tech support

[Roberto1223]

ok so im listening to music on my onboard integrated audio and its sounds pretty good; then i decide to buy a sound card (cheap ass one) called "soundblaster audigy SE" (20 bucks).
so i use it then i notice that sound is either the same as it was or a little worse (i honestly didnt notice a difference without using the sound effects).

then i start messing around with it, i change settings into 24bit and 96khz (whatever that is... im guessig that bigger numbers are better...) then i listen to some downloaded music and i watch downloaded movies and i notice that sound is kinda crappier.

then one day im downloading a movie (team axxo maybe) then i read the .nfo file and i see it says:

GRAN TORINO
STARRiNG:..: Clint Eastwood.Christopher Carley.
:..........: Cory Hardrict.Brian Haley
GENRE:.....: Crime | Drama | Thriller
COUNTRY:...: USA  | Australia 2008
LANGUAGE:..: ENGLISH
ExTRAS-SUBS: ENGLISH
RUN.TiME...: 01:56:30 min
SiZE:......: 1 x 800 MB
ViDEo:.....: XviD
AuDio:.....: AC-3 128 Kbps/48.0 KHz/[2 chnls]
iMDB:......: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1205489/
iMDB.Rating: 8.5/10  20,091 votes [Top 250: #83]

i notice the AUDIO section saying "48.0 KHz". this makes me think that my downloaded music is most probably at "48.0khz", and im thinking that maybe i should just leave my soundcard's option at that same setting.

im thinking that maybe playing 48khz audio files at higher sample rates might not be a good thing for optimum sound quality.

is this true? is this false?

what should i do?

[Roberto1223]

well i guess all i can say is


dont buy soundblaster Audigy SE

it blows.

[Gui Brazil]

I wonder if I'm the only person who still goes to movie theatres to watch the movies I'm waiting for.

[frvge]

Now that I have a budget, I go to movies more often. But depends on the movies. Sometimes I go 3 times in 2 weeks, other times I dont go for 8 months or something.

[Theodore W]

Most of music from CDs is encoded in 2-channel signed 16-bit PCM sampled at 44.1kHz, and DVD can support up to 24-bits/192 kHz depends on the compression. MP3s are around 10 times worse from CD quality.

The DSP on your sound cards is to do with the latency (how fast the audio signal is coded and decoded) rather than the "sound quality" itself. A good sounding file must come from a good quality source ie. coded at higher sampling rate, if you increase the sampling rate during playback is not going to make the original file sound better, instead you will get aliasing aka intermodulation distortion, in other words very much like the effects you get when you are trying to scale up a 12k jpg photo to 500dpi png or something, you will see how the pixels and pictures get stretched and flattened / distorted. Same thing with sound. Thats why it sounds "crappier" when you increased the settings.

Most of the consumer level soundcards can handle dvd quality audio playback these days, you dont need to increase the sampling rate unless you want to code / record high quality audio files, then you will really see the difference between a 20 bucks card and a $2000 card.

Hope it helps ;)

[Roberto1223]

thanks for answering.
im going to put the mid settings on my audio card should be better for my mp3s :P

[Theodore W]

no problem, have fun.