[coho66]

i'm just looking into piecing together a desktop pc or laptop for lossless audio playlist playback through my headphone rig...i'm a little tired of swapping cd's every 2nd or 3rd song. I've been reading up on threads regarding the topic and noticed something I have not come across before... .... ... kernel threading??? Can someone please give me an explanation of what it is...why you would want to use it...and what is required to use it?

Thanks in advance,

Dan

 

[HendrixFreak]

Don't know what context you saw the phrase in but don't worry about it. "Kernel" refers to code running in the highest privileged mode, close to the metal - IE, parts of an operating system. Threads - sounds like you know what they are. "Kernel threading" - could mean a number of things. In any case its nothing you can control, its nothing one PC has that another doesn't.

 

[coho66]

well....all i know is that i keep seeing the program "foobar2000" mentioned with reference to it...i checked out the website and couldn't find any documentation outlining what it was; there may have been a readme with downloading it but i'm too lazy to do that.

 

[mulveling]

Actually it's called "kernel streaming". It's a very nice technique for sending sound directly to the soundcard, thus bypassing Windows's "kmixer" process. Bypassing kmixer is always considered a good thing because apparently kmixer can mangle the bits of a digital audio stream before it gets passed to the soundcard. I've heard kmixer might possibly do extremely stupid things including but not limited to upsampling 44.1kHz cd audio to 48kHz, and the back down to 44.1kHz before sending it to the soundcard, which results in a loss of data.

Foobar2000 is a fantastic music player that has several nice plugins, one of which does kernel streaming. Aside from that plugin, I love foobar 2000 for its no-nonsense minimalist interface and of course for the way it sounds.

Winamp with the ASIO plugin is the only non-kernel streaming method I've heard of for bypassing kmixer, but I don't like winamp and I think kernel streaming works with a larger set of soundcards. I deleted winamp once I got foobar2000. One more thing - I know kmixer is a problem with Windows2000 systems, but it may not be an issue with Windows XP. I just don't know since I use 2000.

Mike U.

 

[coho66]

any other ways of doing it? particularly better ways or ways that have certain advantages? any idea of finding out which soundcards support this process and/or which soundcards are compatible with which software?

 

[coho66]

anyone ever do comparisons between using this method and without? if so please feel free to express thoughts/opinions/observations resulting from this,

thanks,

dan