. 🙂
the output of your stereo coder has an impedance it was rated to be loaded with. that’s what the output should be loaded with. it doesn’t actually have an impedance tho. you’re not sending signal TO your stereo coder’s MPX output, there-fore it is not considered a load, and doesn’t have impedance.
what’s happening is the soundcard is expecting much more impedance (load resistance) than what the transmitter’s exciter is providing as the load. so in other words, the soundcard is outputting only a small fraction of its intended current before you’re reaching 100% modulation.
that’s why i’m specifically asking what the impedance of the exciter’s input is.
the cable shouldn’t have any impedance on purpose, or you’re also adding capacitive inductance which reduces audio quality.
It sounds pretty good with many genres. It was indeed designed to remove noise very well. First preset that really fine tunes the downward expander. I actually even found a zipper-noise in the low frequency bands that I don’t think Leif has discovered yet, and I keep forgetting to tell him about. I found a way around it, but yeah… I’m using the full 24dB of reduction at max, so it had to be very finely tuned or it would have sounded jumpy etc. There are times where it might sound slightly jumpy in fact. But overall 99% of the time it’ll be way better than not.
I’m also really loving the new Zenith. More transparent, more range, just… love it.
[edit]
Bassdrive live webcast from WMC is over, thanks if you tuned in and enjoyed Motor City.
[/edit]what is the impedance of the transmitter’s exciter input, and what voltage does it want for 100% modulation? that’s what’s important in this case.
Did you use the tilt & eq calibration in Breakaway, to correct for any (if any) non-linearity in each of those two cards?
You can’t gain any quality from converting those lossy encodings to lossless, unless the decoder you’re using for real-time playback is totally junk, which is not likely.
That being said, the only way to up the quality is by getting better sources. Preferably lossless (FLAC is nice) that’s been ripped from CD using Exact Audio Copy in Secure mode, with AccurateRip, with 100% (no errors) logs.
If you’re paying SoundExchange royalties (if you’re playing any music they represent online) for your statutory license to US Office of Copyright, then you’re allowed to fill your library however you want. Yes, that makes it perfectly legal (for a company operating within the USA) to add items to your music library however you see fit, including file sharing. So if you’re paying royalties to SoundEx, then I recommend joining a website like what.cd to build your library. If you’re already paying out royalties, then there’s no sense in supporting a huge somewhat greedy company like Apple. One huge greedy company (SoundEx) is more than enough eh?
If you’re not in the USA paying those royalties, then… What you might consider is contacting the artists/labels directly either to get serviced, and/or buy the CD directly from them and rip them yourself. You will then keep your own quality control, and you’ll get a direct connection with the artists. That’s one thing most artists LOVE to do is promote themselves. The changes of getting denied by any but the largest labels & artists is pretty darn slim. 8)
Lastly, have fun. It’s spring time in the northern hemisphere. Enjoy the tunes.
They look ok there, not too bad, but would for sure need EQ correction for halfway serious work like tuning broadcast audio processing. $165 from "TheHeadphoneStore.com" right now.
Here’s where I see them falling apart pretty bad. Lots of resonance even at 500 Hz. See how instead of holding the square wave, or declining in amplitude fairly smoothly, instead it’s wobbling all over the place? That’s resonance, and especially when you hear it up that high, it’s going to color the sound quite a bit and reduce clarity, and cause phase cancellations to some degree. There are probably other resonances at other frequencies too, perhaps where the bass dips too.
Also notice the speed that it slows down, it’s not a fast wiggle, but it’s a large wiggle that slows down in frequency…. so that’s telling us that even at 500 Hz there’s a lot of driver compression happening from the internal acoustics. Most of the time that’s where the worst resonances happen at in a closed headphone, mainly at lower frequencies.
But still, for the price, not bad cans at all. There are $1000+ headphones with worse sound.
And also check out the AKG K81 DJs. Now you know why I said those are a sick deal. Those don’t have much resonance at all until about 50 Hz and below, hence the phase cancellation starts to reduce the frequency response the lower it goes, and the bass becomes less defined. But still, incredible cans for the price. My ONLY personal beef with them is that they are on-ear headphones, not circumaural.
Cheers 8)
They might be the same brand as the speakers, Creative Labs, therefor they were chosen because they looked cool (not according to me) but they probably sound like crap.
If you want great sounding headphones, check out my very short list. Sorted lowest to highest price.
AKG K81 DJ (~ $50 USD)
Beyerdynamic DT-880 Pro (~ $329 USD)
Sennheiser HD-800 (~ $1200 USD)All very incredible headphones. Obviously the $50 model has the most value, but the bass isn’t flawless on them, they are slightly resonant as they drop down, but nothing too major at all. I still recommend going to the $329 model. I was able to get mine *new* for $75 less than that by just asking for a price break, so see what you can do there (there’s a few cheaper online right now i can see). The $1200 model is probably just as great, and pending that I haven’t heard a pair… I have seen a bunch of testing done on them, and I can quite easily guess that if they do sound better than the $329 cans that it’s a very very small difference. The possibility is there, and I would DEFINITELY hear them both if you get a chance. Is that small difference worth over 3 times the price? That’s up to you. 😆
Pending more verification that there’s no problems with it, and that I personally don’t think it reduces the great things about the original……..
It will just be the new Zenith that comes with the next builds of Breakaway. So you don’t have to do anything except wait, and select Zenith from the presets menu. Leif said the presets menu is probably going to be reworked a bit too. Part of this will involve the ability to have way more presets on a small screen (640×480), and a method to select legacy presets & legacy versions of current presets. Just in case someone liked something that was older better.
Very few presets have ever been updated from what was originally publicly available, but Leif still wants to keep ALL of the options open to everyone, as far as using what presets they like. Some previously removed presets might make a comeback too, we’ll have to wait and see.
