[t10]

I have two PCs both Nforce2 Ultras with Soundstorm2 onboard.

My mainrig got the Revo. I was really skeptical to hear any difference, but darn, my jaw dropped when I heard the Revo using analog out on my Klipsch Promedias 4.1
The bass was MUCH tighter, sound is a lot clearer, and faster (better resolution). When using my A900's, there was no constant background hiss.
I still cannot believe the difference, it is as if every sound packet is charged; faster, stronger, better, with more impact

Not to stop the good sound, I quickly grabbed the AV710, and headed to my HTPC. Disabled Soundstorm in bios, rebooted, uninstalled NVmixer, popped in AV710, booted to dos, flashed with Prodigy firmware, back to windows, installed prodigy drivers quickly played my DTS wav, and yay bitperfect.

Now onto the sound. After unexpected and surprising bump in SQ with the Revo, the AV710 was a letdown. I spent hours playing back everything, from Techno, to Classical, to Ambient to House. I tried closing my eyes, tried changing sitting positions, layed down on the floor put my feet up in the air on the couch

, heck I even changed the speakers (went from PSB 7pt, to PSB B2 for the fronts), then tried my headphones, and no luck. The sound was still very much the same.

I do have to mention, I only played back MP3's, since testing out CDs was slightly pointless in my case, when all my music collection is 160-320kbps Lame VBR MP3.

I concluded that either soundstorm did a great job upsampling mp3's to 48khz, or that for mp3's it really did not matter much if they are resampled or not, being lossy in the first place.

Btw, the setup was glass optical s/pdif from the AV710 to Panny XR-X70 receiver, then 12awg cables to PSB 7pT towers.

Just thought I'd share

 

[Soundstorm]

Duh, obviously. Digital output's final sound quality characteristics is determined by the DAC and other components like opamps and such inside the receiver. If you compare the AV-710's Alt-out output(Wolfson WM8728 DAC) to the Soundstorm digital output to your receiver that would be more interesting. And Soundstorm analog output is forgettable, limited by the crappy DAC inside the Realtek AC97 codecs......

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by t10 Btw, the setup was glass optical s/pdif from the AV710 to Panny XR-X70 receiver, then 12awg cables to PSB 7pT towers. Just thought I'd share

You are using a digital conenction, the audio is all processed by the panny, there would be no difference really between the av and the soundstorm. So, your results are correct.

The reason the m-audio sounds better, is because its using analog connection to the pro-medias, so you are now using the m-audio to process the audio instead of the nforce.

 

[t10]

Yes, Revo has a better DAC than the Soundstorm no argument here.


What the argument was, is that a lot of people say resampling is bad unless it is done at intiger multiples.
Ex: from 1 to 2 is good.
But from 1 to 3.78946464 not as good.

44.1khz -> 48khz is not resamped at an intiger multiple, therefore BAD, since the receiver is not getting bit perfect data stream. Someone is tampering with it, in our case it is the Nforce APU.
The point of digital out is to take the source out of the equation completelly, and bit perfect audio/data stream, literally makes the source transparent (which is what I wanted so that only my class D amp would tamper with the bits, and nothing else).

And I was slightly dissapointed to not hear any improvements with bitperfect stream, over tampered with 48khz soundstorm one. One the other hand, I am delighted, that SS is doign a good job at resampling. In fact, I may even loose the AV710 later, and just go back to soundstorm, since it is less picky when doing wierd stuff, like playing mp3's while videogaming ;p

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by t10 Yes, Revo has a better DAC than the Soundstorm no argument here. What the argument was, is that a lot of people say resampling is bad unless it is done at intiger multiples. Ex: from 1 to 2 is good. But from 1 to 3.78946464 not as good. 44.1khz -> 48khz is not resamped at an intiger multiple, therefore BAD, since the receiver is not getting bit perfect data stream. Someone is tampering with it, in our case it is the Nforce APU. The point of digital out is to take the source out of the equation completelly, and bit perfect audio/data stream, literally makes the source transparent (which is what I wanted so that only my class D amp would tamper with the bits, and nothing else). And I was slightly dissapointed to not hear any improvements with bitperfect stream, over tampered with 48khz soundstorm one. One the other hand, I am delighted, that SS is doign a good job at resampling. In fact, I may even loose the AV710 later, and just go back to soundstorm, since it is less picky when doing wierd stuff, like playing mp3's while videogaming ;p

Yep, its bad on paper, but sometimes hearing the small imperfections are very hard, and depend a lot on sensitivity of your equipment, and also keep in mind, this is a headphone forum, so you are hearing those small details a bit easier than you would on your speaker system.

Glad you are happy tho

 

[dwc]

I wonder if you would be willing to see if you can hear a difference between the 48khz upsampling done by soundstorm vs. the 48khz upsampling done by Foobar.

(going to try it myself, but not expecting to be able to hear a diff)

-Dan

 

[t10]

dwc do you keep soundstorm disabled in the bios or no?

I never tried having both, in fear that SS might mess with ASIO or something. If it doesnt, I would love to jump back and forth between digital outs on the 2 to compare them more closely.