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1
Audio Hardware / Re: Onboard MB Sound vs Schitt Modi?
Last post by DVDdoug -
Quote
and folks there talk constantly of the noise problem in desktops.
TRUE - You can have noise (hum, hiss or whine in the background).   But if you had audible noise you'd know it.   ;)

I had a soundcard once that had noise when the hard drive was accessed (or it was worse when the drive was accessed).

That's about the only thing to worry about.   Frequency response and distortion are almost always better than human hearing.

Or, sometimes a headphone load (which will have varying impedance over the frequency range) can cause related frequency response variations.

Note that USB power tends to be noisy and occasionally noise can get into the analog-side of a USB powered DAC through the power.   (Usually it's a "whine".)   A DAC with it's own separate power supply will avoid that possibility.
3
Support - (fb2k) / Re: A possible Xing VBR tag issue
Last post by Porcus -
Looks like the explanation is here: https://www.jwhitham.org/2023/09/system-shock-soundtrack-gapless.html
Correct Xing/LAME tag that fb2k fails to read because the next frame is faulty. Since bad mp3s are all over the world, leaving it up to the decoders/players to work around, I guess fb2k could use a fix that gets the Xing/LAME header correct?
Quoting:
Quote
The System Shock MP3 files are 320kbit MP3s, so each frame is either 1044 or 1045 bytes in size. Stepping through the code with GDB, I realised that the problem is not the Xing/LAME tag itself, but rather the frame after it. mpg123 and Foobar both expect the next MP3 frame to start at the correct place, exactly 1044 or 1045 bytes after the first one. But it's not present: instead, that part of the file is zero. mpg123 and Foobar both assume that the Xing/LAME tag is invalid and ignore it.


As for that TEST.wav file, I can replicate. I got winLAME to create bit-exactly the same file as yours whether or not I choose the gapless option (adding --nogap).
MediaInfo reports it as one minute.
Audiotester says "(LOST SYNC @ 0m 00s)"
ffmpeg: "Skipping 680 bytes of junk at 771."
5
3rd Party Plugins - (fb2k) / Re: [fb2k v2] SQLite Utilities (foo_sqlite)
Last post by mip52 -
Thanks, I hope I got it now. Here should be the final code:
Code: [Select]
drop table if exists albumSummary;
create table albumSummary as
  select album,
         [album artist],
         date,
         round(sum(rating*length_seconds)/sum(length_seconds), 2) as albumrating
  from Playlist
  where playlist_index = active_playlist()
  group by 1, 2, 3;

update PlaylistUpdatable as a
  set albumrating = b.albumrating
  from albumSummary as b
  where       playlist_index = active_playlist()
        and a.album          = b.album
        and a.[album artist] = b.[album artist]
        and a.date           = b.date;
drop table if exists albumSummary;
7
Support - (fb2k) / Re: A possible Xing VBR tag issue
Last post by A_Man_Eating_Duck -
I just gave this a test using the standalone winLAME 2021 release 1 and Foobar2000 v2.1 32bit (2023-09-22). I also tested a portable install of foobar2000 v1.6.16 with the same results.

I created a 1 minute single channel wave file of silence in audacity and used winLAME to encode it using the HQ: hifi setting (-V2 --vbr-new). The resulting mp3 is reported in Foobar2000 as being 128kbps and the length 0:14.956.

the orginal wav
Code: [Select]
Duration : 1:00.000 (2 646 000 samples)
Sample rate : 44100 Hz
Channels : 1
Bits per sample : 16
Bitrate : 706 kbps
Codec : PCM
Encoding : lossless

The MP3 encoded by winLAME
Code: [Select]
Duration : 0:14.956 (659 567 samples)
Sample rate : 44100 Hz
Channels : 1
Bitrate : 128 kbps
Codec : MP3
Codec profile : MP3 CBR
Encoding : lossy
Tag type : id3v2.4
Embedded cuesheet : no

Samples attached.

EDIT; I just ran the MP3 through MP3val and it reports this.

Code: [Select]
WARNING: "C:\Music\TEST.mp3" (offset 0x2e4): MPEG stream error, resynchronized successfully
WARNING: "C:\Music\TEST.mp3": Wrong number of MPEG frames specified in Xing header (2298 instead of 2301)
WARNING: "C:\Music\TEST.mp3": Wrong number of MPEG data bytes specified in Xing header (239409 instead of 240034)
8
Support - (fb2k) / A possible Xing VBR tag issue
Last post by wheelie -
Windows 10 and foobar2000 v2.0 [x64] standalone here.

Recently I converted some flac files to mp3 with WinLAME. I noticed that fb2k showed the duration time of mp3 incorrectly. I thought it was WinLAME issue and informed the dev. I provided a flac and an mp3 file. After running some test the results were suggesting that there might be a bug in fb2k:

Quote:
"I examined the Xing VBR tags that the LAME-produced and foobar2000-fixed files provide, and they are nearly identical and within the Xing VBR tag specifications. I also checked the files using ffprobe from FFmpeg and they report a correct playback time. So I suppose there might be an error in foobar2000."

About the mentioned "foobar2000-fixed" thingie, quote:
"VLC can correctly show duration of VBR files. I guess they scan the whole mp3 file. foobar2000 doesn't do this, but offers a menu item "right-click > Utilities > Fix VBR MP3 header...", which fixes the duration for foobar2000. It does this by adding a Xing INFO tag that the unmodified mp3 file is missing, which is strange, since it should have been written by LAME..."

Source here.
9
Other Lossy Codecs / Re: Descript Audio Codec (.dac) - 90x smaller than .wav?
Last post by rc55 -
Quote from: C.R.Helmrich on
Quote from: rc55 on
... it's made a 40MB exe ...
This does not include the weights file which is ~300MB. The weights file contains the model data used to encode and decode the audio and is a necessity, and the model is not interchangeable. You have to use the same model to decode any encoded file.
Thanks for the analysis! Out of curiosity: could you 7zip (preset Ultra) that 40MB exe and 300MB weight file and let us know what file size comes out? That would be a rough estimate of how much room for reduction there is.

Thanks,

Chris

Happy to oblige!
dac.exe 41,865,797 bytes
dac.7z 41,456,443 bytes

weights.pth 306,720,768 bytes
weights.7z 278,740,892 bytes
10
Audio Hardware / Onboard MB Sound vs Schitt Modi?
Last post by AudioNirvana3824 -
Hi, I'm wondering if I'd notice a difference between my Onboard sound from my motherboard vs an External DAC such as the Schitt Modi. I use to be an amateur audio engineer and have a M-Audio ProFire 610 from back in the day. So getting into external DACs interests me.

My chain is
Realtek ALC98 > Mini-plug-RCA > Source Switching Box > AudioSource AMP100 > Speakers
The AMP100 contains volume and balance controls so no need for a preamp. I'm on a fixed income so if external DACs are just snake oil please let me know. I'm a member of AudioKarma and folks there talk constantly of the noise problem in desktops.

Of course I could also just throw the ProFire in the chain and let it do the job. I have a new PC with Windows 11. I used to be a Linux user and the ProFire wasn't well supported under Linux.

Thanks so much.