Grekim Jennings wrote: Check the versions of aplay maybe? Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/

On 03/05/2013 02:35 AM, Peder Hedlund wrote: The studio computer has an RME 9632 and a stock sound card. It is mainly running Arch (latest Alsa and no problems), but I experiment with other systems all the time. The Debian system (laptop) has just a stock soundcard as well and running with relatively older (1.0.23) Alsa support and has no problems. Sometimes I will test things out between the two with the Audiobox (usb). Interestingly, with a 'standard' Ubuntu 12.04 (although 32 bit and not 64 bit as is Ubuntu Studio) I did not have this problem...so 24 bit files were playable after I compiled Alsa-Tools.

Quoting Erik de Castro Lopo <mle+la(a)mega-nerd.com>om>: And people say Windows is better than Linux... - Peder

On 03/07/2013 06:45 AM, david wrote: Linux of course if you have to believe the audiophile forums. Jeremy

On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 07:28:46PM +0100, Jeremy Jongepier 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

On Fri, 2013-03-08 at 11:24 +0100, Jeremy Jongepier wrote: There are many things involved and audio jitter easily can make the sound muddy. I never had an audio card mounted to my computers, that did reach the sound quality of my consumer HiFi equipment, so I suspect there's simply jitter making the sound less transparent. I suspect that without audio jitter the sound quality of a RME card should at least reach the sound quality of a Sony consumer DAT recorder, but I doubt that on my machine the RME card does sound as good as the DAT recorders I own. Assumed people make digital copies, than it's still the question if they really make a copy or if they mix sound, don't take care about jack issues etc., I experienced more sound loss for "digital copies" using jack, than for even cheap analog gear. It always depends to the usage. Regarding to the workflow inaudible rounding errors etc. might become audible and who's aware that there could be issues looping a signal from the output of an app to it's input, if you don't take care about the order of the ports. However, back to the topic, I suspect that audio jitter is caused by a combination of chip sets and kernel versions. A lot of issues aren't esoteric. I guess that even many audiophiles aren't idiots, they don't pay 1000,- € for a cable, to get better sound, they pay for the optical design, to get an unique status symbol etc., some people simply have enough money, for some people 10000,- € are less than 1 Cent is for you and me. They don't have the time to become audio experts, audiophiles are consumers, not interested to get the same knowledge most of us have got. They don't need it. My dentist is an audiophile, he has got knowledge about dental medicine and I only expect knowledge about dental medicine, not about audio. "On a serious note, people seriously believe a real-time kernel sounds better than normal kernels." Using a kernel-rt I get less xruns, so it's not impossible that it will increase the sound quality, even when I'm unable to hear an improvement, the better sound quality is visually reported by the counted xruns. Seldom 2 computers are equal, nearly everybody of us has got another machine, so issues are likely and less likely esoteric. Regards, Ralf

On Fri, 8 Mar 2013 10:02:49 +0000 Ben Bell <bjb-linux-audio-user(a)deus.net> wrote: But you haven't addressed the differences that using solid gold SATA cables can give you. With a purer path to the hard drive the bits are written more cleanly, resulting in a warmer kernel - but only if you're using a spinning disk. If you use a SSD you'll lose any benefit the gold SATA cable will give. That solid state crap has been the audiophile's bane for over half a century now. -- ====================================================================== Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh(a)brainiac.com Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa

On Sat, 09 Mar 2013 01:00:51 +0100 Hartmut Noack <zettberlin(a)linuxuse.de> wrote: Without wishing to be critical, you're all rather failing to see the elephant in the room. The biggest corrupter of sonic purity is worn and dirty electricity. Think of it. The electricity you're using today was quite likely being squirted through a heavy industrial processing plant yesterday. It may even have passed through a sewage works. Yes I know that's pretty disgusting but we have to face the facts. Now, I know that you can apply mains filters and proper on-line UPS units and that will clean the electricity up a lot, but don't you think all that scrubbing only makes it even more worn and takes some of the 'sharpness' out of the sound you make with it? No, the only answer is to use a rotary converter. By its mechanical action, this will actually use the stale electricity to create brand new electricity. You will be amazed at the improvement. The clarity will be so stunning you will even be able to tell the point number of the kernel your OS is using, and it has been said that under these conditions some people are able to detect the nuances of the different formulations of the hard disk surface. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

On Sat, 2013-03-09 at 13:53 +1300, Gary M wrote: No, not only oxygen-free, the room should be completely empty of matter, that's why Ubuntu does produce the best audio quality, since Mark Shuttleworth does transmit vacuum energy by imposition of hands to Ubuntu mirrors. He got this super power by an accident, when he was a space tourist. I've got this secret information from Stan Lee.