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Noise at low volumes using ASIO (Essence STX)

post #1 of 5
4/17/11 at 9:37am
Thread Starter 

My usual googling skills have failed me on this occasion.

When I set the volume extremely low in foobar, I hear a weird sort of hissing noise/distortion whenever a note is audible in the music. Turning the volume up either removes this noise or drowns it out – either way it becomes inaudible (for me at least).

It’s not the recording – I’ve tried many tracks from many albums.

It’s not any DSP – I’ve got none enabled.

It’s not foobar – I’ve loaded songs as samples into different programs using ASIO and it still appears.

The odd thing is using other output options such as KS, WASAPI, or ASIO4ALL instead of ASIO (I have no idea what the difference is, but Renoise has options to use both ASIO and ASIO4ALL while foobar only lets me choose ASIO) fixes the problem. Dithering fixes it in foobar though I’m not sure why.

I’m using a Xonar STX with the latest drivers.

Am I missing something? A brain?

 

EDEET: I've since found out this is quantization error noise which is obviously why dithering fixes it. What I don't understand is why I'm getting this noise when I'm testing 16-bit files with 16-bit setting in the driver. If I set it to 24 it goes away... HMM.


Edited by Ilovebeef - 4/17/11 at 6:13pm
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post #2 of 5
4/17/11 at 10:03pm

You can use KS - on many setups this output better than an ASIO.

ASIO is a pretty good option but sometimes KS better, just try on a high volumes what sound better for you.

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post #3 of 5
4/18/11 at 1:03am

Try by closing all input ports (mic, line-in's, etc.).

 

jiiteepee

 

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post #4 of 5
4/18/11 at 10:36am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chs177 View Post

You can use KS - on many setups this output better than an ASIO.

ASIO is a pretty good option but sometimes KS better, just try on a high volumes what sound better for you.


KS doesn't work very well for me. The volume slider on foobar seems to lag behind when I change it which is annoying.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by jiiteepee View Post

Try by closing all input ports (mic, line-in's, etc.).

 

jiiteepee

 


No difference. As I said in the edit it's quantization noise rather than interference.

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post #5 of 5
4/18/11 at 10:01pm

You can try a unixonar driver. This is not an official driver but it works.:)
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ilovebeef View Post

KS doesn't work very well for me. The volume slider on foobar seems to lag behind when I change it which is annoying.

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