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I know that it's generally best to bypass everything you can, but how exactly does Windows Mixer color the sound? I know it did some ugly resampling and cut off two significant bits in XP, but what does it do in Vista and 7?
Bypassing Windows Mixer reduces/eliminates any sort of signal processing. If you go through DirectSound, the PCM audio is pre-mixed before it reaches the driver.
Based on how I understand the technology (someone who understands audio engineering can probably speak better than I can; digital audio is an extremely technical subject, as any software developer who went through a competent compsci program will tell you), the advantage of DirectSound is real-time control over the audio through APIs, which is very useful for more dynamic applications like video games.
Conversely, if you just want a neutral reproduction of the sound, you want to cut out as much of that as you possibly can. Based on both subjective and quantitative testing, everything from processes requiring CPU and memory usage, to process prioritization, to the quality of the clock, can make an effect on sound which some people are capable of picking up on.
The part that gets lost in the discussion is that some people enjoy that coloration. Other people want as faithful a reproduction as possible, and they think it sounds better to their ears. From my own perspective, I couldn't really tell the difference until I drastically improved my chain. Whether it's 'better' is an exercise ultimately up to the listener.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/media/10audio.html
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In fact, among younger listeners, the lower-quality sound might actually be preferred. Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford, said he had conducted an informal study among his students and found that, over the roughly seven years of the study, an increasing number of them preferred the sound of files with less data over the high-fidelity recordings.
“I think our human ears are fickle. What’s considered good or bad sound changes over time,” Mr. Berger said. “Abnormality can become a feature.”
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/03/11/153205/young-people-prefer-sizzle-sounds-of-mp3-format
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the-sizzling-sound-of-music.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASAPI#Audio_stack_architecture
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd316780%28v=vs.85%29.aspx