"Oldspook" said:
Thanks for the input. I only have one sound output on the back of my
computer. I ran the Audio Sound Wizard, it was set for stereo speakers. I
set it for headphones. It sounds a little better but not near as good as the
Digital Audio Player.
The poor sound must be the onboard sound system because I am playing the
same file on the DAP and using the same headphones.
I have been considering the Turtle Beach RIVIERA for $22.99. I want high
quality music and only need 2 channels.
Oldspook
OK. I did some testing. I have the P4C800-E, but have never used
headphones with it. I dug out my headphones, and the Audio Wizard
is smart enough to realize that the 32 ohm headphone driver is only
on the Lineout connector. So, once I plugged the headphones into
the green jack, I could do some testing.
Now, I'm no audiophile, and have a lot of trouble detecting subtle
differences in quality. No question, you're right, the sound is
muddy. I put a CD in the computer, set up the CD drive for
DAE (digital audio extraction, so no CD audio cable needed), and
listened to a CD I had handy. The results wasn't quite what I
was expecting.
I visited Abxzone.com, and there were a couple of suggestions.
The first suggestion is, the P5P800 has exactly the same audio
subsystem as the P4C800-e. And, being a newer board, Asus has
newer versions of drivers on the download page for the P5P800.
The "5150" driver is the recommended version. I downloaded
that and tested it, and the output isn't quite as muddy.
Another suggestion is to use a Realtek ALC650 audio driver.
The ICH5 got support in driver 3.41, and versions later than
that might work. I tried downloading and installing 3.43 and
it was a flop. Perhaps there is a trick to installing those
drivers (editting the .ini for example). In any case, I went back
to the 5150 driver above.
The 5150 driver doesn't have a button in the interface any more
for the Audio Wizard. The 36xx driver had that button, but 5150
does not.
There was always a "bass boost" slider in the control panel.
You just have to go into the preferences and enable it. There
is no graphic equalizer, but I got to play with the one in
Winamp instead, for some of my experiments.
I don't know if you have noticed the problem with your
motherboard or not, but I was getting infrequent pops and
clicks coming from the AD1985. I could not figure out what
the source of those pops and clicks might be. The Abxzone
thread had various suggestions, such as disabling the
Bass Boost feature. At least while I was testing the 5150 driver,
I didn't hear any of the usual pops and clicks, but other people
testing 5150 on Abxzone were still getting the clicks.
A possible reason for the muddy audio, is I believe even when the
special effects are set to "none" in 36xx driver, the driver was
still doing some DSP on the audio signal. The audio is still not
as clean as I would like it, but I need some higher quality audio
to do more testing with. The CD I was listening to, was likely
originally recorded on a two or four track recorder, so is hardly
idea for detecting "mud".
As for you choice of the Turtle Beach RIVIERA, be aware that the
card looks visually identical to many CMI8738 based cards
(cmedia.com.tw). The chip only offers a 24 bit path via SPDIF,
and the DACs on the chip are only 16 bit. Many companies make
CMI8738 based cards, ranging in price from $7 to $70. The only
significant difference between the cards, might be the bundled
software.
AFAIK, the CMI8738 does not have a base/treble set of controls.
So, you won't be able to shape the sound, if your listening
environment needs help.
This card is only $25 and seems to have better numeric specs.
It would be nice to find a picture of the mixer/control panel
before buying it. It is based on the Via Envy24:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829120103
http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=16&PISNo=199
There is a review here. Note that the jumper mod they are talking
about, may connect the DAC directly to the output, and the DAC
cannot drive headphones. You may want to leave the jumper as is.
I read something/somewhere about the DAC being gutless, because,
well, you don't drive stuff with a DAC, you use an amp after the
DAC for that. You can do their jumper mod if connecting the
card to your stereo, or to a separate high quality headphone amp.
If your stereo doesn't have a very high impedance input on it,
you may find that connecting the DAC without the amp in the
path, still isn't possible without causing some audio coloration.
In any case, for $25, I think this will be a worthwhile gamble.
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?p=848255
HTH,
Paul