Jay B
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2007
- Posts
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So I just made the leap from XP to Vista. I did a clean install of course, anything else would be uncivilized. Vista looks a lot nicer, and is different in many ways, for better or for worse. So, how does it sound?
Well, its important to note that audio has been built from the ground up in Vista. All new driver implementations, and the way that the sound is mixed and passed to the kernel is new as well. It has been designed with high-quality audio in mind, so this is good news for us Head-Fiers. Microsoft worked with Intel to meet Intel's new High Definition Audio standard. I believe that any sound device supported by Vista must meet this standard. Either way, all the new cards, most notably the on-board cards, meet this standard. But I'd still recommend upgrading to a full sound card.
So I got vista up and running, and went straight to the music. But oh no, its popping and cracking and breaking up!! Not what I expected from a completely redone audio stack. Fortunately, after much searching, I found a fix, not the most intuitive fix though. I tried updating my sound card drivers. Nope. I read that the video drivers might be interfering with the sound drivers , so I updated my video drivers to the latest. BAM! Super smooth audio!
Okay, so how does it sound!? Great! There's definately an improvement. A comparable improvement to when I added a DAC to my system. That's pretty darn good! The sound is sharper and more engaging. It's simply higher fidelity. If you're a computer audio user, and are looking to upgrade your system but your components are already 'maxed out', Vista is a worthy upgrade.
There's more. My sound card offers a variety of different bit resolution/bit rate combinations, and the driver's for Vista offered selection of any combination. 16 or 24 bit and 41, 48, or 96 kHz. I tried all the combinations and could tell a noticeable difference between them all. For relation, I fail an ABX test in foobar between 192 MP3 and FLAC, so there's a noticible difference. (I pass 128 MP3 vs FLAC) The 24-bit settings were smoother; the high's weren't as sharp, and was more engaging. Going up in bit rate didn't change the clarity or warmth of the sound, but made the music more engaging. In the end I went for the 16 bit/96kHz combination. I wanted the hard hitting trebles of 16-bit because I listen to Trance, which has a lot of hard hitting bass and treble, and enjoyed the engaging benefit from 96kHz.
This was all a nice surprise for me because I upgraded to Vista for other reasons, and was actually expecting the sound quality to be worse. Just makes me that much happier to be using Vista. There's certainly issues with Vista, but overall I think I like it from what I've seen so far (48 hrs). Service Pack 1 is due out shortly (in the next few months), so when that arrives would certainly be a great time to upgrade. Something to think about!
PS - If your a Mac or Linux user, you can kindly ignore this post
Well, its important to note that audio has been built from the ground up in Vista. All new driver implementations, and the way that the sound is mixed and passed to the kernel is new as well. It has been designed with high-quality audio in mind, so this is good news for us Head-Fiers. Microsoft worked with Intel to meet Intel's new High Definition Audio standard. I believe that any sound device supported by Vista must meet this standard. Either way, all the new cards, most notably the on-board cards, meet this standard. But I'd still recommend upgrading to a full sound card.
So I got vista up and running, and went straight to the music. But oh no, its popping and cracking and breaking up!! Not what I expected from a completely redone audio stack. Fortunately, after much searching, I found a fix, not the most intuitive fix though. I tried updating my sound card drivers. Nope. I read that the video drivers might be interfering with the sound drivers , so I updated my video drivers to the latest. BAM! Super smooth audio!
Okay, so how does it sound!? Great! There's definately an improvement. A comparable improvement to when I added a DAC to my system. That's pretty darn good! The sound is sharper and more engaging. It's simply higher fidelity. If you're a computer audio user, and are looking to upgrade your system but your components are already 'maxed out', Vista is a worthy upgrade.
There's more. My sound card offers a variety of different bit resolution/bit rate combinations, and the driver's for Vista offered selection of any combination. 16 or 24 bit and 41, 48, or 96 kHz. I tried all the combinations and could tell a noticeable difference between them all. For relation, I fail an ABX test in foobar between 192 MP3 and FLAC, so there's a noticible difference. (I pass 128 MP3 vs FLAC) The 24-bit settings were smoother; the high's weren't as sharp, and was more engaging. Going up in bit rate didn't change the clarity or warmth of the sound, but made the music more engaging. In the end I went for the 16 bit/96kHz combination. I wanted the hard hitting trebles of 16-bit because I listen to Trance, which has a lot of hard hitting bass and treble, and enjoyed the engaging benefit from 96kHz.
This was all a nice surprise for me because I upgraded to Vista for other reasons, and was actually expecting the sound quality to be worse. Just makes me that much happier to be using Vista. There's certainly issues with Vista, but overall I think I like it from what I've seen so far (48 hrs). Service Pack 1 is due out shortly (in the next few months), so when that arrives would certainly be a great time to upgrade. Something to think about!
PS - If your a Mac or Linux user, you can kindly ignore this post