[LAU] Audiophiles, was: Alsa and 24-bit in Ubuntu Studio?

[Jeremy Jongepier]

On 03/08/2013 11:02 AM, Ben Bell wrote:
> Well obviously. Anyone with ears can tell you that.
>
> More importantly, does a vintage kernel sound better than a more recent one?
> I've been doing some testing and the results are pretty clear, not that
> they should surprise anyone who knows anything about recording:
>
> 1) Older kernels sound much warmer than newer ones.
>
> 2) Kernels compiled by hand on the machine they run on sound less sterile
>     than upstream distro provided ones which also tend to have flabby low
>     end response and bad stereo imaging.
>
> 3) As if it needed saying, gcc4 is a disaster for sound quality. I mean,
>     seriously if you want decent audio and you use gcc4 you may as well be
>     recording with a tin can microphone.
>
> 4) Kernels sound better after they've been worn in a bit. Don't expect your
>     newly built 2.4 kernel to have that warm sound until you've run with it
>     for a few weeks, but for a really classy sound here's a trick: compile the
>     kernel and then put it somewhere safe (ext2 partition, obviously) to mellow
>     for a month and then boot into it at the last minute before you start
>     recording an important session. Your clients will thank you.
>
> Ben

I have a couple of NOS kernels stacked, those sound way better than any 
kernel built after 2000.

On a serious note, people seriously believe a real-time kernel sounds 
better than normal kernels. They also think raising the nrpacks value of 
the snd-usb-audio module improves the sound quality of their $2000 USB 
DAC. Maybe the latter is true but I have no idea how nrpacks relates to 
sound quality.

Jeremy