Arnold, Strange that they'd use one set of drivers for the front and rear. Huh. I try to keep my volume down at those levels too and it does seem to make a difference. Can you explain why we seem to have 2 "Master" sliders and 2 "Line-In" sliders? Strangely enough, i was so distressed by the sound yesterday that i took it out of the system and re-introduced my Nvidia chip-set ("Hi, Nvidia meet my Carver amp. Again."), When i listened to it carefully it only sounded a little better, but more to the point the smoke damage was showing again with channel drop-outs. So i re-reintroduced the SB ("Hey SB meet my Carver amp. Again." Carver: "Will you quit talking to me?! I'm just trying to sit here an hum by myself"). I recompiled my kernel and alsa-libs and fired it up. It actually sounded OK. Then i played a track through mplayer with a switch of -srate 48000 and it sounded better still. I donno why i sounds better this time, but hearing is *so* based on expectations. It's not great, but it will do till i can afford something better. I wonder how much better the M-Audo Audiophile sounds? As far as your Tascam goes i might consider that. How much do you want for it and how much higher is the sound quality? All i need is stereo out + line-in for mythtv. Thanks, Bearcat On Thursday 06 September 2007 in an email titled "Re: How much does my new SB Extigy suck and why?" Arnold Krille wrote: >Am Mittwoch, 5. September 2007 schrieb Bearcat M. Sandor: >> If you're hearing the same thing i am, then it can't just be the bit rate >> conversions. I'm thinking there is an exceptionally poor D/A converter in >> there in the first place. > >I think it has to do with the converters (maybe both DA and resampling) but > it only seem to happen at higher volumes. So I am turning the volume down > to 80% on master and 80% on PCM and leave it there. > >And on the sblive the converters for rear are better then the front ones, >because front (and line-in and mic-in connected at the board) are feed >through a ac97 while the rear-channels and all the external plugs on the >livedrive are through the emu10k1. > >> Also, if you're hearing what i am, how can you stand it? > >I don't use the full volume scale. And for professional use I do have two >external devices :-) (Tascam US-122 (anyone interested in buying it?) and a >Presonus FirePod) > >> I'm asking all of these questions, not just because i am an audiophile >> snob, but because i want to learn as much as i can about this stuff. > >Hey, if you are an audiophile snob, maybe I can sell you some >extra-super-duper extremely high quality cables(*)? > >Sorry, was temporarily trapped in irony-mode for the last paragraph. :-) > >Arnold > >(*) Of course they are unshielded. Shielding on these class of cables costs >extra... _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user