I added this to the old post, but then you replied, so I pulled it down here instead:
By the way, you'll probably get better music on the computer if you use Winamp or Foobar to drive the Firebox with ASIO, rather than using the X-Fi. Both of them need plugins to speak ASIO; Foobar's is in its component section, and I had to search the Winamp website some to find its plugin.
Amplifying the X-Fi will give you okay results, but you'll probably hear a noticeable improvement if you avoid its forced 48Khz resample and somewhat inferior DACs. You can avoid the X-Fi's resample by setting bit-matched mode (which disables all game sound effects, btw), but the Firebox should just output a pristine 44.1Khz with no effort.
Shame about the no headphone thing. Hopefully the Oppo will work better.
Do you have a headphone jack on the SACD player? Maybe it might do that automatically?
Nope. 
Like I said before though this is an old player, maybe a current gen one would. I had a five-disc carousel DVD-A/DTS-CD player and when this one came out I upgraded to also get the SACD capability as it was also one of the first affordable SACD players, let alone a combo. This was back when Circuit City would give you full purchase price as credit towards an upgrade within a year of original purchase. That was a sweet program.
[Edit] Hmm, it does have a stereo out in addition to the 5.1 out so that might work in parallel. That still doesn't help the selection between SACD multichannel or stereo though. The stereo playback is a much higher bitrate than multichannel on the disks that have both mixes.
Say i was going to pick up one of these here phones. Any current recommendations for non-creative PC amplifier solutions?
Say i was going to pick up one of these here phones. Any current recommendations for non-creative PC amplifier solutions?
You've got three problems that you need to solve with PC sound to drive really good headphones. The first is the DAC, the Digital to Analog Converter. All DACs are not created equal. Most DACs on most PC soundcards are awful.
The second is amplification. The 650s are high-impedance headphones; this means that they're a heavy load. A normal soundcard out won't drive them to their full potential; they'll sound a little muffled and dull, because they're just too hard for the limited amperage on normal headphone outs to drive properly. They still sound good without an amp, far better than cheaper headphones, but an amp will improve them a bunch.
The third problem is Windows Sound, which is screwed up in some way. I'm a little unclear on the technical details, but somewhere between handing the sound to Windows at 44.1Khz and when it comes out the soundcard, it gets forcibly resampled to 48Khz. And it's usually resampled very poorly, which severely damages the sound.
You can solve each of these problems in different ways, via a soundcard, an amplifier, and a player that supports ASIO or kernel streaming, which are sound output methods that bypass Windows Sound. But the total expense on the first two hardware items is pretty high, and combined with the good headphones, it's rather out of reach for most folks.
But you can get kind of an all-in-one solution, the Total Bithead from Headroom. (great company to deal with, by the way, very friendly and really knowledgeable. Although they do champion headphone wires, which is clearly pandering to make money instead of telling you the truth.) The DAC in the Bithead is much better than most soundcards. It's not awesome, but it's pretty competent. And it has a pretty good analog amplifier built right in.
Further, it's a USB device, and by being USB, it's much less damaged by Windows Sound. For whatever reason, Windows Sound will pass bitperfect audio to USB devices. I don't understand why this works over USB, but fails over PCI, but I have been able to repeatedly send bitperfect DTS audio streams at 44.1Khz to a receiver over USB soundcards. And this is just using standard Windows programs like Media Player... hit play on a compressed DTS file, and you get beautiful multichannel music from your receiver instead of hash. The sound path to USB is less invasive than it is to PCI.
So, you can just buy a Bithead and a pair of 650s, and use standard Windows music programs, and get pretty damn good sound without much effort. You can spend more time and effort and do better, but that's a good solution with minimal pain for not very much money.*
[size=8]* Well, for for values of 'not much money' when compared to the many thousands that people can and do spend on this stuff.[/size]
I added this to the old post, but then you replied, so I pulled it down here instead:
By the way, you'll probably get better music on the computer if you use Winamp or Foobar to drive the Firebox with ASIO, rather than using the X-Fi. Both of them need plugins to speak ASIO; Foobar's is in its component section, and I had to search the Winamp website some to find its plugin.
Amplifying the X-Fi will give you okay results, but you'll probably hear a noticeable improvement if you avoid its forced 48Khz resample and somewhat inferior DACs. You can avoid the X-Fi's resample by setting bit-matched mode (which disables all game sound effects, btw), but the Firebox should just output a pristine 44.1Khz with no effort.
Shame about the no headphone thing. Hopefully the Oppo will work better.
Came back to edit my post yet again but you bet me. I was being dumb, there IS only one "bit-rate/sampling rate" with DSD. It's DVD-A disks that I was thinking of that have different bitrates depending on stereo or multichannel. So presumably if the stereo out on the player downmixes then I should be able to get headphone output from the stereo out with no menu monkeying.
Yeah, I'm using MediaMonkey with the old Winamp ASIO plugin to get ASIO to the Firebox. I also set it up to use the MAD MP3 decoder. That just means I have to monkey around to go from music to gaming mode as I don't want the Firebox connected to the PC when I use it for amping the X-Fi for gaming because of the noise issues. It's not a big deal though, I just have to unplug the firewire connection from behind it, I just prefer to minimize cable jockeying for convenience sake.
Thanks for all the input and continued reading. 
[ObEdit] Well bollocks. I read through the manual and if the player is configured for 5.1 playback then only the front L/R are output through the stereo outs, it doesn't downmix. So much for saving menu jockeying. The good news is that my MOTU box pushes the 650s brilliantly. Now I just need to get over to Monoprice to get some longer RCA cables.
[ObEdit2] Great, the Oppo player does downmix for the stereo outs. So I just need to put up with my archaic Pioneer until I can spring for that. Guess what my wife is getting for her Christmas present.
Thanks, I'll add that to my Xmas list:)
My $7 closeout Plantronics headset died last week and I just picked up a replacement. I'd considered the cheapest Sennheiser rig, but finally decided on this Plantronics 5.1 surround sound headset instead. It's available for $50 on Amazon, which makes it about the least expensive circum-aural 5.1 headset I could find. In terms of overall quality it's quite obviously a sub $100 rig, but I expect I'll get a few years out of it anyway. The open ear design is a plus for me, since I need to be able to hear the baby monitor, and the sound is really pretty decent (I'll just be gaming with it anyway). Give me a day or two and I'll tell you whether the surround sound bit makes any difference--here's to hoping it does.
But you can get kind of an all-in-one solution, the Total Bithead from Headroom. (great company to deal with, by the way, very friendly and really knowledgeable. Although they do champion headphone wires, which is clearly pandering to make money instead of telling you the truth.) The DAC in the Bithead is much better than most soundcards. It's not awesome, but it's pretty competent. And it has a pretty good analog amplifier built right in.
They just started a promotion a few days ago, buy "ANY" headphone, get the Total Bithead for $99 ($60 off). I tried to get this, but I didn't actually need headphones (have Senn HD-595's). However, my ipod touch earbuds are still the crappy stock ones, and are worn out, so going from their 'Headphones' menu, I selected Senn MX560 buds, and added them and the Total Bithead to the cart. I created an account and got as far as clicking the "Complete Order" button, and never received a discount.
I tried with both the earbuds, and then I tried with Senn PXC 350's, $200 headphones (just to see if it would work), and it still did not give me the discount, even going as far as the 'complete order' page. Bummer. I wanted that Bithead at that price. I guess I could call them on Friday.
next day edit: it's working now. I got the Total Bithead and Senn MX560's for $123 shipped.
As a quick sidequestion (not to derail the thread I just figured this would be easier than starting a new one) I've recently gotten a new headset and I plugged it into my front I/O port. One cable in the mic port and one in the headphone port. Both are responding fine but I'm wondering if there is a way to set a key combo bind to switch back and forth between putting sound output through my speakers and headset.
What is your soundcard?
Does that really matter
It does in that the Creative cards have profiles which also contain a setting to use the inherent switching with the front panel jack or ignore it. I use Autohotkey to switch between the profiles so that I can enable CMSS when I have headphones on or disable it when I normally have speakers on. In my case your script wouldn't work as I only list speakers for my gaming sound card, not the front panel, so the type of card is very important. Glad you got it sorted.
Does that really matter? All I really want is to make a keybind to do the action of switching my speakers from default to my headphones and back.
The soundcard is built in and it just says 'High Definition Audio Device' by Microsoft.
Right now I have a keybind to bring up the sound control menu and I can switch it from there easily, but I would like it to be even more convenient if possible.
Edit: OK, I used autohotkey and made a script to do what I want then used a normal windows program shortcut key to open the exe
Script for headset:
Run, mmsys.cpl
WinWait,Sound
ControlSend,SysListView321,{Down}
ControlClick,&Set Default
ControlClick,OK
Script for speakers:
Run, mmsys.cpl
WinWait,Sound
ControlSend,SysListView321,{Up}
ControlClick,&Set Default
ControlClick,OK
Question for Malor et al, regarding the Total Bithead amp (mine is on the way) -- since it uses USB, which you say bypasses the Windows sound system anyway, is it still necessary to play back music using the asio_out.dll? My understanding is that ASIO's purpose is to bypass the windows sound system to give a 'pure' feed. If the TBH does this, do I still need ASIO?
Also, it would seem to me that I shouldn't need to mess with the X-Fi control panel anymore. It would be nice to not have to jockey back & forth between X-Fi modes (Audio Creation vs Game vs Entertainment).
What I'd like to be able to do is leave the X-Fi on Entertainment mode, for use when gaming or listening to music via the 5.1 external speakers. But for music sessions with the Senn HD-595's, I'd like to be able to plug in the Bithead and have it take over the sound system, and not have to fiddle with settings.
Does the Bithead effectively act as a soundcard?
I haven't been able to drive the Bithead with ASIO at all; it doesn't seem to support it. But it sounds fine through regular Windows Sound, at least under XP. I haven't traveled for awhile and thus haven't used it under Win7; it's in my suitcase. 
Yes, the Bithead looks like a soundcard, so you just plug it in. Windows switches sound automatically to the most recent card it detects. When you plug in the Bithead, Windows should use that. When you unplug it, it should switch back to the Soundblaster.
You can also leave it plugged in all the time, and set your default sound output to be the Soundblaster. Then use a player that knows how to play on whatever device you want, and aim it at the Bithead. It sounds like you're using Foobar; that'll work fine.
Thanks Malor. I was going off this:
Further, it's a USB device, and by being USB, it's much less damaged by Windows Sound. For whatever reason, Windows Sound will pass bitperfect audio to USB devices. I don't understand why this works over USB, but fails over PCI, but I have been able to repeatedly send bitperfect DTS audio streams at 44.1Khz to a receiver over USB soundcards.
Out of curiosity, how did you measure the quality if of audio over USB vs PCI?
That'll take some explaining. Warning, screed ahead.
When I first got my HTPC set up, with all new speakers and a new receiver, it didn't sound very good. Movies were always fine, but listening to music was really no fun. It just didn't sound good. I always thought it was the speakers; I'd bought them online, and just assumed that I'd been misled by bad reviews. So I used it for movies and almost never for music, because it sounded so awful. And I was rather critical of the speakers on forums, which I'm now rather embarrassed about. (I apologized profusely later, and went back and corrected old mistakes as much as I could, but probably some of my early distaste still shows.)
I'd been experimenting with a PowerPC-based Mac Mini as a replacement HTPC, because my existing one was a little loud. I eventually determined that it was no damn good for what I wanted, and sold it to someone else. But I'd bought an M-Audio Sonica Theater USB card to go with it, and I was stuck with it, so I figured I'd try it out on the PC just to play with it. I hooked it up, installed the drivers, connected the S/PDIF (I just run a S/PDIF from my HTPC to the stereo). Then I got the ASIO drivers for Foobar, since this thing supported it, and hit play on a fairly random choice, Genesis' Invisible Touch.
It took a minute for me to realize it, but then I was absolutely stunned at how incredible it sounded. Dear God, it was just pure bliss coming out of my speakers. I couldn't believe how awesome it was. Note that I still remember with absolute clarity, about five years later, exactly what track it was. I sat there and listened to the whole album, start to finish, just blown away at the amazing sound in my front room. Yes, even Genesis can sound pretty goddamn good. And then I started randomly flipping through my library, and getting more and more pleased as I went. I probably sat there for three hours.
So then I started research to find out what the hell I'd done wrong, and that was where I started finding out about the hell that is Windows sound. There is an absolutely epic thread over on AVSForum about the Envy24 chipset that I eventually found, and spent, geeze, probably a couple of DAYS reading, and it was there I learned a few basic things:
- Windows Sound itself is screwy to all PCI cards; it has a rounding error in the XP code that prevents bitperfect code from getting through;
- Most PC soundcards force a resample to 48Khz;
- Finding a card that will pass bitperfect is startlingly difficult.
- You have to drive such a card in ASIO or kernel streaming, because the Windows Sound bug will prevent it from working.
- You can test whether your signal path is bitperfect by playing a 44.1Khz DTS-encoded WAV file. If you're connected via a digital cable (S/PDIF, not analog wires), and you're bitperfect, you should get nice orchestral sound out of such a track. If you're not bitperfect, you will get hash.
So, I realized what my original problem was. I was using an Audigy 2NX USB card, and it forces a 48Khz resample, even down the S/PDIF, and it does a horrifically bad job of it. That's why movies always sounded good, because they're at 48Khz natively, while music at 44.1Khz sounded so awful, because it was butchered going through that abortion of a sound card.
So, armed with this new knowledge, I went back to my Sonica Theater and fired up the DTS test. The first time I think it failed; I hadn't set something to full volume somewhere. But once I adjusted a little, whammo, music, not hash.
Doing further experimentation, I discovered that ANY Windows program would send perfect audio through the Sonica Theater, not just ASIO ones. Whatever rounding bug is in the Windows PCI sound code, it's not in the USB code. iTunes, Media Player, Winamp in regular output mode... they all worked fine. Orchestral music, not hash, each and every time.
So then I bought a Chaintech AV-710, a $20 PCI soundcard that also supports bitperfect output. It, however, will only do bitperfect in ASIO or kernel streaming; it doesn't work with regular Windows programs.
And that's how I know that the USB signal path is good. And my ears tell me that the Bithead is quite good. It's not as nice as my Squeezebox's headphone out, but it's way better than most soundcards I've heard, and it's portable, works on anything, and has an amp so you can get more out of a high-impedance set of cans than you can out of pretty much any soundcard.
I can't imagine anyone being offended by the Bithead.
BTW, the X-Fi, set to bit-matched output in Music Creation Mode, isn't bad at all; you should experiment with using both it and the Bithead as your DAC to see which you prefer. I'd be interested in what you think. The biggest reason for you to get the Bithead is for the amp, more than the DAC.
You know, in all that screed, I don't think I was very clear: I'm not sure the Windows sound rounding bug on PCI actually matters in terms of sound quality, but it DOES matter if you're trying for bitperfect output. USB seems to avoid that bug, but you can still get crap sound through USB if the soundcard is bad, as in my Audigy 2NX, which was goat vomit on toast.
The nice thing about USB is that if you do have a lossless-capable card, regular Windows Sound appears to drive it without any extra effort. So you don't have to muck around with ASIO or anything. But it's not like ASIO will ever HURT, if your card supports it.
I think you might actually get slightly better sound if you use your X-Fi in Music Creation Mode, set to bit-matched, drive it with ASIO, and use the Bithead as a pure analog amp in between. Doing A/B tests should be dirt-simple that way, too. If you've got a good set of HD600s or 650s, that should give you music so good that you'll be spoiled forever for cheap stereos.
edit to add: I think I've figured out that you've bought JUST the Bithead, and not good headphones, so I don't know how much quality improvement you'll get; the biggest reason to add a Bithead to an existing X-Fi setup is mostly to get the amp to drive high-impedance headphones. If you don't have those, you don't really need an amp.
But you can also use it a nice convenient way to listen to music without swapping modes on the X-Fi. It might be just a hair inferior to the X-Fi if you do the Full Monty on the X-Fi's settings, but again, I can't imagine being upset with it.
edit to add: I think I've figured out that you've bought JUST the Bithead, and not good headphones, so I don't know how much quality improvement you'll get; the biggest reason to add a Bithead to an existing X-Fi setup is mostly to get the amp to drive high-impedance headphones. If you don't have those, you don't really need an amp.
Correct, I just bought the Bithead (they are shipping it today). But I do have good headphones ... Sennheiser HD-595's.
Thin_J helped me select those back in March, and I've been in love with them ever since. But since then I've been on a mission for finding 'perfect' sound, or at least as close as I can get in Windows. My PC is in my bedroom, and besides an ipod touch, is my only source of music playback.
I read this thread, saw your recommendation for the Bithead, and went to the site and found they had that $60 off sale going, so I went for it.
I mainly wanted to say thanks for the excellent and in-depth replies. I'm still absorbing everything at the moment, and I'm sure I'll have some more questions soon. But seriously, thanks, that was a very helpful couple of posts!
Hmm, I don't think the 595s really need an amp, but it can't hurt.
Hmm, I don't think the 595s really need an amp, but it can't hurt.
They're relatively low impedance for nicer headphones but they open up a fair amount with an amp.
That they're easy to drive is partially why I like recommending them as an entry point to higher end headphones.
Sennheisser just launched a relatively low cost easy to drive 400 line. They look pretty promising based on some reviews. Any attempt to make great sounding cheap headphones in good in my book.
I'm very interested in the 448s.
An easy trick for getting bit perfect output, if you have Vista or Win7, is to use WASAPI out. There's a WASAPI plugin for foobar and it's also a selectable option in the latest iTunes. Much easier to get working than ASIO or kernel streaming in my experience.
For anyone who is interested, I posted some (very) long impressions of the Astro A40 mixamp/headset combo over in the other headphone thread.
And in case you don't care all that much, I love them -- they offered all the features I needed and a bit more and have great sound quality -- and recommend them highly if you can stomach the somewhat prohibitive price.
Sennheisser just launched a relatively low cost easy to drive 400 line. They look pretty promising based on some reviews. Any attempt to make great sounding cheap headphones is good in my book.
For anyone who is interested, I posted some (very) long impressions of the Astro A40 mixamp/headset combo over in the other headphone thread.
And in case you don't care all that much, I love them -- they offered all the features I needed and a bit more and have great sound quality -- and recommend them highly if you can stomach the somewhat prohibitive price.
Ohh sure put the Cliff Notes version up after I already read the other one......
Looks like I won't be getting my Total Bithead till next week. Headphone.com sent me a "your items have shipped" email on Monday, but tracking states that only billing info was sent to UPS, and they didn't actually go into transit till today. ETA is early next week
I'm used to Amazon Prime, where I get my goodies either overnighted or in 2 days at worst!
An easy trick for getting bit perfect output, if you have Vista or Win7, is to use WASAPI out. There's a WASAPI plugin for foobar and it's also a selectable option in the latest iTunes. Much easier to get working than ASIO or kernel streaming in my experience.
Excellent tip. This also got me to try foobar for the first time -- and I love it! I installed the WASAPI (which you know i'm pronouncing "wasabi") and it worked great, and sounded great.
Huh, they're usually really good. If you complain, they might refund the shipping fees.
Thanks for the pointer to WASAPI, Strekos, I didn't know about that. iTunes is perfectly capable of bitperfect output on a Mac.... it may now do it on Windows, too.
Huh, they're usually really good. If you complain, they might refund the shipping fees.
Shipping was actually free, so no complaints really, just a bit disappointed.
Yeah I would be too, that sucks.
Ok, this is odd. First off, I'm using
* Win7-x64.
* X-Fi Xtreme Music, 3.5mm out to speakers
* foobar with the WASAPI plugin
* X-Fi Console set to Audio Creation, 44.1khz, bit-matched enabled.
I happened to be doing some file maneuvering, copying, pasting, etc. The mere act of changing directories in Explorer, or moving a file, would at times cause a half-second pause in foobar. I then looked at the X-Fi console, and noticed that when those pauses were occurring, it would be jumping from 44.1khz to 48khz. Turns out, something in this setup REALLY wants it to be on 48khz. Once it got there, it would be happy, and no more pauses. If I set it back to 44.1, it'd be back at 48 before long.
I don't think it made it any audio difference, but I'm not positive.
For perfect bit-matched playback, does WASAPI need the 44.1kzh in the x-fi panel like ASIO does?
Pages