hello fellows gurus! i am a noob when it comes to sound,i reckon from the start lately i started to listen more classical music and instrumental .... why i wonder there is such a difference in sound quality between windows and linux i use windows 7 pro and linux mint debian i may not have a dedicated soundcard but in windows sound is more,,,,clearer,crispier,better in linux with the latest alsa driver and sound tweaks ,sound is more ...muffled. now...cam anyone enlight me ? again,escuse me for my noobishness
Hi! You would need to take a look at your Win 7 and Linux Mint audio settings, look if you have any enhancers, DSPs, number of channels enabled, Dolby PrologicIIx, virtual speaker, DTS NeoC or similar technologies enabled, bit rate and sampling, all this can change the way the sound is handled by your system. Linux won't have all this options and the few that it does are hidden under more obscure settings in (sometimes hard to find) text files. Also the drivers can be responsible for the sound signature. I have a dual boot system with Win 7 Ultimate and Ubuntu 11.04 (with some tweaked configuration files) and both systems sound different, on Win7 I have Dolby Headphone enabled, Ubuntu doesn't have this, but I managed to enable the Dolby Digital Live on both for the digital out (tip: A/52 encoder plug-in for ALSA). However, if I disable the Dolby headphone on Win and set everything the closest as possible between both OS, music sounds the same, this also happens with my laptop. If you have a more specific question about Linux Audio, I can try to answer it or at least give you some suggestions. And don't worry too much about being noob, you have to start somewhere, It took me a long time and effort learn the little what I know.
Good luck w LINUX , its the biggest PITA i have ever worked with since Ive been building PC's / over 15 yrs......there's a good reason it's free :bang:
You may want to try a Lunix OS that is more geared to audio apps. and or you may have to pay for driver support for the audio card to work properly, though you have to contact tech support for that Lunix OS you use.
i have yet to try a more sound geared linux distro,i was thinking of tweaking the OS i already have,but no bigie i can install several linux distros in a spare computer.. however.Debian Edition of Linux Mint doesn´t come with all the codecs/libs as a usual distro,so i learned that i have to further tweak the OS ... now,for the fact that i don´t have the same sound quality i am not angry with Linux,for me it is a chance to learn some more about Linux...:nerd:
I had to experiment a lot with ALSA to get my X-Meridian to work (I got the card as soon it was released), but it's common that Linux suport takes a little longer after the launch of new hardware to enter the stable release, usually 1 or 2 stables releases before the drivers are mature enough to rival windows support. Ubuntu Studio looks like a good alternative for audio oriented distro. But maybe you should also consider a discret soundcard, the C-Media CMI8788 Oxygen HD and derivatives (the one used in Asus Xonar cards) have excelent driver support under Linux and sound is great. I never had a problem with audio in Linux once ALSA support was included by default, be it Ubuntu, Mint or even Meego, LiveCD or installed, it has worked out of the box for years now.
