On Sun, 29 Jul 2007, Uli wrote: > Bill Unruh <unruh <at> physics.ubc.ca> writes: > [snip] >> You have only two ears. The only difference in the sound coming in from the >> back is a fall off in the high freq response above about 1KHz (shielding by >> your ears. If you happen to have no outer ears there will be absolutely no >> difference. If you happen to have sticky out ears, there will be a greated >> roll off. )Ie, the in ear response can easily be duplicated by earphones >> with some tweaking of the signals. > > The whole thing doesn't seem so easy...last year I heard from the guys at some > fraunhofer institute (the one that invented mp3 and aac) that they'd still be > working on a solution for that (which they'd probably sell to apple). They > wanted to ship some calibration tool with the system with which you could make > some adjustments for your head dimensions. I also heard that currently > headphones are sold with multiple speakers in them to do the same. > > >> That $100 soundcard is almost certainly >> very poor. ( You could try using my testing program >> www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/soundcard/soundcard.html)) > > Sounds real interesting...I'll give it a shot once I've found a cable to connect > in- and output. I wonder how the Sennheiser card performs in comparison to my > onboard hda-intel. > >> Ie, the biggest problem with headphones is that the separation of sounds is >> too great. There exist cicuits which will feed one channel to the other >> side with the right phase and amplitude info. In fact sox has a module >> included to do that, but that is clearly useful only for preprocessing >> sound. Ie, a good pair of headphones augmented with sound processing >> circuitry will almost certainly be more satisfying than that Bose system. >> Eg, The Grado Labs SR60s ( which have gotten very good reviews) which I >> have and like will set you back about $70, plus a good soundcard will >> almost certainly sound better than any $400 system. > > You're probably right about that. I just looked at the market for PC speakers > and the bose system seems to be the best there is according to its price tag and > the reviews I've seen. There is a real problem between price and quality and exactly what you want with the end result. As I said, if you are handy with tools, making your own speakers is probably the way to go, but that is useless if you are not. The cheap ( about $100) TransAudio T10.1 has gotten rave reviews as an amplifier-- but it is purely stereo and only 15 watts, so it is not going to blast low efficiency speaker-- which any small speaker system will be. > > I'll have a look if I can try those grado headphones somewhere. With which sound > card would you be running them? That maudio transit you suggested? Would that I am not enamoured of the maudio transit, because of there total lack of commitment to Linux. I once asked them which of the files which they sent with their card was the firmware which the Windows system installed and they told me that that information was proprietary. I found out which it was by reading one of their files. Sheesh. On the other hand the card does have very good distorition/noise figures from what I have tested. (The intel onboard cards can be reasonable or terrible.) Note that my testing program works most simply with oss, not alsa. It can be used with alsa with a bit more effort. Also if you are going to be using CD format output, do not get one of the Soundblaster type cars which ONLY work at 48000 Bps. output. They have to speed convert CD rate cards, and alsa speed conversion introduces a lot of noise and distortion ( AFAIK they still only use linear interpolation, which is pretty terrible) I do not however know what the output of computer games is. (ie what rate their output runs at). > also be the right choice if one would use a digital amp and some speaker system > with it? > > But like I said I wouldn't be afraid to spend some more money on a sound system > if I'd get a decent gain in quality. Unfortunately, there'd be 3 choices to > make...sound card, amp, and speakers. Although I just saw an amp from harman > kardon[1] for about $1400 which apparently also has a USB audio card in it. How > about that? I would go for a good soundcard and amp separately. Otherwise you may well get mediocre in both. 1.4K sounds pretty expensive for and amp plus soundcard. By this time making good amps is cheap. > Although one should probably invest more money into the speakers than the amp... Yes. generally that is true. I just noticed on googling that Turtle beach makes a usb soundcard with the head transfer function for headphone built into the soundcard, and it's $39 or so. No idea if it is any good however. Turtle beach did make some pretty good soundcards but I do not know if this is one of them. All I want to say is that if you expand your range of options to include headphones, your options are increased and your pricing drastically decreased. Of course if you want two or three people to all enjoy the sound together, headphones do not really cut it. You could buy two or three pairs of headphones, but that tends to isolate the people instead of bringing them together. (But then 5.1 makes little sense since you pretty well have to sit in the sweet spot to get the 5.1 effect) > > > Thanks, > > Uli > > [1] > http://www.harmankardon.com/product_detail.aspx?Region=EUROPE&Country=DE&Language=ENG&cat=REC&prod=AVR%20645/230&sType=C ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
