[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Better Music, From Your PC, for Free here

[ColoradoUser]

I was not able to find the 2000 ASIO DLL at foobar website. Also, (may be related), not able to find Off-line settings in the Start Menu. Output was not an option in the Preferences menu.

What's up?

[mjd420nova]

I've done a lot of testing of "lossless" compression schemes and not found a one that is truly "lossless" FLAC is one of the better formats, but is not as lossless as some may think. I'll explain the testing criteria I use. Using a dual signal generator, two different signals, both sine waves, one at 1,000 cycles and the second at 600 cycles. I use a frequency counter to calibrate the input frequency and the output from an amplifier to insure that what I get out is exactly the same as I put in. I not only look at the 1,000 and 600 cycle tones but also at the 1,600 and 400 beat note signals. I then record them into the PC using line inputs to a Creative Audigy 2 card with 16 bit PCM, 44KC stereo, .WAV format and save to the hard drive. I then test two ways, one playing back direct from the drive and one by saving to a CD and playing back from there. Then I do the same, but save on the PC using the FLAC format, both to the drive and to a CD. The results were better than most compression formats, signals came out at 1,008 and 591 cycles respectively. The beat notes were closer, at 402 and 1,596 but as you can see, not exact. Now with just two tones this is close but not exact and we all know that music is a very large and complex waveform, as many as a thousand different tones and beat notes all mixed together. Any compression scheme has to discard some of those notes in order to save space and once discarded these notes cannot be replicated when decompressed. The results are very disconcerting if I use a triangle or square wave signal, as these two are ripe with harmonics and beat notes become very, very complex. I also tried a 24 bit sample rate without any improvement in results and the format is not playable on a regular CD player of PC unless equipted with a card with a 24 bit sample rate. To retain the original sound I always use the .WAV format to insure against any loss of content. This will take up more hard drive space but without any loss in content I feel it is worth the added usage. One minute of content takes a little over 10 MB of space using the 16bit sample rate, 24 bit takes 50% more space but maybe desirable for more content but is not playable on a standard CD player.

[noresh07]

a few weeks back i tried the reco jet audio. i read your article and could not resist another try. kept your article open and followed all the steps .quick, clear and clean. thanks. loaded the new foobar and thus far bass sounds and piano solos are great. crisp and clear.
so far i am pleased with the sound. thank you
may peace and harmony surround you

[fastbullet]

A very well written article.
I would dearly love to see more written as well.
Too often, when articles include downloads or suppliments the them they fail to address where or how to place them. You have covered this very well.
As to the subject matter, I'm afraid it is useless to me now because I have dumped Windows and moved to Linux only.
I hope that I am fortunate enough to find Linux technical pieces similar to this one written as thoroughly. So far, I have not.

[wharvey48]

Ditto on all counts! This isn't worth the trouble.

[Paul1957]

I converted a WAV file to FLAC then back to WAV. The original WAV file was bit-for-bit exactly the same as the converted WAV file. This tells me that FLAC is lossless but your FLAC player is not.

[exodus]

Use Winamp.

[irogerk]

New to this, Getting the audio in, are these pgm's required to not have XP degrade?.

Have a creative video editor box, use that? or purchase a new audio card?

[jag32266]

foobar 2000 has a components page-
http://www.foobar200...ents/index.html

that has a list for asio, look for the file half way down that's called "asio support" from the link above
hth

[mikkelbreiler]

[In reply to mjd420nova|~5183]

I read your post with a lot of skeptiscism regarding your testing.

If I was to test lossless formats I'd make a wave file with complex contents, then make a copy of that file in FLAC format, and unpack that again, and compare the unpacked used-to-be-FLAC file with the original file. If no bytes are changed then FLAC is lossless, if on the other hands one bye is changed then FLAC is not lossless. Testing your analog converter on your cd player through your sound card is another excersize and I cannot understand what role it plays in testing two digital formats, WAV and FLAC - other than making the resuts fuzzy and unreliable.

By your account you are comparing digital formats by sampling it over your soundcard. And also you are looking at an analog signal in the digital stream of data, digital 1's and 0's are approximations of the actual analog sound, so I'd expect the results to be near identical, but not identical.

I cannot understand why you evaluate FLAC this way.

[jmarkow]

It's listed under ASIO support ASIO support on the Optional Componants page. It has to be installed before you see the Output option