![]() The only caveat is that you need to be exact with the queries to get the information you want. In addition, at the bottom of the page, you will find a search box to find the information you need quickly. I would not be happy if I spent my money on a high-end USB audio device and all this would still be happening in Windows.After you complete the steps, you will have a detailed overview of the laptop or desktop specs. Also, I would like to hear if some more “hifi” solutions (for example, DAC or streamer from known hifi manufacturer) have dedicated drivers that can bypass Windows audio processing. If you have references to more detailed explanation of how Windows audio works, feel free to comment. Archimago’s Musings: MEASUREMENTS: Windows 10 “Audio Stack” / DirectSound Upsampling, after my own measurements I found this regarding Windows upsampling – and the results are not pleasing.Headphone addict: Bit perfect playback in foobar tutorial, this is how I set up my ASIO4All drivers in foobar.It may be good to have two sound devices in one PC, for example USB for “audiophile playback” with foobar or similar player, and Toslink for other playback. However, it did not work so easily for me and ASIO seemed to reserve the device for good and I could not play anything even after closing the player or changing the sound device – whatever the reason. The device should be released when the ASIO-software is closed or the sound device set to something else. ![]() When software with ASIO is used, it reserves the sound device and no other software can use it in the meantime. I have used ASIO4All and have to say it is not a perfect solution either. Therefore, I dare to say that if you want to make sure you are getting the best possible audio, I suggest using ASIO drivers or similar methods to leave Windows mixer, interpolation, etc. Maybe some players can perform better, I do not know as I am not expert in Windows audio. Anyway, I still cannot say that what is seen here would always be the case. However, the only result that looked good in FFT was achieved with ASIO drivers. Spotify uses lossy audio codec causing some extra spectral deficiencies. Results vary depending on how the test tones are created, what is the sample rate of the file, the setting in Windows, etc. For these tests I used foobar2000 but also tried Windows Media Player and Spotify. I have tried these with one Windows 7 computer and one Windows 10 computer and with two different USB audio devices: miniStreamer and PCM2707C-based H-DAC. ConclusionĬomparing the first and the last FFT image tells a lot. H-DAC USB to analog output using ASIO4All driver, 0 dBFS tone. THD+N level of the signal below is -78 dBV which is quite bad number for a modern digital audio device. Obviously there is some resampling or whatever and the implementation is very poor, likely to achieve faster execution. And the results are even worse if sample rate is set to 44.1 kHz. You would imagine there was no resampling and output would be quite clean, if not bit-perfect. This signal is generated in foobar with 48 kHz sample rate and Windows sound device is set to 48 kHz / 16-bit output. Take a look at the spectrum below showing 997 Hz 0 dBFS signal played with foobar2000. This is purely a technical inspection but the differences are significant so I can easily imagine some golden ears can spot the difference. Its PCM2707C-circuit is capable of “only” 48 kHz / 16-bit audio so I was not expecting superb measurement results but was still amazed how bad they actually were. This post arose as a consequence of testing the USB-input of H-DAC. ASIO drivers or similar can improve audio output significantly by bypassing Windows resampling and other not-so-well implemented audio processing stages.By default, Windows audio quality can be technically inferior as has been shown in this measurement.
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