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Topic: Audio quality and Vista (Read 183103 times) previous topic - next topic
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Audio quality and Vista

Reply #50
Hardly ... I guessed you read just woodin's post's and no others. 
No one can be told what Ogg Vorbis is...you have to hear it for yourself
- Morpheus

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #51
Jesus ... your saying the different schemes between the 2 are clearly audible and I'm saying they're not.

Well, actually, it's not ME who's saying that, a whole lot of people are saying that, the same people who have been pointing out the problems with Kmixer for years.  Perchance if you had some experience in the field you'd have known this. The fact you even bother to argue the situation suggests rather a lot.
Quote
Again ... this all sprung off claims you more or less made starting from your 1st post here that Vista will always sound better than XP

No, that's not my claim. I guess you couldn't win the argument using what I actually said, so you have to make up a position for me?

So perhaps you can go tilt at whatever windmill you imagined saying that.  Galoop, galoop!  Hi Ho Don Quixote!
Quote
.. under any circumstance. Every replyer except for yours has scoffed at that idea. Can I put it any plainer? Now whose the simpleton here that can't get the general point?


Well I could speculate who that might be, especially since rather some number of people have chimed in on the subject.

But I don't think I'll bother, perhaps you can let us know when you get tired of crying "yield" to windmills, while the knight's skewered you through and through.

Enough. One can not educate the deliberately ignorant, and he who continues to argue with ...
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #52
Vista has, as far as I know, a completely revamped audio stack which pretty much irons out all the annoyances of the old kmixer, and also sports a UNIFIED control panel (no more different control panels per audio setup - whatever those panels do, must also be supported through the regular "soundcard properties" window), better quality internal resampling, the direct mode, a bunch of built-in features for bass redirection and channel upmixing, and per-app volume control.

This latter is my favorite. You know how annoying it is when some webpage fires up a flash applet with 100% volume over-clipped over-compressed horribly sounding audio, always when you least expect it, and when you are listening to music in foobar/winamp running in the background? You can just mute your browser from the windows volume mixer now.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #53
Well, actually, it's not ME who's saying that, a whole lot of people are saying that..

Yea I agree, I've heard this from at least 5 people now.. Woodinville1 Woodinville2 Woodinville3 Woodinville4 Woodinville5.

To cut the story short, if people by any chance and for any reason are dissatisfied with Kmixer playback in XP, I'll just ask them to switch to a FREE player called Foobar2000 that has an excellent PPHS resampler running in Kernel Streaming mode, instead of buying a NON-free copy of Vista just so they can enjoy non-discernibly better audio.

So now we have a person's untested and unverified claims that Kmixer in Vista >> Kmixer in XP (besides consistently counter-claiming and convenient references to Google which will throw up ANECDOTES on this issue). We are also amazed that some individuals don't understand that the ABX test is constructed to test for differences, not to test for a lack of difference. Perhaps they did not read the posts of the people in this forum who are trained in both audio and statistics.

One group compares XP and Vista using methods like ASIO or kernel streaming where the goal is that *one* application can output an audio signal as unmodified as possible without any effects or mixing with other applications' audio. In that case there should really be no noticeable difference at all between XP and Vista.

Considering that this thread resides on an audio forum where people learn best-practices in audio, it should have been obvious that I have been talking about this. My question now is this: anyone disagrees with the quoted assertion? And what's the implication if I cannot hear a difference between Kernel Streaming and DirectSound?

I can't be bothered with Kmixer besides the fact that having been a member of this forum for 5 years now, I tend to sniff out TOS #8 violations easily. I usually let others take on the responsibility of informing the offender, just not this time.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #54
It's amazing how the M$ bashers appear out of the woodwork when an opportunity arises! 

Personally, I find M$ a complete enigma. There is part that I admire and much that I loathe, but none of that is relevant in this thread.

The simple statement being made is that the audio reproduction through Vista, out of the box, is noticeably better than through any previous version of Windows, straight out of the box.  And the simple answer is that it is; sufficiently so that any testing of this is really quite pointless. And, I am quite aged and it's still very obvious even to my old ears! Now if you haven't been in a position to put this to the test, then you really don't have a valid opinion.

I find it quite interesting that those who dig out and wield TOS #8 here are those who fall into this latter category! We are all well aware that kmixer, etc., in XP can be bypassed with an attendant jump in output quality but, again, that wasn't where this started from.

Any further discussion on this thread should be limited to those who have made the comparison and, therefore, have a valid opinion rather than those who simply want to argue a point!

Sorry!! But this is getting slightly heated and very silly.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #55
The simple statement being made is that the audio reproduction through Vista, out of the box, is noticeably better than through any previous version of Windows, straight out of the box.  And the simple answer is that it is; sufficiently so that any testing of this is really quite pointless.
The simple statement being made is that the audio reproduction through cryogenically treated solid silver speaker cables, out of the box, is noticeably better than through any other speaker cables, straight out of the box.  And the simple answer is that it is; sufficiently so that any testing of this is really quite pointless.

Eh?

If you are so sure, please organize and run a test to prove your point. The whole idea of requiring tests on this forum is that people can't make unsubstantiated claims about audibility - even (or especially) in cases where it is very obvious to them. Now, I am not an MS basher, and you might very well be right - but you need to provide evidence other than an assertion.

As for me, I didn't notice a significant change in quality when installing Vista, but I don't listen to music in Windows very often - so I might well have missed it.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #56
I'm sorry, but without two identical hardware setups, testing is an impossibility as there would be too many variables to satisfy even the most basic of testing requirements! And while I have several systems available, no one is the same as any other.

I have to say that I don't quite see where this obsession for testing is going with this topic anyway! If you use XP, then you're forced to work within what it provides, and the same goes for Vista. Is anyone really likely to make their OS choice based upon whether the audio output from the one is any better than the other? I think not. The decision, if there is a decision to be made, will be based upon other factors not the least being what may be provided with a purchased system if you're not building it yourself.

Testing, therefore, is of no more than academic interest as basically you get what you're given when you choose the OS! In reality, my, or anybody else's, opinion, one way or the other, is utterly irrelevant!

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #57
To cut the story short, if people by any chance and for any reason are dissatisfied with Kmixer playback in XP, I'll just ask them to switch to a FREE player called Foobar2000 that has an excellent PPHS resampler running in Kernel Streaming mode, instead of buying a NON-free copy of Vista just so they can enjoy non-discernibly better audio.
Oh, so that's the real reason. People don't want to switch and must find reasons why the new Windows doesn't yield any advantages. It always boils down to the sleep happy thing. And I guess the people defending Vista are the ones that already have it and therefore want to find its advantages.

Considering that this thread resides on an audio forum where people learn best-practices in audio, it should have been obvious that I have been talking about this.
That might have been best-practice in XP but in Vista this is now obsolete. Even using a simple WDM/DirectSound combination now delivers superb quality. And that you don't need this advantage doesn't mean that it isn't there. Again I read this "I don't (want to) need Vista" between the lines.

So, basically this turns out to be an XP versus Vista in general "discussion" instead of XP's audio system versus Vista's audio system, at least when looking for the possible emotional motivation that some people might have here, which would of course be no valid argument and therefore is always hidden well behind objective phrases.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #58
good to see nobody read the articles I posted and video about the Vista audio stack which is with the two programers. They explain about the stack, wave forms, dsp, floating point etc.

frankly they have more clue then most people here but if nobody wants to watch the video fair enough flame on.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #59
So, basically this turns out to be an XP versus Vista in general "discussion" instead of XP's audio system versus Vista's audio system, at least when looking for the possible emotional motivation that some people might have here, which would of course be no valid argument and therefore is always hidden well behind objective phrases.

Not for me. I take issue with this statement.
Hello,
I have just installed Vista dual boot with XP and from the first moment I got the impression that it sounds better than XP, more detailed highs and bass, and somewhat better dynamics.
I have a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 RCA cabled to a 50 watt NAD amplifier and stereo PSB monitors. I have tuned Vista for reduced memory and CPU consumption by only running essential services and software.

I know my claims come just by personal perception, and aren't supported or proved with ABX, but I have noticed a significant improvement and wanted to contribute to this post. I run updated drivers on both XP/Vista, and play music on foobar2000, WMP and MPClassic.


I couldn't give a crap which OS comes out top. I just want facts substantiated with hard evidence, not people's perceptions. That's what this forum is about isn't it? If I get some free time over the weekend I'll try and get a hooky copy of vista and run some RMAA tests with my two MAudio cards and realtek HD onboard.

Got anything from any other situation?

Like? Time permitting, I'll provide it. Remember, for me this is mostly about the statement made above.
daefeatures.co.uk

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #60
I just tested Vista's resampler by recording the outgoing signal with another sound card. The sound card used for playback is an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 and the one used for recording is an Edirol UA-1EX at 96000 Hz, 24-bit. I used a sine sweep to detect any artifacts visually. Here are the results:

44100 Hz at 44100 Hz:


44100 Hz at 48000 Hz:


48000 Hz at 44100 Hz:


48000 Hz at 48000 Hz:


There are clearly artifacts visible but they leave me a bit puzzled because they are also visible when no resampling occurs. It might be a problem related to the UA-1EX's recording process. Any conclusions from this?

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #61
So now we have a person's untested and unverified claims that Kmixer in Vista >> Kmixer in XP (besides consistently counter-claiming and convenient references to Google which will throw up ANECDOTES on this issue).


Let's start from the beginning.

As the MS documents show, there is no "kmixer" in Vista ?.  So, your allegation that there is is shown by testable, verifiable evidence to be wrong.

There is no kernel-level signal processing in Vista. That is also easily determined by looking at the basic Vista documents.

It is clear to me that you are not interested in an evenhanded examination of the subject, and that furthermore you are not willing to examine publically available information, including that which somebody else (I mean, third-party, even) has cited directly from the horse's mouth.

It is time that you capitulate, and that you admit that what I'm saying is tested, verified, and factual.  Your attempts to manipulate TOS into silencing your debating foes, when in fact their statements are supported by the documentation available, is transparent.

So capitulate. Admit that what I've said is testable, verifiable, and falsifiable. What's more, it's time that you admit that my comments about the new audio chain in Vista are in fact factual and material.

Now, since I've pointed out that I designed some of the stuff in the Vista audio engine already, perhaps it will dawn on you that you're arguing with the pro from Dover, here.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #62
Quote
http://www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt/room_correction.ppt
Is a very good description of both the design and the implimentation, at least as good as one gets without going into specific code and such.


thanks for the link to a very interesting view about DRC
Is here anywhere a more complete paper on this MS room correction, I found nothing searching in the AES preprints or journal.
Thanks for infos

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #63

The simple statement being made is that the audio reproduction through Vista, out of the box, is noticeably better than through any previous version of Windows, straight out of the box.  And the simple answer is that it is; sufficiently so that any testing of this is really quite pointless.
The simple statement being made is that the audio reproduction through cryogenically treated solid silver speaker cables, out of the box, is noticeably better than through any other speaker cables, straight out of the box.  And the simple answer is that it is; sufficiently so that any testing of this is really quite pointless.



Lad, you need to understand. We HAVE run tests.

good to see nobody read the articles I posted and video about the Vista audio stack which is with the two programers. They explain about the stack, wave forms, dsp, floating point etc.

frankly they have more clue then most people here but if nobody wants to watch the video fair enough flame on.



Dude, make that 3 of them.

There are clearly artifacts visible but they leave me a bit puzzled because they are also visible when no resampling occurs. It might be a problem related to the UA-1EX's recording process. Any conclusions from this?


It looks like some capture artifacts, and maybe a DAC or ADC filter artifact.

The question of DAC/ADC quality is another question, worth another thread, and one in which you may experience quite some ranting from those who want BETTER HARDWARE.

Oh, you betcha...

Look at WHQL standards for audio.

Now ask "how many manufacturers went ballastic when we set them that low".

Quote
http://www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt/room_correction.ppt
Is a very good description of both the design and the implimentation, at least as good as one gets without going into specific code and such.


thanks for the link to a very interesting view about DRC
Is here anywhere a more complete paper on this MS room correction, I found nothing searching in the AES preprints or journal.
Thanks for infos


There's a paper in the last NY AES convention on the same. Authors are Johnston and Smirnov. Sorry, my disc is at home, I don't recall the paper #.

As for me, I didn't notice a significant change in quality when installing Vista, but I don't listen to music in Windows very often - so I might well have missed it.


Take Ry Cooder's album "Jazz", set your DAC to 48kHz (so you ahve resampling for sure), and play back the (.wav version) of the last track.

Listen to the last 30 seconds in both systems.

You won't be able to run a blind test.  After a few runs, you'll be able to ID each one independently.

I've tried it. Now you try it.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #64
XP Kmixer resampling is measurable, I did measure it and results are here. Sorry, graphs are not visible in Firefox, the measurements page was generated with an old version of RMAA.

It doesn't seem really awful, in my opinion it would get unnoticed in most cases for most people, but it is true that this resampling could be done better, SSRC or Cool Edit Pro/Adobe Audition are clearly better in this respect. Also, this resampling only happens when the sound card playback sampling  rate doesn't match the source sampling rate, for whatever reason. I think in some cards it happens always (48 KHz fixed cards), in others when there are several sounds at different sampling rates playing at same time, whatever.

Vista improvement is that it does this resampling the right way, as should have been done from the beginning (32 bit float processing vs. 16 bit integer processing) and adds many other new features. I trust 100% what Woodinville has to say about new Vista features and capabilities. It have not had the chance to measure quality of the new resampling, but if Woodinville says it's good I trust him.

(Edit: Woodinville, thanks for the nice ppt about room correction, really very interesting)

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #65
Funny that I'm accused of being an MS basher. Is Microsoft Windows XP (what I'm using) a non-MS OS?

And nice one there woodinville, you skirt my direct question and pick on my ignorance of Vista's audio stack.

Let me say it again: best practices with music playback on both XP and Vista yield no discernible difference. You'll have to convince me that 101% is better than 100%, assuming 101% exists. I don't care if resampling is involved, if Kmixer is involved, if as many as 64 bits are involved, if room correction is involved. And to set the record straight, let me state also that I now trust the claim that Vista's out-of-the-box music experience is superior to XP's.

I hope the term 'best practices' conjures up the appropriate images in people's minds for constructive discussion. If people STILL want to pick on resampling alone, I'll have to step out of this thread. Why? Because I'll truly be speechless at the inanity and obstinacy.

By the way, I live in Dover too, but my latitude is 1 degree N.


The only thing I love about Vista's audio stack is the per-application volume control. Using Foobar2000 in Vista (RTM version, ahem) was a great pleasure.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #66
Let me say it again: best practices with music playback on both XP and Vista yield no discernible difference.

So, does best practice bypass Kmixer or not?
Quote
You'll have to convince me that 101% is better than 100%, assuming 101% exists. I don't care if resampling is involved, if Kmixer is involved, if as many as 64 bits are involved, if room correction is involved.

Room correction is irrelevant, unless you're using it, so why did you even bother to mention it. It's very clear to me that you haven't done your homework, you don't know the issues, and you're spewing what looks perilously close to absolute hatred just because I dare to dispute your religious beliefs.

Convince? No, I don't have to.  You can hold to whatever myth you want, I don't do religion. I've posted measurements, measurements that make the issue clear. 50dB and 120dB are hardly the same by any standard, including perceptual.  Perhaps you would like to produce some appropriately done measurements that say otherwise? Note: We're tlaking about the processing itself here, not the quality of ADC and DAC, both of which are another sore point, but one that remains.  Yes, those results are the result of extreme signals, but that's life.

Ball is in your court.  Can you test the resamplers? Will you do the work?

How about channel folddown?  How about the quality of the graphic EQ?  What about BSOD due to 3rd party driver death?  Do you count these as part of quality or not?
Quote
I hope the term 'best practices' conjures up the appropriate images in people's minds for constructive discussion. If people STILL want to pick on resampling alone, I'll have to step out of this thread. Why? Because I'll truly be speechless at the inanity and obstinacy.


Well, do you have an answer for known issues like Kmixer channel folddown and Kmixer resampler?  How about clipping in the equalizer due to the 16 bit arithmetic, or the SNR loss in the IIR filters in the equalizer due to the 16 bit arithmetic, or then there's the question of putting fancy arithmetic in the kernal. But you dodged the BSOD issue from 3rd party drivers entirely. Guess that's not part of quality for you.

Perhaps you've just never noticed the problems. I don't know. Maybe that's it.

ETA:KG, try the resampling in Kmixer (be sure you get that, and not the resampler in the player, which is better) with a complex signal with lots of high frequencies.  Carefully.

(Edit: Woodinville, thanks for the nice ppt about room correction, really very interesting)


Thank you, it's a nice solution where you get 95% of the full effect for about 3% of the (cpu) work. I like that kind of engineering solution.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #67
OK, I'm stepping out of this thread after all.

From 'best practices in audio playback' we move to some rambling regarding 'room correction' and then *gasp* 3rd-party driver stability. I attempt to cover all the possible loopholes a certain egotist can conjure up, and hey, he found a new one, and a very minor one at that! And when I have already set the record straight, he goes and shifts the goalposts. Now he want me to believe that the best possible setup in Vista is better than the best possible setup in XP with ZERO documented proof. Shall I bring back my lossless versus lossless example again, just for kicks?

Here's a new one: "Cool, this BSOD in Vista sounds better than the one I usually get in XP!'


And it's amazing after all that, he think I'm the one with blind faith issues. Good attempt there with the ad hominem on 'religion' and 'stranglehold' on 'science'. I guess Hydrogenaudio has been feeding me 'religion' after all, lol.  I can see that he is quite challenged in the areas of imagery and vocabulary though. He cannot visualise and comprehend 'best practices'!

----

I never wanted to be nasty about this, but you leave me no choice... if Microsoft holds a public survey on 'most loyal employee', remind me to vote for you.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #68
He cannot visualise and comprehend 'best practices'!



You have claimed many things so far without evidence. Now, without evidence, you have publically accused me of professional misconduct.
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J. D. (jj) Johnston

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #69
@sld: I think you've got the answers already. You want to say that using kernel Streaming, or ASIO, in XP, allows to bypass XP's audio path, and with  it, getting bitperfect audio straight to the hardware.

That's really not the issue here. And that doesn't make XP better than Vista. It is true that "audio in XP can sound as faithful as in Vista". But it is true also that "Vista improves the quality of the audio path versus the path in XP".

The problems with resampling with kmixer have been known to be true, and discernable, especially with AC-97 soundcards. You've been told why this doesn't happen in Vista. If it was audible before, and now it's fixed, it is obvious that it can be ABX'd.
This is why it doesn't need more proofs.

Resuming  : "Can bypass" not equal to "Works".

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #70
As a follow up to Hancoque's post here are my results. Recorded using the MAudio Audiophile 2496 @ 32 bit float* in loopback mode on Windows XP64. Files played back in Foobar2000 and resampled with PPHS.

44.1@44.1


44.1@48


48@44.1


48@48


* I realise the soundcard is only 24bit but I didn't see a 32bit option. If this is wrong please tell me how to rectify that.
daefeatures.co.uk

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #71
I think I now have conducted a conclusive test. Instead of recording the outgoing signal with a seperate soundcard I just recorded it with the same one using the monitor function. The disadvantage of this method is that the sample rate for recording and playback cannot differ. But that is not really a problem. I just recorded at 48 kHz and recorded sine sweeps created with sample rates of 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz and 96 kHz. This way I can measure the quality of upsampling from 44.1 to 48 kHz, 48 to 48 kHz (no resampling) and downsampling from 96 to 48 kHz.

PPHS:


Vista:


PPHS (ultra mode)


The middle image shows gaps beetwen the samples. I guess that is because foobar2000 had to change the sample rates during playback while that wasn't the case when letting the player do the resampling. There's also a glitch visible in the first image. I recorded it about 10 times but it was always there and at the same location. So I assume it's an issue with the PPHS resampler in default mode and not related to the recording process.

My conclusion is: Vista's resampler is better than PPHS in default mode but PPHS beats Vista's resampler in ultra mode. But I think it's not about which algorithm is the absolute best in this case but if Vista's algorithm is sufficient. As it is designed solely for real-time playback I would say it's good enough. What the images don't show well is the frequency roll-off. But I hope you believe me when I say that the ranking stays the same in that regard. Vista's resampler begins to roll-off the high frequencies at about 19 kHz for the 44.1 kHz sample but doesn't reach a relevant attenuation (> 1 dB) before 20 kHz. The frequencies of the 96 kHz sample are preserved up to 21 kHz. After that a steep roll-off occurs.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #72
.
Thanks to the folks who took the time to create the nice graphs, however – what’s needed are actual sound-files for comparison.  A trio of high-fidelity clips, ‘played’ via Windows Media Player on an XP box (loaded with all updates / patches – clean), vs. the same audio clips on a cleanly loaded, fully-up to date Vista box - using the same version of WMP (ver.11), and then posted online – correctly labeled (for reference) and un-labeled (for ABX).

We can all see that a great many hours have been burnt off in these discussions thus far, by a variety of parties.  If folks had spent this much time posting clips for us to ABX, along with a brief outline of the hardware involved, I suspect that this conversation would have found a conclusive result long ago.

I’ll look at this thread again Monday night, if no one has posted audible clips as per above, I'll disconnect the currently install hard disk drive and pop another identical one into the (currently), 'Vista box' that I'd recently loaded as a power-cable test-unit (its very clean & up-to-date).  I’ll load the new hard disk drive with XP Pro (clean / up-to-date), and spit off a couple of clips from each O.S. (30-seconds, within 'fair-use' rules), for us to audition and ABX.  Folks can then post their ABX results and we can see, once and for all if identical files, on identical machines, with identical software aside from the O.S., cleanly loaded without any 'tweaking' - are audibly different from one-another.

(Yes, I’m procrastinating on doing this myself; it’s a beautiful, sunny day here in the Okanagan today and I wanna’ go for a bike ride!  Additionally, my board is beside me, absorbing the wax I just melted onto it moments ago, and I intend on riding the hell outta’ the local mountains this weekend before it closes for the season – 7 days and counting!)

Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com

.

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #73
Here's a new one: "Cool, this BSOD in Vista sounds better than the one I usually get in XP!'


I would tell you, since I'm running the exact same machine same hardware as when I had XP SP2, but alas I haven't had a single BSOD in Vista since the day I installed it many months ago. 

To me, best practices includes ease of use and.. stability.



Woodinville, is anyone actually using WaveRT and/or Exclusive mode?

Audio quality and Vista

Reply #74
.
Thanks to the folks who took the time to create the nice graphs, however – what’s needed are actual sound-files for comparison.  A trio of high-fidelity clips, ‘played’ via Windows Media Player on an XP box (loaded with all updates / patches – clean), vs. the same audio clips on a cleanly loaded, fully-up to date Vista box - using the same version of WMP (ver.11), and then posted online – correctly labeled (for reference) and un-labeled (for ABX).

We can all see that a great many hours have been burnt off in these discussions thus far, by a variety of parties.  If folks had spent this much time posting clips for us to ABX, along with a brief outline of the hardware involved, I suspect that this conversation would have found a conclusive result long ago.

I’ll look at this thread again Monday night, if no one has posted audible clips as per above, I'll disconnect the currently install hard disk drive and pop another identical one into the (currently), 'Vista box' that I'd recently loaded as a power-cable test-unit (its very clean & up-to-date).  I’ll load the new hard disk drive with XP Pro (clean / up-to-date), and spit off a couple of clips from each O.S. (30-seconds, within 'fair-use' rules), for us to audition and ABX.  Folks can then post their ABX results and we can see, once and for all if identical files, on identical machines, with identical software aside from the O.S., cleanly loaded without any 'tweaking' - are audibly different from one-another.

(Yes, I’m procrastinating on doing this myself; it’s a beautiful, sunny day here in the Okanagan today and I wanna’ go for a bike ride!  Additionally, my board is beside me, absorbing the wax I just melted onto it moments ago, and I intend on riding the hell outta’ the local mountains this weekend before it closes for the season – 7 days and counting!)

Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com

.


Easy way.

Fix your rendering rate to 48kHz (control panel) so that you trigger the resampler.

Even worse, fix your rendering rate to 8kHz by playing a speech file.

Add a huge quotient of silence to the speech file.

While the silence is playing, play the first 30 seconds of "We Shall be Happy" by Ry Cooder, off the album Jazz.

Do the same in Vista, only leave your rendering rate at 48kHz (for both speech and whatever).

Listen to the two.

I dare say you'll notice a touch of difference here and there.  Even those above your article who would rather spout professional accusations than investigate ought to be able to notice, even if they listen on a nice PWB3.0 system.
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J. D. (jj) Johnston