shrimants
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2006
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I'm trying to find out the best way to test my current setup's weak/strong points. There are points at which the audio is completely digital, thus not causing a drop in signal quality (assuming there is no up/down converting occurring). How do I figure out the fidelity of other components however?
My current setup is a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop going to either my headphones or a pair of Audioengine A5's. However, there was a small problem I was experiencing with the sound card that led to this topic. I noticed that when the computer was using a large amount of power to process something, everything sounded fine. But when it was idling, I could hear a warbling from my headphones. I went through the PITA process of replacing parts of it piece by piece (via dell warranty); sound card, mobo, CPU, ethernet, even the modem. Nothing solved the issue. Then I got the brilliant idea to wrap the sound card in some sort of electrical insulator. I hypothesized that since the warbling was greater when the CPU was idling, that meant that there was too much electric interference caused by excess voltage/power to the sound card. I had thought it might have been ambient electric fields that were causing it but the sound card itself had no electric circuits that would induce a magnetic or electric field and cause interference (according to my basic physics knowledge).
I wrapped the thing up in masking tape so that not a single thing was touching it, not even the screw that held it in place (made a thick layer of tape and drove the screw through it). Viola! it worked! Later revisions called for duct tape instead of masking tape, and finally now i have bonafide electrical tape insulating everything.
The only thing I notice now is that the sound quality suddenly becomes nonexistent when I am trying to bass test, ie run bass frequencies lower than 30hz to my headphones. Instead of the tone or silence, I get this weird high pitched warbling. This, in turn, leads me to believe that either the chip itself is incapable of processing low frequency sounds, or that something interferes with its ability to process the sounds.
How do I test this theory, and how do i test this sound card? for the headphone output I can test it by looping it into the line in and seeing if the data I run out of the headphone jack matches the data that comes into the microphone jack, but that doesnt account for an internal test at all.
Furthermore, how do I test other sources? for example, my Nexus One? or my other laptop?
**tl;dr**: How do I test various analog and digital sources to check if they are a possible cause of bad sound quality? (Laptop, phone, ipod, etc)
My current setup is a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop going to either my headphones or a pair of Audioengine A5's. However, there was a small problem I was experiencing with the sound card that led to this topic. I noticed that when the computer was using a large amount of power to process something, everything sounded fine. But when it was idling, I could hear a warbling from my headphones. I went through the PITA process of replacing parts of it piece by piece (via dell warranty); sound card, mobo, CPU, ethernet, even the modem. Nothing solved the issue. Then I got the brilliant idea to wrap the sound card in some sort of electrical insulator. I hypothesized that since the warbling was greater when the CPU was idling, that meant that there was too much electric interference caused by excess voltage/power to the sound card. I had thought it might have been ambient electric fields that were causing it but the sound card itself had no electric circuits that would induce a magnetic or electric field and cause interference (according to my basic physics knowledge).
I wrapped the thing up in masking tape so that not a single thing was touching it, not even the screw that held it in place (made a thick layer of tape and drove the screw through it). Viola! it worked! Later revisions called for duct tape instead of masking tape, and finally now i have bonafide electrical tape insulating everything.
The only thing I notice now is that the sound quality suddenly becomes nonexistent when I am trying to bass test, ie run bass frequencies lower than 30hz to my headphones. Instead of the tone or silence, I get this weird high pitched warbling. This, in turn, leads me to believe that either the chip itself is incapable of processing low frequency sounds, or that something interferes with its ability to process the sounds.
How do I test this theory, and how do i test this sound card? for the headphone output I can test it by looping it into the line in and seeing if the data I run out of the headphone jack matches the data that comes into the microphone jack, but that doesnt account for an internal test at all.
Furthermore, how do I test other sources? for example, my Nexus One? or my other laptop?
**tl;dr**: How do I test various analog and digital sources to check if they are a possible cause of bad sound quality? (Laptop, phone, ipod, etc)
