Ubuntu + pulseaudio + max settings + m-audio fast track pro = beyond i
Reply #3 – 2011-08-24 21:14:35
If you are not adding effects or altering the audio, the player-application or operating system should not make any difference... You should be able to feed the same audio data into the soundcard. In reality, unless you're feeding /dev/dsp or whatever device you have directly, the audio is always altered by software rate conversion for mixing purposes (alsa/dmix and OSS4 default to 48000). The rate conversion algorithms do vary in quality. In fact, the default algorithm used by dmix is known to horrible. That's why there is an option to use the userspace libsamplerate as an alternative:File: /etc/asound.conf defaults.pcm.rate_converter "samplerate_best" On the other hand, OSS4 is known to have superior quality primarily due to using high quality rate conversion algorithms with float calculations enabled by default (not allowed in in-tree kernel code):/* * The src_quality setting defines the precision of the software based sample * rate conversion algorithm used by OSS. This setting doesn't affect possible * hardware level conversions done by the devices themselves. Using higher * quality setting gives better quality while lower settings consume less * CPU time. * * Possible values are: * 0 - D lowest quality (normally equals to 1=low quality) * 1 - L low quality (spline interpolation) * 2 - M medium quality (lagrange interpolation) * 3 - H high quality (DEFAULT) * 4 - HX high quality (high quality with extra precision) * 5 - P production quality * 6 - PX production quality (prod quality with extra precision) */ Unfortunately, OSS4 started to cause kernel crashes in my laptop. So, I had to stop using it. But I would stringly recommend it for anyone whose hardware does not reproduce the bug mine is suffering from. pulseaudio is just another mostly useless (except for special uses like network sharing and bluetooth) layer between applications and kernel subsystems. I'm guessing that it does have its own rate conversion algorithm(s) that might be better in quality than the default offered by alsa/dmix and whatever is used in windows.