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Topic: I wish more control how fb handles audio formats (Read 982 times) previous topic - next topic
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I wish more control how fb handles audio formats

Hiyas, among all formats that foobar recognises most of them are decodable/playable by the player, but there are also some that fb passes on untouched to hardware device. Yet not too long ago it was DTS/DTSHD, SPDIF or DSD.
Firstly comes a question for the formats decoded by foobar, does the volume control touch the audio quality some way, or is the amplitude change lossless on quality?
Secondly I wanted to know if I get better result if I send from foobar to ASIO driver quieter signal and make more amplification on endpoint amplifier, or send to driver a louder signal making the endpoint amplification lower.
Finally I wished if foobar could (for those formats it can decode) make more user control about which formats are fully decoded and send to DSP chain, and which are just passed through untouched to audio driver (as some audio devices can direct play more formats than just PCM). It would be also helpful to ensure the source data are directly send to playback device without any interference. What do you think about the idea?

Re: I wish more control how fb handles audio formats

Reply #1 –
1. Any amplitude attenuation will make digital signal closer to quantization noise floor, thus signal to noise ratio will be lower.
2. Sending "digitally quieter sound" to DAC and then analog amplifier will result in amplifying signal with more noise (not judging if this increased noise level is audible or not).
3. Listen to the music. Not the decoders, wires, amplifiers or DACs.
4. Don't make your life more complicated only because you want to achieve almost INAUDIBLE effects, even if theoretically they are positive. Playing with "bitperfectness" mostly means less or almost no control over sound, other than volume knob on amplifier. This is contrary to what you ask for.

Re: I wish more control how fb handles audio formats

Reply #2 –
Adding to EpicForever's answer:

1. If you increase volume, you may drive the signal to digital clipping. In fb2k, use ReplayGain and the "prevent clipping according to peak" function under Preferences->Playback.

2. If you do as in 1, and use RG and clipping prevention, then volume will be taken care of, provided that the peak tag is correct - you can easily mess up things by deliberately hacking it.
There is a technical issue here on inter-sample peaks. If you have patience to wait for RG scanning taking longer time, then fb2k can give "more accurate results" by Preferences->Tools->ReplayGain Scanner and check "True peak scan".
(Folks: which option is most reasonable, really?)

(I once had a not-too-bad amp that when paired with very sensitive loudspeakers would hiss audibly at typical volume knob settings, such that input level actually mattered. But that was in the analog domain, and I cannot recall other such issues IRL on consumer equipment.)

Re: I wish more control how fb handles audio formats

Reply #3 –
Thanks for explaining, I'll probably leave the idea of direct playback as I need to use foo equalizer at any cost.
Anyway it's good to know what's best practise of handling the audio (even though probably it's behind the placebo threshold).

Re: I wish more control how fb handles audio formats

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Anakunda on
Thanks for explaining, I'll probably leave the idea of direct playback as I need to use foo equalizer at any cost.
Anyway it's good to know what's best practise of handling the audio (even though probably it's behind the placebo threshold).
No-one got hurt from knowing what is (not) in the playback chain ... when I started doing computer playback, I thought I absolutely wanted "bit-perfect" playback. Reading myself up, I found out that I don't - I use ReplayGain. And you want an eq. I just did a search that returned https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,86438.0.html so I assume that you have an idea how to set that component.

By the way, you "need" bit-perfect output of undecoded DTS - but you don't need undecoded DTS if you use https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_input_dts .