[mad-user] Huuuuuuuge Improvement to My Stereo

[John van Ommen]

If any of you do a lot of listening at your PC, I ran into something today
that may be of interest.

I've been listening to MP3s on the command line using madplay.exe, cuz
winamp sounded like ass, even with the MAD plugin. It turns out that a
upgrade of wimamp had replaced my "wave out" output plugin in Winamp. As
far as I can tell, the MAD input pluging was outputting a 24bit stream, and
I think the wave out plugin was truncating it down to 16bit.

Nonetheless, I fixed the output plugin, and the difference is h-u-g-e.
24/96 soundcards playing MP3s upsampled to 24/48 really give CDs a run for
their money. Especially at high volumes, the extra dynamics of 24bit are
clear, and it seems like you can see 'deeper' into the recording as well.

John van Ommen

[Gabriel Bouvigne]

Post by John van Ommen
It turns out that a
upgrade of wimamp had replaced my "wave out" output plugin in Winamp. As
far as I can tell, the MAD input pluging was outputting a 24bit stream, and
I think the wave out plugin was truncating it down to 16bit.

Could you please give more details: wich winamp version was shipped with a
restricted wav-out and wich version of the plugin did you used instead?


Regards,

----
Gabriel Bouvigne
www.mp3-tech.org
personal page: http://gabriel.mp3-tech.org

[Hans Laros]

mmm,

although it sounds silly that compressing and upsampling would better the
soundquality, I remember a review of the 18-bits DCC player (sadly lost the
war with minidisc) where a few panel meber actually thought that the dcc
(blind test) sounded more analogue / less grainy / clearer than the original
cd that was included in the blindtest aswell. Can't remember the cd-player
in question, but they did use a very high quality one.

Regards,

Hans.


----- Original Message -----
From: "John van Ommen" <***@verio.net>
To: <***@lists.cc.utexas.edu>
Cc: <mad-***@lists.mars.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 9:40 AM
Subject: Huuuuuuuge Improvement to My Stereo

Post by John van Ommen
If any of you do a lot of listening at your PC, I ran into something today
that may be of interest.
I've been listening to MP3s on the command line using madplay.exe, cuz
winamp sounded like ass, even with the MAD plugin. It turns out that a
upgrade of wimamp had replaced my "wave out" output plugin in Winamp. As
far as I can tell, the MAD input pluging was outputting a 24bit stream, and
I think the wave out plugin was truncating it down to 16bit.
Nonetheless, I fixed the output plugin, and the difference is h-u-g-e.
24/96 soundcards playing MP3s upsampled to 24/48 really give CDs a run for
their money. Especially at high volumes, the extra dynamics of 24bit are
clear, and it seems like you can see 'deeper' into the recording as well.
John van Ommen

[horst]

Post by Hans Laros
mmm,
although it sounds silly that compressing and upsampling would better the
soundquality, I remember a review of the 18-bits DCC player (sadly lost the
war with minidisc) where a few panel meber actually thought that the dcc
(blind test) sounded more analogue / less grainy / clearer than the original
cd that was included in the blindtest aswell. Can't remember the cd-player
in question, but they did use a very high quality one.

I borrowed a high quality cd player to make copies of cd's onto minidisc
and blow me over but the copy seemed to be more dynamic and spritely then
the original, the minidisc is 20-bit.
And while I was expecting it not to sound much diffrent it was better.
the diffrence was not a subtle one.

Horst

[John van Ommen]

It's really hard to explain why upsampling works without resorting to
graphs. Basically, audio theory says that 40,000khz is adequate to play
back a 20khz sinewave. But if you think about it, a sampling rate of only
44,000 hz gives a VERY crude approximation of a sine wave. Sure, the peaks
and the valleys are there, but the sine wave now looks more like a square
wave than a sine wave.

With upsampling, you can interpolate that waveform to *approximate* a sine
wave. Obviously, the best solution would be to do the original recording at
a extremely high sampling rate.

John

P.S.

Here's my graph:

Analog 20khz sine wave :
** **
* * * *
* * * *
* *
* *
**
and here's what a 44khz DAC does to a 20khz signal:

**** ****
**** ****
**** ****
****
****
****

As you can see, there's little more than a passing resemblance to a sine
wave at that sampling rate, the interval is too coarse.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-***@lists.cc.utexas.edu
[mailto:owner-***@lists.cc.utexas.edu]On Behalf Of Hans Laros
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 12:55 AM
To: ***@lists.cc.utexas.edu
Cc: mad-***@lists.mars.org
Subject: Re: Huuuuuuuge Improvement to My Stereo


mmm,

although it sounds silly that compressing and upsampling would better the
soundquality, I remember a review of the 18-bits DCC player (sadly lost the
war with minidisc) where a few panel meber actually thought that the dcc
(blind test) sounded more analogue / less grainy / clearer than the original
cd that was included in the blindtest aswell. Can't remember the cd-player
in question, but they did use a very high quality one.

Regards,

Hans.


----- Original Message -----
From: "John van Ommen" <***@verio.net>
To: <***@lists.cc.utexas.edu>
Cc: <mad-***@lists.mars.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 9:40 AM
Subject: Huuuuuuuge Improvement to My Stereo

Post by John van Ommen
If any of you do a lot of listening at your PC, I ran into something today
that may be of interest.
I've been listening to MP3s on the command line using madplay.exe, cuz
winamp sounded like ass, even with the MAD plugin. It turns out that a
upgrade of wimamp had replaced my "wave out" output plugin in Winamp. As
far as I can tell, the MAD input pluging was outputting a 24bit stream,

and

Post by John van Ommen
I think the wave out plugin was truncating it down to 16bit.
Nonetheless, I fixed the output plugin, and the difference is h-u-g-e.
24/96 soundcards playing MP3s upsampled to 24/48 really give CDs a run for
their money. Especially at high volumes, the extra dynamics of 24bit are
clear, and it seems like you can see 'deeper' into the recording as well.
John van Ommen

[Steve Hanna]

Don't forget John, that the 44kHz lobes on the crummy looking 20kHz
square wave of yours are going to be filtered out before it gets to the
output. Then you will have a nice clean 20kHz sine wave again.

Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: John van Ommen <***@verio.net>
To: <***@hotmail.com>
Cc: <***@lists.cc.utexas.edu>; <mad-***@lists.mars.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 2:22 AM
Subject: RE: Huuuuuuuge Improvement to My Stereo


It's really hard to explain why upsampling works without resorting to
graphs. Basically, audio theory says that 40,000khz is adequate to play
back a 20khz sinewave. But if you think about it, a sampling rate of
only
44,000 hz gives a VERY crude approximation of a sine wave. Sure, the
peaks
and the valleys are there, but the sine wave now looks more like a square
wave than a sine wave.

With upsampling, you can interpolate that waveform to *approximate* a
sine
wave. Obviously, the best solution would be to do the original recording
at
a extremely high sampling rate.

John

P.S.

Here's my graph:

Analog 20khz sine wave :
** **
* * * *
* * * *
* *
* *
**
and here's what a 44khz DAC does to a 20khz signal:

**** ****
**** ****
**** ****
****
****
****

As you can see, there's little more than a passing resemblance to a sine
wave at that sampling rate, the interval is too coarse.

[Luc Henderieckx]

John,

To challenge this statement of yours : I once tested my then new Marantz
CD-63 MkII KI Signature CD-player (a respectable one in my opinion) and
played a CD where I had put a 20 kHz sinus testsignal on (made with
CoolEdit, so with mathematical precision). The output signal was a perfect
distortion free sinus of the exact amplitude which proved the validity of
the Nyquist sampling theorem to me. Don't let your mind fool you (it indeed
sounds strange that 2 samples per period suffice to reproduce a periodical
sinewave, but I assure you : it is) !

Kind regards,

Luc Henderieckx
***@pandora.be
http://users.pandora.be/airborne

Post by John van Ommen
It's really hard to explain why upsampling works without resorting to
graphs. Basically, audio theory says that 40,000khz is adequate to play
back a 20khz sinewave. But if you think about it, a sampling rate of only
44,000 hz gives a VERY crude approximation of a sine wave. Sure, the peaks
and the valleys are there, but the sine wave now looks more like a square
wave than a sine wave.
With upsampling, you can interpolate that waveform to *approximate* a sine
wave. Obviously, the best solution would be to do the original recording at
a extremely high sampling rate.

[Dean-Ryan Stone]

On Thursday, February 21, 2002, 7:40:55 PM, you wrote:

JvO> Nonetheless, I fixed the output plugin, and the difference is h-u-g-e.
JvO> 24/96 soundcards playing MP3s upsampled to 24/48 really give CDs a run for
JvO> their money. Especially at high volumes, the extra dynamics of 24bit are
JvO> clear, and it seems like you can see 'deeper' into the recording as well.

Off-topic:
I think you should try MPEGplus when you get a chance. www.mpegplus.de.

Rgds
Dean-Ryan Stone
www.dhryland.com

[Andrew Burgess]

Post by John van Ommen
With upsampling, you can interpolate that waveform to *approximate* a sine
wave. Obviously, the best solution would be to do the original recording at
a extremely high sampling rate.

I don't think this explains it. A 20KHz square wave sounds like a 20KHz sine
wave on your stereo. This is because, in the frequency domain, a square
wave is the same as a sum of (even or odd -- I forget, probably odd) harmonics.
The first harmonic is 40KHz which your stereo cannot reproduce. The 2nd is
80KHz, etc.

All DACs also have low pass filters on the output to attenuate these unwanted
harmonics.

I don't disbelieve that it sounds better but I don't think this explains it.

Andrew

[John Utz]

this is what that '1bit' CD standard is supposed to solve.

i am starting to think that it's actually a pretty good id, tho 1500 bux
for a CD player/recorder is awfully challenging...

Post by John van Ommen
It's really hard to explain why upsampling works without resorting to
graphs. Basically, audio theory says that 40,000khz is adequate to play
back a 20khz sinewave. But if you think about it, a sampling rate of only
44,000 hz gives a VERY crude approximation of a sine wave. Sure, the peaks
and the valleys are there, but the sine wave now looks more like a square
wave than a sine wave.
With upsampling, you can interpolate that waveform to *approximate* a sine
wave. Obviously, the best solution would be to do the original recording at
a extremely high sampling rate.
John
P.S.
** **
* * * *
* * * *
* *
* *
**
**** ****
**** ****
**** ****
****
****
****
As you can see, there's little more than a passing resemblance to a sine
wave at that sampling rate, the interval is too coarse.
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 12:55 AM
Subject: Re: Huuuuuuuge Improvement to My Stereo
mmm,
although it sounds silly that compressing and upsampling would better the
soundquality, I remember a review of the 18-bits DCC player (sadly lost the
war with minidisc) where a few panel meber actually thought that the dcc
(blind test) sounded more analogue / less grainy / clearer than the original
cd that was included in the blindtest aswell. Can't remember the cd-player
in question, but they did use a very high quality one.
Regards,
Hans.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 9:40 AM
Subject: Huuuuuuuge Improvement to My Stereo

Post by John van Ommen
If any of you do a lot of listening at your PC, I ran into something today
that may be of interest.
I've been listening to MP3s on the command line using madplay.exe, cuz
winamp sounded like ass, even with the MAD plugin. It turns out that a
upgrade of wimamp had replaced my "wave out" output plugin in Winamp. As
far as I can tell, the MAD input pluging was outputting a 24bit stream,

and

Post by John van Ommen
I think the wave out plugin was truncating it down to 16bit.
Nonetheless, I fixed the output plugin, and the difference is h-u-g-e.
24/96 soundcards playing MP3s upsampled to 24/48 really give CDs a run for
their money. Especially at high volumes, the extra dynamics of 24bit are
clear, and it seems like you can see 'deeper' into the recording as well.
John van Ommen

[Stefan Baltus]

I had something similar. I used to play mp3s from my laptop PC. When
the laptop crashed recently, I re-installed the OS. To my surprise, the
audio came out dull and flat. I noticed that there were two different
sets of drivers for the soundmodule. After installing the other drivers,
the old great sound was back (to my relief).

Apparently the drivers can have a substantial impact on the way the
sound is output on the line-out. Whether that is a result of better
software or software that activates better hardware (i.e. a generic
set of drivers vs. a h/w specific set) I don't have a clue.

Stefan

Post by John van Ommen
If any of you do a lot of listening at your PC, I ran into something today
that may be of interest.
I've been listening to MP3s on the command line using madplay.exe, cuz
winamp sounded like ass, even with the MAD plugin. It turns out that a
upgrade of wimamp had replaced my "wave out" output plugin in Winamp. As
far as I can tell, the MAD input pluging was outputting a 24bit stream, and
I think the wave out plugin was truncating it down to 16bit.
Nonetheless, I fixed the output plugin, and the difference is h-u-g-e.
24/96 soundcards playing MP3s upsampled to 24/48 really give CDs a run for
their money. Especially at high volumes, the extra dynamics of 24bit are
clear, and it seems like you can see 'deeper' into the recording as well.
John van Ommen