[Sinsen]

Hi all.

I have tried hard today to make Winamp work with Apple lossless (and preferably ASIO), but I can't get "Winamp essentials" to work any more, tried reinstalling everything, but no luck.

So, I was thinking about just going back to iTunes, where Apples lossless plays right out of the box.

The question is, how much will sound quality be degraded by doing this?

Setup is iTunes->E-MU 0404->Stax 3050

Thanks.

 

[krmathis]

...or you could give Foobar2000 a try.
It has both ALAC and ASIO components available.

/me don't like iTunes on MS Windows. You might like it though...

 

[Sinsen]

I tried Foobar, but it made my music crackle and pop with apple lossless... I can live with the iTunes interface, I am just curious if my setup would sound (even) better with a ASIO compatible player.

 

[Shoreman]

I am very much a music purist, and I can tell you, to my ears, there is a significant difference (YMMV, as well as your ears. I guess that would be YEMV!

). It isn't the player, per se, it's the output options. iTunes natively doesn't give you the option of going the KS/ASIO route, and WaveOut just doesn't cut it if you're serious about your music. Whether you go with Winamp or Foobar2000, you have those options. Although I personally agree with krmathis' recommendation, either will give you the same basic audio output functionality. It's the other "stuff" that will push you toward one over the other. If you're inclined to go with Winamp, and have been stifled only by the Essentials plug-in (I'm assuming you're interested in the ALAC decoder), let me suggest that you reinstall Essentials and uncheck everything except the ALAC decoder. Barring any other issues, that should work for you. Or, you can install just the ALAC decoder plug-in and forget about the Essentials bundle entirely.

 

[Sinsen]

Well, allright

I'll give it another try. My problem is that ALAC files are not recognized and played in winamp after installing essentials. It might be some registry settings left over... guess I'll need to try cleaning it up.

Any advice removing the crackling in Foobar using ASIO would be great though

 

[Shoreman]

I'd check out the foobar2000 forums over at Hydrogenaudio. If you search for "crackle and pop," I'm sure you'll get more than a few hits. I do recall discussions concerning same in my browsing of their forums. That's really the place to go if you if you're serious about foobar and want to get the real scoop from the most knowledgeable users and developers.

 

[Sinsen]

I just reinstalled Foobar, but this time I did not install ASIO4All, as I did last time. No crackles, and no pops.... but what is the ASIO option that I get? Is it some sort of built in ASIO support in the E-MU drivers?

 

[Shoreman]

What is your selected output device (Preferences -> Playback -> Output -> Output device)?

 

[Sinsen]

It is set to "ASIO : ASIO E-MU 0404 | USB".

Last time I tried I followed a guide reccomending ASIO4All, and some custom configurations i Foobar... might be the standard E-MU (if it actually exists) ASIO selection is better for the 0404...

 

[Shoreman]

I wasn't sure whether E-MU 0404 included native ASIO drivers (I've ordered one but haven't received it yet). I think you answered the question. And it's always better to use the native hardware drivers than, in this case, ASIO4ALL (although it works splendidly for me) if you can.

 

[Sinsen]

It would seem that this is the case. I'll try reinstalling everything tomorrow, and see if this is just something left behind by the 4All-installation.

 

[krmathis]

Great to see that you seem to have found a working solution.
I don't have much more to add, as I am not all that familiar with MS Windows, ASIO, WinAmp, etc. Since I a Mac OS X user..

 

[bigshot]

I use iTunes for everything and it sounds great. But I have a Mac, and we Mac users don't have to go through all that kludging to get bitperfect sound out.

See ya
Steve

 

[Brewmaster]

I would think there would be no difference in sound quality. The 0404 shouldn't be doing any resampling so it should sound no different.

 

[Brewmaster]

Ok, I'm going to take back my last statement as I've been comparing Foobar to WMP for the last 20 minutes. Both are not resampled, yet Foobar sounds consistantly better. Soundstage is less with WMP.

This is with high quality MP3's.

What's the differnece? MP3 decoder?

I wish I had a easy way to A to B test this to make sure I'm not having some crazy placebo effect.