[lini]

Fyi, another product news for today (some more over in the dedicated source section): Turtle Beach brings a new and really tiny USB audio device, the Audio Advantage Micro (~ US$ 30), which looks like a typical USB stick. More info over there: http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/prod...roducthome.asp

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

P.S.: Heck, I'm posting more product news on Head-Fi than for the magazine I work (and get paid) for. Hopefully they'll never find out - or I might get as fired as it gets...

 

[luukas]

That's quite interesting indeed! But this part definately grabbed my attention:
Quote:

Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Headphone and 5.1 Virtual Xear multi-speaker simulators for creating 3D surround effects

From http://www.savvyshopping.net/item/B0002ICGDY/.

 

[lini]

Yup, but the problem is that we don't know yet, whether DH support is on hardware, driver or software level. A hardware implementation seems hardly probable considering the price. I wouldn't mind system-wide DH support on driver level, though - but Turtle Beach would probably marketeer that more aggressively, if they offered that. Most probable seems DH support for some software dvd player application, which is hardly anything special anymore and can be obtained seperately anyway...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[Wodgy]

Another card that resamples everything to 48kHz (according to their website here: http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/kb_ftp/5203005.asp ). Shame on manufacturers that persist on doing this.

 

[Onix]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy Another card that resamples everything to 48kHz (according to their website here: http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/kb_ftp/5203005.asp ). Shame on manufacturers that persist on doing this.

Wodgy, excuse the ignorance, but why is that a bad thing?

 

[Wodgy]

Because CDs are recorded at a different sample rate (44.1kHz) and changing the sample rate to 48kHz generally degrades the quality unless a good algorithm is used, which is computationally expensive. This is the kind of thing that gives PC audio a bad reputation, and it's a shame that it persists in so many cards (along with the other banes of PC audio, bad drivers and the Windows kMixer, both of which also often introduce distortion that cannot be corrected).

 

[Onix]

I see. So, it's better to keep it at the same sampling rate?

 

[richx]

The DH support is probably in the software - much like the Audiotrak OPTOPlay - thru WinDVD (or was it PowerDVD?)

 

[lini]

Onix: Definitely yes, unless you can upsample to a higher degree. Do you happen to have some experience with tft lc displays? It's a bit like feeding such a device with a resolution that's just a tad below the original/native resolution of the display (like 1152 x 864 pixels on a 1280 x 1024 display, for example) - if you keep the full picture size (for audio, that would be equivalent to keeping the original speed), the display will have to resample, too, and you will notice strange artifacts or a rather smeared/fuzzy picture (depending on the type of resampling algorithm).

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[Onix]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lini Onix: Definitely yes, unless you can upsample to a higher degree. Do you happen to have some experience with tft lc displays? It's a bit like feeding such a device with a resolution that's just a tad below the original/native resolution of the display (like 1152 x 864 pixels on a 1280 x 1024 display, for example) - if you keep the full picture size (for audio, that would be equivalent to keeping the original speed), the display will have to resample, too, and you will notice strange artifacts or a rather smeared/fuzzy picture (depending on the type of resampling algorithm). Greetings from Hannover! Manfred / lini

It makes a lot of sense Manfred. Thanks. Now I have a better picture of resampling (pun intended)

 

[sygyzy]

Why do they upsample? There has to be a reason. And why choose 48?

 

[Wodgy]

Microsoft audio hardware standards since 1997 have mandated that every device support at least 48kHz. Ideally, devices would also support other sample rates, 44.1kHz especially (since it's the native sample rate for CD audio), but the cost to do this is not free.

Because 44.1 and 48 have no common small integer multiples, manufacturers cannot use one timing crystal to directly support both rates. They need to either: 1) choose a crystal that's a multiple of 48kHz and use a PLL to ratchet down the clock rate to 44.1kHz, or 2) use two crystals. This costs extra money, obviously. Not much, but consumers don't seem to care about quality, so it's all too easy to cut corners. Custom DSP chips also get more complex when they need to support multiple sample rates, so some cheap manufacturers (Creative Labs is notorious for this) just implement DSPs to support only one specific sample rate.