Why is this improving my sound quality so much

[quote author=”jonwolds”]Hi,

I can’t understand how this software is making my music sound so much better!

I am playing music though xbmc or windows media center and the sound is quite muddy until I turn this software on. I have the sound card set to Hi-Fi mode and all equaliers/regain etc disabled. It’s stereo output from the media center to the amp.

My understanding is that the sound card should convert digital to analogue and then the amp should make it sound great. how can this software improve it so much?

Any answers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jon

Stuff:

xmbc/windows media center
MP3 ripped at 320kbps
Xonar Essence STX – sound card
Rotal RA-06 – amp
B&W 685 – speakers[/quote]

Never look a gift horse in the mouth! 😆 😆

The inner workings are based on over half a century of innovations that are still largely missing from studio gear. The outcome is designed in part to take advantage of non-linearities of the human auditory system, aka psycho/neuro-acoustics. For instance when you turn up the bass, and it makes the treble sound more quiet even though the treble hasn’t changed at all. Balancing the average spectral response can "unmask" a huge amount of detail within the sound.

Wait till you hear Undo though, once the new versions of Breakaway come out. That’s really the missing half of the puzzle, a HUGE innovation in audio DSP. 8)

By the way… nice setup. 🙂 And @ your amp question… the amp is supposed to amplify the sound with as little change or coloration or distortion as possible. Everything in a proper hifi setup should be designed to be as transparent as possible, so that incredible sounding music sounds incredible, and crappy music sounds crappy. You can’t really make crap sound good without reducing incredible to good as well… using mostly linear gear like that. Breakaway is *extremely* program dependent, using a TON of technology that is designed to prevent "bad things" from being done to already incredible recordings. For the most part. The upcoming Breakaway stuff has even more innovations in regard to that aspect.