Auzentech Prelude Discussion Thread

There are different routines chances are the volume amounts won;t be exactly the same. Most prefer DTS over DLL.

 

I'd personally leave foobar AND windows set to 16 bit, 44100 Hz. Resampling to 24 bit actually makes it sound a bit worse, unless of course your source is 24 bit. For normal 16/44 music, don't do any unnecessary resampling. Just get the wasapi plugin for foobar, as I have found it does indeed sound better with it than without. Other than those things, the rest of your settings look good!

 

things have definitely changed in my neighborhood. last time I inquired about best SQ settings, they were very similar to niCe99's config. but I must admit that was some time ago, even before I got the prelude. you're statement makes sense, though. I tried it and I think I have to agree with you.

 

Upsampling for playback usually make little sense. You are just adding zero's and changing the frequency of the data. There is no positive change in sound quality as there never can be. The data is already set...
There are instances when upsampling makes sense bu this is usually for recording purposes and has to do with overhead for effects.

 

Whats the difference between the Prelude and the Forte soundcards?

I want the best I can get - I play a lot of games and watch movies using the blu-ray player in comp. I plan on later buying a big screen DLP to connect to comp also and will use comp surround sound.

Whats the difference between the 2 cards - which is better?

 

WASAPI doesnt work for me. It says device cannot be found

 

hi mate i have a question, i use 24bit 48000 Hz what will i gain from moving this down as i thought it would lose quality but from the last few posts on this topic im now getting confused

i listen via WMP11, and listen to - mp3 @320kpbs, and BR 1080p DTS 6.1rips

 

get some flac @ 1000+ Kpbs

 

i use WMP and its limited to codecs, i need a good sounding music player but im not sure whats best footbar or winamp

 

Auzentech Prelude bass and treble tone dials,

hi all i have a question on this topic, i have a great sound set-up which is classed as a high end system, i will post the setup at end of post for people to view, my question is...

1. why is it i need to run them down to BASS~46% / TREBLE~13% as any more and the base/treble is just to much, in windows sound panel it says that the preludes 50% setting is 0.0db enhancement, so that means i have them both turned down way past the normal sound setting. i run my setup via DTS~coax and most of my music is 320kbps mp3

my windows re-sample quality is set to 24bit~48000Hz, and my other prelude ctrl panel setting are as follows

5.1 ~ DTS (no neoc)
bass boost ~ OFF
eax ~ OFF
cmss2d ~ OFF
crystallizer ~ OFF
svm ~ OFF
eq ~









my speaker setup,
AMP
http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/3254.asp
FRONTS ~
http://www.mordauntshort.com/summary.php?PID=18&Title=914
REST c/bc/rr/rl
http://www.mordauntshort.com/summary.php?PID=47&Title=Avant+902i

 

Shame on you, Robscix, I would think your days at 3DSS would have taught you better. Under foobar200, setting a playback bitdepth of 24 or 32 will benefit the playback of lossy material. MP3, AAC, MPC, etc are waveform models, and do not inherently have a bitdepth, tho they do store the info from it's source. When decoding back to wav, it ca be rendered back at any bitdepth, and the more bits, the less "error" tho benefits are minimal. Lossless gets padded. This is why 16bit has a dithered option, for reducing error, since internally, all processing is upsampled, and then dithered down in the end for accuracy.

 

..3DSS? Not sure what you mean. If you are talking about a site though, I a member of many forums.
We are not talking about filters and outputs for players we are talking about output for soundcards. I have seen zero evidence to suggest that upsampling itself adds anything of value to the sound quality. Some times filters come in to play that make people enjoy the higher setting more but in all actuality nothing is being done.
I also added that 24 bit allows more overhead for effects..etc...which is basically what your getting at in a round about way.

 

Only time you should change your bit-rate and hz is if your source that your playing has been recorded in 24bit/96khz. Other wise your not gonna hear a diffent if the source has been recorded at 16bit/44khz and you resample it to 24bit/96khz some times it can make it worst. IT cant add what isnt there in the first place when you upmixing. Only time I use 24bit/96(192) is when my creations are recorded in 24bit/96khz(192khz) from the start. or when I am watching my Blu ray/HD dvd movies on my computer.

I used to use WASAPI my self but it wouldnt work correcty and kept making songs sound like the chipmucks are singing them so I went back to ASIO winamp plugin which doesnt do that to me. Tho I do use it when I using Foobar.

 

Make sure you go into foobar options > playback > output and choose WASAPI: Speakers (Auzen X-Fi Prelude), or choose SPDIF if you are using that. Also make sure you have the latest version of WASAPI found here. I just saw that it only supports Vista SP1 or newer (no XP). I personally had problems with an older version, but this version has worked flawlessly for me on both Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64.

 

See, I disagree with that statement. I know its off topic, but the purpose of a lossy (or lossless) codec is to make it sound exactly like the source. Of course lossless does this inherently so no further discussion is needed there. For lossy codecs, even though the codec itself may be somewhat bit-depth-independent, the source is not. Anything the lossy codec/player tries to do by increasing bit depth and creating a smaller-error waveform means it is trying to do better than the source, which is impossible since that data doesn't exist, and the resulting waveform would differ more greatly than the source waveform, thus sounding different. Whether its better or not, is up to your ears and your own subjective judgement.

IIRC, the main reason for dithering options was due to resampling, and the main purpose of resampling in the past was because certain soundcards would simply resample everything whether you told it to or not, and the resampling algorithm in those cards used to be quite bad. Thus, it was better to have the player resample to say 16/48 and apply dithering, which is what the sound card natively worked at, than to have the sound card do it poorly. Please don't quote me on this as I'm not truly familiar with the ins and outs of Windows sound and the internal workings of the Prelude, but I do believe that if you set Windows Vista/7 to 16 bit, 44 kHz, that it doesn't resample anything playing at 16/44. With foobar and wasapi, you (I think) are completely bypassing the Windows mixer altogether, so your music will play at the bit and freq you tell it. This is why its best to set both Windows and foobar to the bit-depth and freq of your source. In my case, I only listen to 16/44 so thats what I set it to. If someone happens to listen to a lot of DVD rips as well, then perhaps 16/48 makes more sense.

The best advice, however, is to try the various options for yourself and decide what YOU like best. I know that I've tried various resamplers in the past, have tried setting foobar to 24 bit, tried setting windows to something other than 16/44, and at least to my ears and my fairly high-end headphone equipment, its no doubt that the 16/44 setting sounds the best and most like the source, given that source is 16/44 in my case.

 

anyone wanna help me out above

 

Perhaps your speakers are "bright" sounding on the top end, which is why you need to turn the treble down so much.

 

damien666: First thing I would do is set bass/treble to 50%, turn off the EQ, CMSS3D, and Crystalizer if any are on. I would do all your EQ and speaker balancing on the Denon amp. So the idea here is to set the card to defaults, and see if you still have badly unbalanced audio. If so, then try using the Audio Control application to reset the card and drivers to default settings, and check again. You may have some legacy settings from previous driver install fuxing up your setup.

You should also check if you have any EQ settings on in your audio player software. (Winamp, Foobar2000, etc)

 

opozoid25: "but the purpose of a lossy (or lossless) codec is to make it sound exactly like the source." Playback Transparency is the goal yes, and you will not have any better quality than the original source's bitdepth and sampling. However, the increased bitdepth and samplerate for DECODING lossy material allows for more resolution for recreating the wavform as close as possible to the encoder's model of it.

 

Hi all, first post on here, wonder if anyone would be kind enough to help me out

Trying to install the drivers for the Prelude on W7 64bit (RC 7100). Have tried both the W7 drivers and the previous Vista drivers. In both instances, when I run setup, it states that it cannot detect any audio card and therefore has to exit setup.

I can confirm that the sound card is definitely installed properly, so I am not sure where I am going wrong ? It worked fine on W7 32bit ? Would really appreciate any help, I miss good sound