no linux audiophiles?

[tom_smythe]

there's lots of good linux info here, no doubt. arstechnica.infopop.net has tons of audio info, but it's mostly windows. i find it hard to get good audiophile info about linux, so here goes.


1. linux audio quality- does it even exist?

2. stability aside, will a better *quality* sound card in windows still be a better card in linux?

3. the only mp3 player i ever liked in linux was XMMS. this is a winamp clone, or so i hear. under windows, i can tell a big fantastic difference between winamp and WMP. does XMMS have the same sound qualities as winamp? is there a better alternative?

and if you are going to respond by telling me the sblive is the best 'cause it works out of the box, don't bother. you're not an audiophile :P

[bdg1983]

I plan to get my Roland soundcard to work in the other pc I just built. Can't get much better than Roland, can you?

So what exactly do you want to know?

[Screamin' Soulman]

tom, this is something that I've begun researching as well. Here is one article that I just found:
.
http://www.linuxhardware.org/features/01/04/16/1249249.shtml
.

Now I realize this article was not written by an audiophile (he even got the Ensoniq chipset numbers wrong...it's ES1371 not ES1731) but it addresses something that I've been curious about and that is how well does a card with great reviews in Windows rate in Linux.

Regarding the Audio/Visual Club at Ars, I don't think you'll find a poptones in these forums Ars posters seem to have better toys than LNO. :D

[ 26 July 2001: Message edited by: Screamin' Soulman ]

[carlywarly]

How is it possible to use the word audiophile in the same breath as MP3 ?

[kuber]

carlywarly-no ****. You are NOT an audiophile if you listen to mp3s.
Go buy a record player and some mags.

[tom_smythe]

carlywarly and kuber: fine, MEDIA player. happy now? besides, it's not like YOU could tell the difference between 320 and cd anyhow. vinyls are expensive and unwieldy. they degrade.

don't associate mp3 with "some 96 kb ***-file i got from napster". it's possible to make good ones.

what "software" then, is good under linux?

does it just boil down to the decoder, or is there more to it than that?

[hux]

>>Can't get much better than Roland, can you?


hehehehehhe.....um...you'd probly be better off looking on audioforums.com for linux users than looking here for musicians or audiophiles. There might be a couple around, but everyone I know is using windows...just because that's what the big boys write the apps for. wish it were different, but it ain't :( I'd love to see how some of this stuff would run on a linux box...sigh

[e_mpika]

Hey y'all!!!
i think im probly the only person on the LNO board who wants to use linux to make music! im sick and tired of windows crashing on me! ive found some apps to help me on my way but i cant get half of them to work! (im gonna post a new topic for that in the software bit in a mo!) but its all alright, sound does seem to be far more stable in linux than in windows! (hey you can even run stuff from the command line!!! why cant windoze!) but yeah its good!

and you are not an audiophile if you rip cds and encode them in to mp3! your a t**t because they sound better off cd! oh and vinyl is FAR better than any cd! (ever noticed the way you can still hear it with the amp turned off, try doing that with a cd! -tehehehee)!!!
-rgds

[Sweede]

real audiophiles can tell the difference between 320kps MP3's and CD's :)

my car stereo got a 39 in SQ :D

one of the major MAJOR differences between Mp3's and CD's is that MP3's lose a lot of the harmonics that make up the sound stage.

As for sound quality in Linux, my AWE64 gold (ya, old and whatnot, but still sounds fairly good) sounds far supieror in windows 98/2000 than linux.


freshly pressed vinyl rocks, i've heard a few albums that where pressed and never been played (freinds work at a local recording studio). but after every turn, it gets worse, CD's will NEVER lose quality.

[e_mpika]

If you write/produce/engineer as much music as me, you realise that vinyl sounds so much warmer than cds.
CDs and digital stuff tends to take out alot of the emotion in music (sounds gay i know but....), turning sound from pressure to 1010111000110101s then back to pressure again takes something out of it!! i dont kknow but, vinyl rocks! it has charachter!

[carlywarly]

I suspect the main reson analog music sounds better than digital is because real music actually exists as an analog waveform in the air. ( It also just happens to be single-ended, just like pickup cartridge signals start off as, try listening to a class-A single-ended Valve Amplifier playing a decent recording of acoustic intruments............MP3s? *&$£^&* )

[Screamin' Soulman]

Originally posted by carlywarly:
<STRONG>...try listening to a class-A single-ended Valve Amplifier playing a decent recording of acoustic intruments</STRONG>

Hmmm, maybe I should pull my old Harmon-Kardon tube amp (http://pipe.freeshell.org/A300.JPG) out of storage and restore it...

(picture nicked from ebay, but I have that exact amp)

[Molecule Man]

For vinyl or cd it all depends on how the master was created.

As for sound cards, the best seems to end up being the emu10k1 (aka SoundBlaster Live!). It doesn't have all the features of the Windows drivers, but with EAX turned off in Windows, it sounds the same with the same file.

The decoder for MP3's or Ogg's does not matter, or trivially so. The real thing is whichencoder gets used. BladeEnc, LAME, and Not-Lame are some of the most popular. Try them all out and see which one you like best. depending on bitrate which corresponds to file size, you will find one is better than the rest.

[carlywarly]

Sorry, that Harmon-Kardon is obviously push-pull, you can tell from the transformers........single-ended amps are very rare, but sound like nothing on earth - and a well-mastered CD is just not in the same league as an otherwise identical record.