[adalyan]

Hi everybody,

This is my first post here and I am new to computer audio but a bit of a veteran in HiFi. I am leaning towards a computer based setup now specifically for headphone listening. I am planning on buying a USB based soundcard to connect to Grado RA1 and to MS1 headphones.

Anyway the real quesiton is: If I go thru the ASIO route to connect to the DAC, can I still use the DSPs that are avilable in foobar? (I am using the crossfeed and sometimes the tubesound DSP's a lot for headphone listening.)

Many thanks,

ADalyan

 

[EnOYiN]

Edit: Welcome to Head-Fi. Sorry 'bout your wallet.

I made a small thread about this:

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=223586

To answer your question in short:

You can use DSPs when using ASIO. The signal will not be bit-perfect any more, but I wouldn't be too worried about that. The difference between DS and ASIO isn't big enough to justify the sacrifice of some DSPs if you think those really sound better. (IMO)

What you (and a lot of other people) should realize is that ASIO wasn't made to fulfil the audiophile needs. It was made for the recording industry. The main advantage is that you can control the latency given to the input and output.

 

[nkoulban]

Yes, you can still use the DSPs with ASIO. An alternative to ASIO is to Kernel Stream, both approaches bypass Windows K-Mixer and offer improved sound quality.

 

[adalyan]

Thank you very much for all the info...

Just so that I understand it better about this bit perfect business.

If I implement some DSP's say in foobar, the source is not bitperfect anymore (simply because the DSP's will change the source material.)

After this, foobar outputs the changed bitstream to DAC via ASIO to the DAC. At this stage the output of foobar should be sent to the DAC without any information loss (ie bitperfect) since this is done via ASIO.

Is my understanding of the process correct?

Many thanks.

ADalyan

 

[EnOYiN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adalyan /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is my understanding of the process correct?

Yup.