Xonar Setup Help
Reply #7 – 2012-08-18 18:56:27
I'm really talking over my head about this stuff, but as I understand it analog means old stuff like tape. I'm playing digital .wav files, so I don't think I should convert digital music to analog by routing it out of the analog jacks. Am I wrong about this? The output jacks on your soundcard output an analog signal, the quality of the signal depends on the DAC (digital-analog-converter) used to create that signal. To my knowledge the outputs of the Xonar cards measure very good, so it is unlikely you will notice any degradation in fidelity when using the analog jacks of your card.According to my reading this morning wasapi is for Vista or Windows 7 and ASIO is for XP only. FWIW, ASIO also works in Vista and 7.1,411, 16 bit, that's the bit rate of an uncompressed .wav file. On the other hand if you rip an HDCD and have the plugin installed in dbpoweramp or other software you end up with a bit rate of a 2,216 and a 20 bit file. MP3 is lossy and only has a bit rate of 320. I refuse to play them at home on good equipment. Bit rate is a file size metric. It doesn't say anything about the quality of an MP3 file vs. the source WAV, it can only be correlated with audio quality when comparing files produced by the same encoder. Your 320kbps MP3s are likely transparent and thereby fine.With dual 3 terabyte drives (one for backup) I don't feel a need to use flac. WAV has no real means to store metadata. foobar2000 has facilities to read and write tags from/to WAV, but that is likely not compatible with most other software. In contrast to you, I see no point in using WAV, since it is worse than FLAC in all regards.