[Covenant]

Via the USB output, which of the above would provide the cleanest, most unadulterated signal to an external DAC?

I know many of those who've built high-end computer as source rigs swear by Macbooks, but I want to know why. Are they really superior to any Windows alternative?

 

[yourstruly]

I think in terms of USB output, bit perfect is the farthest you can go in terms of sound quality. I'm not sure on this, so someone correct me if I'm wrong.

In terms of interface though, I just did NOT like asio4all. The issue I have with it is that first, it's incompatible with DRM protected wma. Second, it craps up whenever you run two different sources of sound at once.

 

[Benaiir]

I had no idea that the OS affects sound. I thought the sound card affects sound. Silly me.

(Many Head-Fi'ers go with OSX according to their sigs)

 

[Benaiir]

Accidental double post.

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yourstruly /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think in terms of USB output, bit perfect is the farthest you can go in terms of sound quality. I'm not sure on this, so someone correct me if I'm wrong.

It begs the question as to whether ASIO4ALL or Vista actually achieve bit-perfect consistently though.

I've heard alot of anecdotal claims that MAC sounds better than any Windows-based solution, so I want to find out if there's any truth behind this.

 

[Uncle Erik]

I don't know if there are technical differences affecting sound, but a MacBook will be trouble and crash free with zero malware. Also, MacBooks hold value extremely well. You can sell it two years on and get plenty of money back.

You can also get highly stable performance running Ubuntu.

 

[Orcin]

First choice = Vista WASAPI via coax/optical
2nd choice = Vista WASAPI via USB
3rd choice = everything else

 

[CDBacklash]

speaking of using a DAC from usb. will changing your USB sampling rate to match the sampling rate of the data you are sending affect anything?

 

[.Sup]

I don't own an Apple PC but I vastly prefer Xp over Vista/Win7 -the sound is too bright and bass is flat while on Xp the sound is magnificent.

 

[.Sup]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDBacklash /img/forum/go_quote.gif speaking of using a DAC from usb. will changing your USB sampling rate to match the sampling rate of the data you are sending affect anything?

Upsampling affects it. Some prefer it, some don't.

 

[brotherlen]

I would base it off what you use as a player. iTunes in Mac OS seems to be better than Windows, but FooBar allows you to play FLAC, APE and other compressed lossless formats via Vista,XP, Linux (Wine) either with WASAPI or ASIO4All or however you choose to set up your rig. Also your choice of DAP may influence this. I prefer Vista and Linux. Due to software choices. I do love how iTunes organizes music though.

 

[MCC]

Vista audio is a massive improvement over XP. It can dynamically change the samplerate if you check the boxes as such and it has WASAPI. You can think of WASAPI as an officially supported ASIO, and there's an fb2k plugin supporting it.

Edit-

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Also, MacBooks hold value extremely well. You can sell it two years on and get plenty of money back.

Same goes for Thinkpads. Just check ebay. You'd be hard pressed to find a fully working T42, a 2004 model, for less than $250. As far as malware goes, I haven't had a computer virus since I was 7. Use the machine properly and you shouldn't even need an antivirus, although I run one just to catch possible malware on USB drives that might get plugged into my machines.

 

[matanoosh]

i agree with mcc.
vista sounds much better than xp.
haven't a-b tested against ubuntu, though.
never tried mac.

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Also, MacBooks hold value extremely well. You can sell it two years on and get plenty of money back.

Why is that? In my experience any sort of computer that's 2+ years old will have become basically obsolete, with little to no resale value. What makes macbooks different?

Quote:

Originally Posted by orcin First choice = Vista WASAPI via coax/optical 2nd choice = Vista WASAPI via USB

I hadn't actually known about WASAPI until now. That looks good, a built-in natively supported ASIO4ALL equivalent. Has anyone tested to confirm that WASAPI set to 'exclusive mode' will effectively bypass any resampling/mixing/DSP effects that may be applied on the audio stream and provide bit-perfect output?

Quote:

Originally Posted by brotherlen I would base it off what you use as a player. iTunes in Mac OS seems to be better than Windows, but FooBar allows you to play FLAC, APE and other compressed lossless formats via Vista,XP, Linux (Wine) either with WASAPI or ASIO4All or however you choose to set up your rig. Also your choice of DAP may influence this.

iTunes cannot play FLAC, can it? My music library is ripped exclusively to FLAC, and I'd prefer to keep it that way as my DAP, the Cowon S9 is a FLAC player also.

Are there any other music applications for Macs than iTunes, that do have support for the non-Apple codecs?

More to the point, there seems to be alot of knowledge about how the Windows audio architecture works and how to get a bit-perfect output on a Windows platform, but I haven't heard anyone talk about how Mac OSX or Linux handles audio. Do they just natively provide bit-perfect output on any application they run? I wouldn't think so.

 

[ph0rk]

If they are all capable of bitperfect output there is no difference, save for the user interface.