The thing about audio, everyone has a different opinion and you're never going to get everyone in agreement.
I chose to "plug" the specific programs because in my experience they're the best at doing what they do. I didn't include a guide for every audio program and OS under the sun becase its simply not possible to cover all bases, and largely unnecessary. This is a beginners guide and not the final word.
To address some of your other points... I devoted as much space to cables as I felt necessary relative to their importance in a system, if you wan't to argue about cables, you're best off doing it on a hi-fi forum tbh, and you're not going to get anywhere there either. I believe it was made clear that this guide was not aimed at gaming, but at music. ASIO in my experience adds quite a bit to the sound quality over windows K-Mixer, regardless of the way you use the PC. etc
I think what I'm trying to say is, if you don't agree with it, then pay no attention to it ;)
I was half-expecting to see a thread full of fanboy flames tbh, and part of me was dreading logging on after a while off the internet to have a look :o
Wont my music sound better with the new nordost odin £9000 interconnect using my £15 speakers?
:D
I only use my pc for the rare cd i play and dvd's. So an e-mu 0404 with foobar is fine for me. Except i can not get ASIO to work with vista.
The benefit of ASIO is large though. When using XP the difference always amazed me. But you will not hear the difference on a cheap system. The same to the person saying you can not hear the difference between lossless and compressed mp3's. He obviously has not got a good enough system to hear the difference or is just cloth eared.
Hey Joshua
Just wanted to tell you that it's a great article.
I've been into HIFI for a very long time (~10+ years) and I think your article is a really great and straight forward guide for those seeking to achieve so much more with their current audio setup.
Now, some audiophiles have aired their opinions here, but as usual they totally neglect the fact that by following the first couple of pages in your guide almost anyone will gain greatly concerning music on their PC.
I think you're spot on with almost the entire article and the recommandations. Kudoz!
Using ASIO to bring audio to your sound cards' DAC REALLY improves sound quality over the windows default. Period!
By the way I consider myself more of a Computerophile than Audiophile and I think this covers 99.99% of bit-tech readers so I concur that pedantic audiophiles take their ignorant criticism to an audiophile phorum ;)
Again. great article. Clear, easy to follow and spot on.
Thank You
Originally Posted by maha_x The point of this arcticle (one of them) was that even when the digital audio gets loaded from the HDD and sent to your soundcard, it's allready being messed with by windows etc. ASIO bypasses this ensuring you get the sound exactly in it's original form (be it MP3, flac etc.)
So if you ASIO the music to an on-board via SPDIF to a good hifi you can save the moneys from a plugin audio card? I only ask as I'll be fairly soon making a htpc system
In my quest to set up foobar correctly I found there is no such thing for my onboard sound, but I did find this - http://www.tippach.net/asio4all. It seems to work well with foobar :)
I am a bit of an hifi enthusiast, adiophile, whatever you wanna label me as....and down stairs i have ~4-5k of hifi equipment that allows for immersive, crisp and detailed sound that is enough to wash ones troubles away with the right choice of music. But i dont think people give enough credit to the abilities of "pc speakers". Ok, a sub is used to over compensate the satellites lack of mid-low range of frequencies, but what do you expect, satellites are tiny and if the base if too overpowering turn the sub down already, tis not rocket science.
In my second year at uni i had a place big enough to have my 5.0 B&W setup in my room, hooked up to my terratec soundcard and it sounded great...as the year progressed i got into gaming more and more and the terratec just didnt cut it in surround games like bf2 etc, so i reluctantly invested in a creative Fatal1ty card (i say reluctantly as creative have been portrayed a company who makes gear on the cheap, maximising margins for the sake of build quality, esp. in speakers.) As it turns out, the card was actually really good after a few teething problems were sorted out, and if you turn off the crystalizer and their CMSS 3-D features things start to work properly and impress me both in games and in dedicated audio listening. I was surprised moving from a terratec card which were recognised as performing well in a more professional situation to what a creative gaming card could do. As it is i've never looked back and am still impressed with the card today. It's currently hooked up to some logitech z-5500's and sounds great, ok so its not as good as my hifi setup, but the cost of actual hifi components for the pc setup is ~£350 and the hifi is 4~5K, do you think there would be a difference?
The article was ok, it touched on alot of topics that people will find useful, but what i've written about are the things that bugged me when i was reading it as i feel it was rushed and alot more research could have done, not trying to be rude but walking into a hifi shop and spending a day listening to the different speakers etc would have opened up Tim's eyes to alot i feel, for example, having undermined the surround system for music listening, if you're going to compare satelites to monitor speakers, atleast go and ask to listen to say a bose system, around £1500 and then compare to a monitor and floorstanding speaker system and the gap is reduced but you cant get that quality of speaker for a pc config, in my opinion. I cant remember what else bugged me in the article, but the key is to remember that its all IMO, in saying that hifi choice is completely subjective Tim did hit the nail on the head, i have friends who just dont hear the things i might in music, subtle changes etc but that might just be what differentiates an enthusiast from a normal person, that or i'm going mad and my mind is tricking me.
Oh yeh, speaker cabling, in my experience, the better the system the more the need for a better cable(obviously), i was always told when hifi shopping (started at the age of 15 from paper-round earnings) that 10% of your budget should be on cabling, so cheap systems can get away with cheap cables, if you spend alot more obviously that 10% grows in £ but is warranted as the transfer of signal is important as there's no point having a £10k amp and cd player using a radio antenna wire to send the signal to the speakers as all the processing advantages gained in the amp and cd player will be lost by the time they reach the speaker.
peace
FATMAN
p.s i find it hard to respect a man who credits a creative speaker system...but i will with hold my judgement until i've heard the speakers in a rig i know! :P
I've seen a few people mention 'aged speaker systems' in this thread so far, and I just want to complain about that for a moment. While it's true that an extremely old speaker may not sound quite as good as it did when it was newer, that's not to say it's a bad system.
If, for example, you've got a nice old set of hifi speakers that your uncle gave you last time he moved, you're probably not going to beat their sound quality with any computer speaker system in the world. Sure, newer hifi speakers might do better, but in this case newer is only better if you're getting a new system from the same class of products. The speakers currently hooked up to my TV are ~30 years old, a set of Pioneer CS-99a's, and I've never heard anything nearly as good. With a bit of creative furniture shuffling, I could hook them up to my computer and have a sound system that no fancy plastic-boxed 87.9 super-awesome computer speaker set in the world could rival, despite the age of my speakers. People who buy expensive computer systems would do well to look around garage sales and eBay first - I've seen my Pioneers going for as little as $200 on eBay.
Stepping aside from unusually large hifi speakers and expensive computer setups, you can get pretty decent sound even with the speakers from those relatively cheap 3- or 4-piece CD-player/tape-deck/radio mini stereos, like these. Please understand that I don't condone buying a system like that specifically for use on your computer; if you're buying new you can get much better things for your money. However, I'd imagine you've got at least one family member somewhere with a system like those that doesn't get used. Go ahead and wire it up to your computer. I promise it'll sound better than that Logitech surround-sound system you've been eyeing.
EDIT: I should probably add that although my Pioneers themselves are decently cheap on eBay, the shipping on something that heavy is terrifying and will probably cost half again what the speakers cost.
Originally Posted by Renoir It was my understanding from previous readings on hydrogenaudio that the kmixer will always resample the audio regardless of what sample rate you have your sound card set to. It even as I mentioned earlier resamples from 44.1 to 44.1. I believe people on HA forums use/d DTS-CDs to test whether their set up was avoiding the kmixer because if the DTS was not bit for bit identical and had been altered in any way by resampling then it simply wouldn't play.
Not so much avoiding kmixer as being adversely affected. A quick and easy test is to play udial.
Quote:
For those who don't know, udial.wav is a test sample with a very loud high frequency noise with clipping. When played correctly it sounds just like a series of dialling tones as the noise is too high to hear. When it is re-sampled it produces distortion that sounds like a siren. You can download it from http://www.nitroware.net/files/udial.wav but be very careful, it will damage your tweeters unless you play it at a very low volume.
It plays fine through my Soundstorm on-board audio using Winamp in Directsound, Kernel Streaming and nVidia ASIO modes, with XP SP2 - no re-sampling occurs. Your soundcard's drivers can be responsible for re-sampling, but blaming MS is more fun. :(
Quote:
Incorrect. The audio ripper from illustrate DMC also supports "secure ripping".
Correct, plus it's under active development and "more reliable" for Flac. The one snag, dBpoweramp isn't freeware. :(
Nobody with intelligence will claim Flac isn't a very good way to store audio; it's lossless, it can be converted back to the original with zero change. By definition MP3 can never be better, more transparent, than Flac. But to dismiss MP3 as "crap" or every doubter "cloth-eared" loses the authors any credibility; a tiny percentage of humanity can tell the difference between 192kbps MP3 and an original CD quality reliably, and it's the optimum way to store audio when space is limited, as on a portable player. Choosing a setting better than the average download quality isn't hard. Just trade number of tracks storable for the degree of transparency needed to suit your player.
A good article for beginners, but I feel there's something missing. Not everyone uses a computer to playback digitally stored music. An increasing trend is the use of streaming, using devices like the Squeezebox 3 or Roku to receive the music data wirelessly and play it back on your hi-fi gear.
The music can be stored on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) or on a pc if you really want to leave your killer gaming behemoth running just to play music.
This is a huge subject and could be addressed in another article (hint)! There's so many options in this emerging market at the moment that not many know of.
(I'm about to buy a QNAP NAS and a SB3 for my digital music).
For those of you who like to use iTunes but want the audio quality of the Foobar/ASIO setup try here... http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=41373
Just realize that it uses iTunes 7.0.2 and if you have an iPhone, it's not really going to be an option.
Originally Posted by Bbq.of.DooM I'd just like to add, speaker cables Can make a difference; I upgraded my setup from 22awg copper to 12awg silver, and they actually sound better; Everyone who hears them says so, without knowledge that I changed the wiring.
For Foobar, it's truely a pain in the ass to configure, but well worth it. Fooblog and hydrogen audio have some setups and how to use them; it's against the EULA to share the entire setup.
That is only because you replaced a thin gauge wire with a heftier gauge wire (and different conducting metals). That is like apples and oranges. The difference you are hearing is real, but it is because there is far less resistance in 12awg cable vs 22awg. Actually 22awg wire would be considered sub-par for a majority of speaker systems, especially on a run of more than several feet.
Silver is a better conductor than copper, but there is very little difference in comparing 12awg silver to 12awg copper, which is the way the comparison should be viewed.
I'd like people to realise, as someone stated, that a speaker cable or an interconnect CANNOT make your system sound better. Your only choice is to choose a cable that doesn't affect the signal as much or badly as another. There is a boundary called physics that limits how "good" a cable can be. Fortunately, regular 99-point-whatever% pure copper is so close to perfect (by our hearing standards) that anything beyond that is not usually needed. The diminishing returns show themselves very quickly.
Proper construction does play a large factor (ie shielding, solid connections, non oxidizing connectors), but cables meeting these criteria are easily found, and can be quite inexpensive.
EDIT: BTW there are hundreds of feet of "standard" wire in each voice coil of each speaker, not to mention dozens of feet for the inductors in each crossover. 5-10 feet of super-magic-turbo wire does nothing but pay for somebody else's Ferrari.
AC97 chips only support 48kHz output, lots of the suckeyness of their sound quality can be solved by using software to convert up to 48kHz rather then the kmixer or the audio drivers to do it- I find the high end much cleaner with a sample rate conversion done in foobar to 48k and then played via kmixer. If I use kernel streaming then I lose the ability to play other things at the same time, and foobar cant open the soundcard heaps because one of my chat programs is using it.
I love having poor hearing, in some respects. ;) I'm far from deaf, mind you, but everyone in the office is amazed that I frankly can't tell most compressions from one another and certainly don't understand the whole idea of lossless. Fidelity is wonderful, but frankly my ears just can't discern that much difference. :D
Originally Posted by Mister_Tad I was half-expecting to see a thread full of fanboy flames tbh...
I've read your words again, after reading some posts I thought you must have been preaching like a tele-evangelist but it's a fair view. I do think you over-estimate the quality possible from PC speakers, the enclosure size and power supply just can't cut it. You've been spoilt.
One point you rightly point out,
Quote:
Winamp can also use these plug-ins, but I like foobar, and Im the one writing this, okay?
Which ties in nicely with
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foobar2000 FAQ Is foobar really better than Winamp?
There is no set answer. According to public opinion, foobar is great for people wanting a minimal player, as well as the opposite: people needing advanced features. However, the medium users are lost between the profusion of settings and components to find.
Is the sound really better with foobar?
As the author of foobar says himself, foobar doesn't have a better sound than the other players like Winamp. From a theoretical point of view, the sound from foobar2000 is not different from the sound from other players since a player can't improve the sound drastically (though it might be altered if not correctly set). Your hardware is much more important...
It's made me revisit my set-up, always a good thing. I've had a good listen via foobar, Winamp, Media Player Classic and WMP, along with some more obscure ones; I've tried different Lame settings and compared against lossless; at the end of the day I'm another Da Dego and features won out over any perceived audio differences. Enjoy the music!
All of the posts starting with "I an audiophile because ive got a XXX thousand pound hi-fi" make me chuckle. Perhaps the article would have more credibility if I mentioned what I do most of my listening on
You're probably right that I'm over-estimating PC-speakers as a whole, but the T20s genuinely impressed me with their sound given the very low price and small size. It be a challenge to spec something better out for 50 quid new.
Win some lose some, but tbh I expected more moaning here ;)
Originally Posted by Mister_Tad All of the posts starting with "I an audiophile because ive got a XXX thousand pound hi-fi" make me chuckle. Perhaps the article would have more credibility if I mentioned what I do most of my listening on
You're probably right that I'm over-estimating PC-speakers as a whole, but the T20s genuinely impressed me with their sound given the very low price and small size. It be a challenge to spec something better out for 50 quid new.
Win some lose some, but tbh I expected more moaning here ;)
Send them over to zerogain ;) they like cable talk as you know. Then let the nutters at the naim forum show them what silly money can do.
Originally Posted by Mister_Tad All of the posts starting with "I an audiophile because ive got a XXX thousand pound hi-fi" make me chuckle. Perhaps the article would have more credibility if I mentioned what I do most of my listening on
Ah ha, finally a reply, ok, my experience is based upon 1 of 2 hifi's i own, the first is for pure music listening and consists of Arcam diVA a70 amplifier (replaced old Arcam 8r amp), with an Arcam CD-73 cd player(replaced the Arcam 7se player) which are accompanied by some Castle Harlech S2 Loudspeakers using Cable talk "hosepipe" as cabling. I cant be bother to walk downstairs now but the components sit on a 4 tier rack spaced with 120mm sheets of 'engineered' glass. The home cinema setup is whatever console you want, makes little difference(pc's included), the amp is a Yamaha DSP-AX640SE (replaced the flagship DSP-A1000) with B&W S2 603 loudspeakers, S2 601 bookshelf speakers at the rear and a random centre that i stole from ebay to replace my original(tough life at university), speakers again are linked with cabletalk 'hosepipe' but at £26 a metre, the rears are a more affordable cable talk 5.1 i think, around £10 a metre. Those are the XXX thousand pound hifi's that 'make' me an audiophile :P i dont think one can say they are an audiophile, like one can't say he's an aristocrat, but as an enthusiaist i might be considered an audiophile, but i couldnt care less what the label was because it doesnt matter, i was just using the terminology associated with the topic and i love what i think are great sounding hifi's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister_Tad You're probably right that I'm over-estimating PC-speakers as a whole, but the T20s genuinely impressed me with their sound given the very low price and small size. It be a challenge to spec something better out for 50 quid new.
I wasnt contesting pc speakers, for the money they are awesome in my opinion, i'm certainly not disappointed with my logitech z5500's, but then if you expect to get out of pc speakers what you can from a hifi, you will probably be disappointed. I tend to expect certain levels of performance from the level of capital invested into a product, as it is the £240 quid(gotta love student loans) i spend on the logi's, they are great in games and movies too. My dig for credibility was only really at creative speakers, not your personal choice par se or ability to make sound decisions.
I've considered myself a hi-fi enthusiast, audiophile if you will, for a good long time, but only in the last 2 years have I put together a "real" hi-fi. I currently do most of my listening in a dedicated listening room, Pathos ClassicOne mk2, Proac Response 1SC and a heavily modified Marantz CD63 KI Sig, DH Labs Q10 and BL1 connecting the bits - a reasonable mid/high-end hifi imo - does this make me any more of an "audiophile" than I was 5 years ago when I listened to music on a Creative Labs Gigaworks surround set? no.
My point was, it seems like people use "I have an expensive hi-fi" as if it will make a statement more credible, when in actual fact it means little.
Originally Posted by mrb_no1 ...Cable talk "hosepipe"...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister_Tad ...DH Labs Q10 and BL1...
If your speaker interconnects have a name more detailed than "copper speaker wire" then you're probably reaching a bit far. I don't doubt the usefulness of heavy-gauge speaker wire, and I'll certainly not question the usefulness of soldered spade connectors and proper heatshrinking on the joints, but that's the limit and I'm just as capable of doing those things as any company out there, for quite a bit less money.
Originally Posted by crazybob If your speaker interconnects have a name more detailed than "copper speaker wire" then you're probably reaching a bit far. I don't doubt the usefulness of heavy-gauge speaker wire, and I'll certainly not question the usefulness of soldered spade connectors and proper heatshrinking on the joints, but that's the limit and I'm just as capable of doing those things as any company out there, for quite a bit less money.
I disagree, I auditioned a whole range of cables and interconnects at a whole range of prices (from cheap and cheerful garden variety copper to massively expensive esoteric cables) and found the DH Labs combo to be the best on my kit. If its a cable argument you're after, try a hi-fi forum ;)
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I chose to "plug" the specific programs because in my experience they're the best at doing what they do. I didn't include a guide for every audio program and OS under the sun becase its simply not possible to cover all bases, and largely unnecessary. This is a beginners guide and not the final word.
To address some of your other points... I devoted as much space to cables as I felt necessary relative to their importance in a system, if you wan't to argue about cables, you're best off doing it on a hi-fi forum tbh, and you're not going to get anywhere there either. I believe it was made clear that this guide was not aimed at gaming, but at music. ASIO in my experience adds quite a bit to the sound quality over windows K-Mixer, regardless of the way you use the PC. etc
I think what I'm trying to say is, if you don't agree with it, then pay no attention to it ;)
I was half-expecting to see a thread full of fanboy flames tbh, and part of me was dreading logging on after a while off the internet to have a look :o
:D
I only use my pc for the rare cd i play and dvd's. So an e-mu 0404 with foobar is fine for me. Except i can not get ASIO to work with vista.
The benefit of ASIO is large though. When using XP the difference always amazed me. But you will not hear the difference on a cheap system. The same to the person saying you can not hear the difference between lossless and compressed mp3's. He obviously has not got a good enough system to hear the difference or is just cloth eared.
Just wanted to tell you that it's a great article.
I've been into HIFI for a very long time (~10+ years) and I think your article is a really great and straight forward guide for those seeking to achieve so much more with their current audio setup.
Now, some audiophiles have aired their opinions here, but as usual they totally neglect the fact that by following the first couple of pages in your guide almost anyone will gain greatly concerning music on their PC.
I think you're spot on with almost the entire article and the recommandations. Kudoz!
Using ASIO to bring audio to your sound cards' DAC REALLY improves sound quality over the windows default. Period!
By the way I consider myself more of a Computerophile than Audiophile and I think this covers 99.99% of bit-tech readers so I concur that pedantic audiophiles take their ignorant criticism to an audiophile phorum ;)
Again. great article. Clear, easy to follow and spot on.
Thank You
So if you ASIO the music to an on-board via SPDIF to a good hifi you can save the moneys from a plugin audio card? I only ask as I'll be fairly soon making a htpc system
You jest, but I toyed with using the speaker cable from my proper hifi on some creative "premium" PC speakers. The improvement was massive.
OK, you got me, there was no difference. Maybe ample use of shakti stones would make the difference audible
In my second year at uni i had a place big enough to have my 5.0 B&W setup in my room, hooked up to my terratec soundcard and it sounded great...as the year progressed i got into gaming more and more and the terratec just didnt cut it in surround games like bf2 etc, so i reluctantly invested in a creative Fatal1ty card (i say reluctantly as creative have been portrayed a company who makes gear on the cheap, maximising margins for the sake of build quality, esp. in speakers.) As it turns out, the card was actually really good after a few teething problems were sorted out, and if you turn off the crystalizer and their CMSS 3-D features things start to work properly and impress me both in games and in dedicated audio listening. I was surprised moving from a terratec card which were recognised as performing well in a more professional situation to what a creative gaming card could do. As it is i've never looked back and am still impressed with the card today. It's currently hooked up to some logitech z-5500's and sounds great, ok so its not as good as my hifi setup, but the cost of actual hifi components for the pc setup is ~£350 and the hifi is 4~5K, do you think there would be a difference?
The article was ok, it touched on alot of topics that people will find useful, but what i've written about are the things that bugged me when i was reading it as i feel it was rushed and alot more research could have done, not trying to be rude but walking into a hifi shop and spending a day listening to the different speakers etc would have opened up Tim's eyes to alot i feel, for example, having undermined the surround system for music listening, if you're going to compare satelites to monitor speakers, atleast go and ask to listen to say a bose system, around £1500 and then compare to a monitor and floorstanding speaker system and the gap is reduced but you cant get that quality of speaker for a pc config, in my opinion. I cant remember what else bugged me in the article, but the key is to remember that its all IMO, in saying that hifi choice is completely subjective Tim did hit the nail on the head, i have friends who just dont hear the things i might in music, subtle changes etc but that might just be what differentiates an enthusiast from a normal person, that or i'm going mad and my mind is tricking me.
Oh yeh, speaker cabling, in my experience, the better the system the more the need for a better cable(obviously), i was always told when hifi shopping (started at the age of 15 from paper-round earnings) that 10% of your budget should be on cabling, so cheap systems can get away with cheap cables, if you spend alot more obviously that 10% grows in £ but is warranted as the transfer of signal is important as there's no point having a £10k amp and cd player using a radio antenna wire to send the signal to the speakers as all the processing advantages gained in the amp and cd player will be lost by the time they reach the speaker.
peace
FATMAN
p.s i find it hard to respect a man who credits a creative speaker system...but i will with hold my judgement until i've heard the speakers in a rig i know! :P
If, for example, you've got a nice old set of hifi speakers that your uncle gave you last time he moved, you're probably not going to beat their sound quality with any computer speaker system in the world. Sure, newer hifi speakers might do better, but in this case newer is only better if you're getting a new system from the same class of products. The speakers currently hooked up to my TV are ~30 years old, a set of Pioneer CS-99a's, and I've never heard anything nearly as good. With a bit of creative furniture shuffling, I could hook them up to my computer and have a sound system that no fancy plastic-boxed 87.9 super-awesome computer speaker set in the world could rival, despite the age of my speakers. People who buy expensive computer systems would do well to look around garage sales and eBay first - I've seen my Pioneers going for as little as $200 on eBay.
Stepping aside from unusually large hifi speakers and expensive computer setups, you can get pretty decent sound even with the speakers from those relatively cheap 3- or 4-piece CD-player/tape-deck/radio mini stereos, like these. Please understand that I don't condone buying a system like that specifically for use on your computer; if you're buying new you can get much better things for your money. However, I'd imagine you've got at least one family member somewhere with a system like those that doesn't get used. Go ahead and wire it up to your computer. I promise it'll sound better than that Logitech surround-sound system you've been eyeing.
EDIT: I should probably add that although my Pioneers themselves are decently cheap on eBay, the shipping on something that heavy is terrifying and will probably cost half again what the speakers cost.
Nobody with intelligence will claim Flac isn't a very good way to store audio; it's lossless, it can be converted back to the original with zero change. By definition MP3 can never be better, more transparent, than Flac. But to dismiss MP3 as "crap" or every doubter "cloth-eared" loses the authors any credibility; a tiny percentage of humanity can tell the difference between 192kbps MP3 and an original CD quality reliably, and it's the optimum way to store audio when space is limited, as on a portable player. Choosing a setting better than the average download quality isn't hard. Just trade number of tracks storable for the degree of transparency needed to suit your player.
The music can be stored on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) or on a pc if you really want to leave your killer gaming behemoth running just to play music.
This is a huge subject and could be addressed in another article (hint)! There's so many options in this emerging market at the moment that not many know of.
(I'm about to buy a QNAP NAS and a SB3 for my digital music).
http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=41373
Just realize that it uses iTunes 7.0.2 and if you have an iPhone, it's not really going to be an option.
That is only because you replaced a thin gauge wire with a heftier gauge wire (and different conducting metals). That is like apples and oranges. The difference you are hearing is real, but it is because there is far less resistance in 12awg cable vs 22awg. Actually 22awg wire would be considered sub-par for a majority of speaker systems, especially on a run of more than several feet.
Silver is a better conductor than copper, but there is very little difference in comparing 12awg silver to 12awg copper, which is the way the comparison should be viewed.
I'd like people to realise, as someone stated, that a speaker cable or an interconnect CANNOT make your system sound better. Your only choice is to choose a cable that doesn't affect the signal as much or badly as another. There is a boundary called physics that limits how "good" a cable can be. Fortunately, regular 99-point-whatever% pure copper is so close to perfect (by our hearing standards) that anything beyond that is not usually needed. The diminishing returns show themselves very quickly.
Proper construction does play a large factor (ie shielding, solid connections, non oxidizing connectors), but cables meeting these criteria are easily found, and can be quite inexpensive.
EDIT: BTW there are hundreds of feet of "standard" wire in each voice coil of each speaker, not to mention dozens of feet for the inductors in each crossover. 5-10 feet of super-magic-turbo wire does nothing but pay for somebody else's Ferrari.
This is very useful information Sound, Can't wait for the Graphics one :) I know what Bit-Tech doing.
Thanks very much. Tech me more.
One point you rightly point out,
You're probably right that I'm over-estimating PC-speakers as a whole, but the T20s genuinely impressed me with their sound given the very low price and small size. It be a challenge to spec something better out for 50 quid new.
Win some lose some, but tbh I expected more moaning here ;)
Send them over to zerogain ;) they like cable talk as you know. Then let the nutters at the naim forum show them what silly money can do.
Ah ha, finally a reply, ok, my experience is based upon 1 of 2 hifi's i own, the first is for pure music listening and consists of Arcam diVA a70 amplifier (replaced old Arcam 8r amp), with an Arcam CD-73 cd player(replaced the Arcam 7se player) which are accompanied by some Castle Harlech S2 Loudspeakers using Cable talk "hosepipe" as cabling. I cant be bother to walk downstairs now but the components sit on a 4 tier rack spaced with 120mm sheets of 'engineered' glass. The home cinema setup is whatever console you want, makes little difference(pc's included), the amp is a Yamaha DSP-AX640SE (replaced the flagship DSP-A1000) with B&W S2 603 loudspeakers, S2 601 bookshelf speakers at the rear and a random centre that i stole from ebay to replace my original(tough life at university), speakers again are linked with cabletalk 'hosepipe' but at £26 a metre, the rears are a more affordable cable talk 5.1 i think, around £10 a metre. Those are the XXX thousand pound hifi's that 'make' me an audiophile :P i dont think one can say they are an audiophile, like one can't say he's an aristocrat, but as an enthusiaist i might be considered an audiophile, but i couldnt care less what the label was because it doesnt matter, i was just using the terminology associated with the topic and i love what i think are great sounding hifi's.
I wasnt contesting pc speakers, for the money they are awesome in my opinion, i'm certainly not disappointed with my logitech z5500's, but then if you expect to get out of pc speakers what you can from a hifi, you will probably be disappointed. I tend to expect certain levels of performance from the level of capital invested into a product, as it is the £240 quid(gotta love student loans) i spend on the logi's, they are great in games and movies too. My dig for credibility was only really at creative speakers, not your personal choice par se or ability to make sound decisions.
peace
fatman
I've considered myself a hi-fi enthusiast, audiophile if you will, for a good long time, but only in the last 2 years have I put together a "real" hi-fi. I currently do most of my listening in a dedicated listening room, Pathos ClassicOne mk2, Proac Response 1SC and a heavily modified Marantz CD63 KI Sig, DH Labs Q10 and BL1 connecting the bits - a reasonable mid/high-end hifi imo - does this make me any more of an "audiophile" than I was 5 years ago when I listened to music on a Creative Labs Gigaworks surround set? no.
My point was, it seems like people use "I have an expensive hi-fi" as if it will make a statement more credible, when in actual fact it means little.
I disagree, I auditioned a whole range of cables and interconnects at a whole range of prices (from cheap and cheerful garden variety copper to massively expensive esoteric cables) and found the DH Labs combo to be the best on my kit. If its a cable argument you're after, try a hi-fi forum ;)