Could someone with The Greater Cause CD please help me?

[Boray]

If anyone wants better sound from their computers, you could try with a so called DAC (digital audio converter).

DAC means Digital to Analog Converter and it's included in every digital device there is, such as sound cards, CD-players, music players etc... What you describe is just an external sound card. There are all kinds of them out there.

[curt]

You're right about the fact that it means "digital to analog". And your also right about the fact that anything handling digital music contains a Dac (if it didn't there'd be no sound).

The external DACs can usually convert to a better or much better quality than a typical soundcard. Calling it an external soundcard however might not be exactly to the point. Usually they haven't got a sound-in option which are included in most standard soundcards.

[Boray]

There are a number of reasons why playing files on a computer could sound worse than on a CD player:

* Low quality DACs. All converters sounds different.

* Real time sample rate conversion. As I've mentioned before, many sound cards and on board audio chips has a DAC that has a fixed sample rate of 48kHz even when you set it to other sampling rates. So playing a 44.1kHz file (or CD) requires sample rate conversion, which makes it sound worse. The default windows mixer setting is also 48kHz. If you have a sound card supporting real 44.1kHz playback, you should change your windows mixer setting as well, or you would end up with a sample rate conversion anyway.

* Digital volume. I suspect that many digital devices such as portable music players and cheap computer sound cards have no analog volume control. This would mean that changing the volume is done before the data hits the DAC. So if you set your computer's volume to 25% and have a 16 bit DAC, you would end up listening to 14 bit music. So it's better to always have your computer volume to 100% and change the volume on your amplifier instead.

* Digital FX: If you change EQ in your soundcard settings or in your music player, this will in most cases degrade the quality. Turn all digital FX off.

* Normalization settings: This is a "feature" that can exists both in your music player program and sound card settings that is meant to even out the volume. This totally changes the dynamics of the music so make sure this all is turned off.

So there are many holes to fall into. This doesn't mean that a computer always will sound worse than a CD player. Getting a high quality sound card for your computer and setting it up correctly will probably sound better than most consumer CD players out there. Computers are used for all music making and mixing now days and home recording is more popular than ever so there are a lot of good sound cards out there relatively cheap. Check out music gear shops.

[brent]

Exactly Curt. There are many outboard DACs out there with USB, Firewire and now Thunderbolt. USBs do not sound as good as firewire, often have more jitter, because of the USB protocol and how the audio is handled. There is a company that takes the control of the data stream away from the computer's processor. I used to sell it, and it was one of the favs among the modern techie/audiophile circles.

This is one of the better bang-for-the buck DACs out there for the consumer markets:
http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=320

This is one of the bang-for-the-buck pro-sumer models:
http://www.proaudio.com/product_info.ph ... ts_id=5713

[Boray]

I posted this by mistake on another thread but here it goes. I downloaded the original wavs and burned to a disc when the project first came out at the beginning of the year. I listened to that cd for months in my car stereo. When I received and played the professional CD in my car stereo, I immediately had to turn down the bass to play the CD at the same volume levels as before. Now, you can say my burner has issues, my computer audio has issues, or my settings were crappy, I don't really care what it is. Until there is a universal setting or you can download and burn the media to disc without an R2 unit beside you to make sure everything is setup right (that would be awesome though), to me the CD release is 100% better. Since I am the paying customer, that should be all that matters. I hope you guys take no offense to what I am saying ... but it shouldn't be rocket science to do this.

Regards, Phillip

I think that is what would be expected. The first files you got was not the final product and wasn't mastered.

[brent]

Ok, here it is: The FLAC download is totally equal to the CD. No question about it. There was total cancellation in my test. Here is also a sample level zoom in of the waveforms for you. Can you see any difference?



I also selected a small piece of a few samples and rendered out the same selection from both files. Here is the resulting wav files viewed in a HEX editor. Can you see any difference?

I wish that DAW graphics guys would finally get with the program and show the samples in their true form, instead of the connected dot look, when exploded. They need to implement the oscilloscope view to see the honest staggered stair steps. Sure looks purdy that way though.

[p-freak]

Editing post since admin took appropriate action.

[Krich]

So, I bought the FLAC download. The FLAC download should in theory be equal to the CD.

So you are getting a lot of FLAC over this?