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

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