[linux-audio-user] Distortion -- bad speakers or cheap soundcard?

[e. j. branagan - the MUSE]

Greg wrote:

>Mr.-  I have the craptastic logitech "X5bla" system on my desktop and
>I can't even listen to MP3 files on them unless I have the volume
>turned down slightly and causes the amp to distort.  So your softsynth
>is probably too loud.  But anyhow, all distortions have their own
>characters.  What you're hearing is a harsh and defined digital
>clipping sound of information being out of range, since CDs play ok
>your amp is probably fine.  When an amp distorts it will usually sound
>smoother, less clicky than digital clipping.  When your speaker is
>cooked it will usually sound bad around specific energies of sound(?)
>like, bass will sound terrible and mids sound slightly airy / fuzzy at
>low volume and then as it gets lowder it all starts to sound like a
>flag in the wind.
>
>  
>
Some sound cards (noteably Soundblaster) introduce a whole new type of 
distortion sound.  They don't sound like digital clipping, because they 
are clipping at 44100hz, then resampling to 48khz before converting to 
analog  (or visa-versa).

I notice this particularly when recording - no matter how hot the input 
signal, sample values rarely get outside the +/- 30000 range and never 
outside +/- 31000, even though the native 48k samples are clipping at ~32k.

I really wish sound card manufacturers would tell us what sample rates 
they really support, and which ones they fake with up/down sampling.

-- 
e. j. branagan
the MUSE § Nashville, TN