Thread: Sound Blaster mp3+ vs. M-audio sonica USB Sound Cards

Originally Posted by sxpert

No, RCA cables are just that, cables. there is no direction or whatever, just don't cross them (red goes on red, and white on white).
Do NOT believe anything of the "this cable has less oxygen blah blah" crap, it's BS. The most important thing is the cross section of the core (the thicker the better) and the screening/ground.

Another thing. when you get an optical connection, or a copper connection to connect digital signals, don't bother taking anything beyond the most inexpensive of all, the wire/light guide won't do ANY difference.
More importantly, with optical, there is NO way ANY interference could get through

My friend does Home Theather installation.

Tell him that the cables are all the same. Hahha .

Your wrong. Mine are gold plated, and have silver inside them. Very expensive.

If you spend 10,000 on a Pioneer Plasma alone, and thne install a Home Theater that cost 10,000, are you gonna use my cables or walmart cables?

Suit yourself.


O yeah, and about optical. How about you buy the thin wire and I buy the thick optical wire, and I bend yours and break the fiber? ehhehe then Ill say you bought cheap and got cheap.

LESLIEx317537:

My friend does Home Theather installation.

guess his interest is fleshing the most money out of the customer, sounds normal so far

Tell him that the cables are all the same. Hahha .

Never said that

Your wrong. Mine are gold plated, and have silver inside them. Very expensive.

well, gold plated plugs are important, as the gold is elastic enough so as to make better contact. point taken
now for the silver inside the cable, I'm not sure this is a better or worse idea. the important thing for a cable is to have low resistance.

now, the other important thing in an environment such as a car is to be impervious, (or limit to the maximum possible) the capture of parasites into the signal.
this is done in two ways,

1) consumer devices use one core and thick shielding
2) pro devices use two cores arranged in a twisted pair and thick shielding.
the signal is sent as a positive version of itself on one of the core, and a negative version on the other core. the parasite will be the same on both cores. at the other end, signal 1 - signal 2 gives signal without the parasite (the parasite is nulled out.)

If you spend 10,000 on a Pioneer Plasma alone,

I wouldn't as I consider plasma total crap. I'd rather have a 1600*1200 DLP projector. same price, will work much longer.
Plasma screens seem to develop a ghost image after some time that you can't remove, so much for "better than a tv"
also, the DLP has a 2.5m picture base, try that with a plasma screen...

also, the plasma screen is heavy as hell, whereas the DLP is about 5 Kilograms

and thne install a Home Theater that cost 10,000, are you gonna use my cables or walmart cables?

I'd be using the DVI input to the projector, (and thus have a purely digital picture) and a fiber to the 6.1 THX amplifier (this is my home system)
The multimedia system is a Linux PC with an ATI radeon 9200 video card.

Suit yourself.

see above for description of system

O yeah, and about optical. How about you buy the thin wire and I buy the thick optical wire, and I bend yours and break the fiber? ehhehe then Ill say you bought cheap and got cheap.

You just voided the warranty on the fiber by not following the manufacturer's recommanded use of not bending the fiber beyond the 15cm bending radius that's described in the spec. too bad.

Note that I am a computer network professionnal, and that I have installed more fiber cables than I can count...

Originally Posted by sxpert

MikeHunt79: see http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...=vendor-MAudio for more details. See how all their USB sound cards use the same cypress chip ?

if you click on "details", you can read :
- Contrary to Creative Labs publicity the Extigy is physically incapable of either 24 bits or 96kHz.

on another note, considering the noise the car makes, I don't think you can actually notice the difference between 16 and 24 bits...

I seem to remember there being a similar situation with the audigy's. Creative claimed the soudncard was 24-bit... and it did indeed process the sound at 24-bit, the the card's DAC was 16-bit, resulting in 16-bit sound being produced. Still, 24-bit dithered down to 16-bit does sound better than "normal" 16-bit, but i'm not sure if the audigy dithers.

I know the difference won't be that noticable in the car, as 16-bit does provide good dynamic range, but It's annoying when you pay the extra for a soundcard, only to find that it doesn't do what it says on the tin (or box in this case).

Yes, Obviosly we both know are stuff.

Gold doesn't oxidize like copper.

But I said 10,000 on one customers install we did on Sat. The Pioneer Elite. 52" Never said that was my choice. Dude, I got sore *** biceps now. My friend was making fun of me. The guy was like, it's croooked, I moved it up and down 10 times. I was going crazy ....
Also we warned him about using the Linksys media player though the TV and leaving it on for longs time, since it will burn in.

We all opt for DLP projectors. I may get one for 1400 buks only cost. Home Theater kind, not computer kind. I told my friend I thought that it was cheap.

And yes, getting alot of money from customers is great, especially since they are generous and nice.

I am only helping him install some lately, my job is computers. I'm a programmer, I just do this for fun and some extra money.

I don;t even have a Home Theater on my PC. Just a Dolby Digital using Optical hooked up to my Audigy 2 NX.

I'm not a sound freak, but all my friends are. They own B&W million dollars Kevlar speakers. Me I don't care, tin can is fine.

I also am a network dude, by we just hired Cisco to take over our switches at www.aig.com thats where I work on Wall Street. O yeah, the orange fiber cables. We have alot but not as many as the spagehtti of Cat5.

Where do you work? Why Linux for your Multimedia PC? What distro?

Gold doesn't oxidize like copper.

heh, never thought of that one

But I said 10,000 on one customers install we did on Sat. The Pioneer Elite. 52" Never said that was my choice. Dude, I got sore *** biceps now.
{SNIP}
Also we warned him about using the Linksys media player though the TV and leaving it on for longs time, since it will burn in.

heh, yeah, no idea what the buzz is about plasma screens...

We all opt for DLP projectors. I may get one for 1400 buks only cost. Home Theater kind, not computer kind.

the computer kind allows much better resolution when you wanna play nasa during those mars missions...
nasa tv on a quarter of the screen (mplayer rulez), and self-written apps to show current position of space station/shuttle/whatever on the rest of the screen

I told my friend I thought that it was cheap.

you surely meant to write inexpensive, as cheap really means flimsily built and shoddy

And yes, getting alot of money from customers is great, especially since they are generous and nice.

and they happily part with the large sums of cash they feel they won't need for the time being, buying inferior technology

I am only helping him install some lately, my job is computers. I'm a programmer, I just do this for fun and some extra money.

heh, can't blame you, I'd also do it, but I have a life (searching for a SO is a full time job these days)

I don't even have a Home Theater on my PC. Just a Dolby Digital using Optical hooked up to my Audigy 2 NX.

the PC acts as a complete multimedia center which, unlike those crappy MS boxes, is actually extensible

I'm not a sound freak, but all my friends are. They own B&W million dollars Kevlar speakers. Me I don't care, tin can is fine.

yeah, as long as the amount of noise generated freaks the hell out of the neighbor

I also am a network dude, by we just hired Cisco to take over our switches at www.aig.com thats where I work on Wall Street. O yeah, the orange fiber cables. We have alot but not as many as the spagehtti of Cat5.

yeah, well, I wouldn't trust admin of my switches/routers to anyone else

Where do you work? Why Linux for your Multimedia PC? What distro?

I'm a university researcher, doing network and information systems (I know it all on all the others)
Linux on the multimedia PC, simple, I can extend it, I can add things, I can do things that were not supposed to be done (see the nasa spiel above)
also, I feel like it handles the load much better than that other so called "operating system".
distro is the same as the carPC... Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org)

Cool, thanks for your answers.

I am going to looking into transforming one of my PC's into more of a Media Center PC. Right now, it's just my File Server for all my Media.

Once, I get the DLP, it will be alot cooler, right now I have a 18.1" LCD, and it doesn't do enough justice for me.

Ok, I am new to this forum and am currently trying to find out as much info as I can before going and buying stuff. I have a fair amount of electronic eng info, but am still learning computer and sound stuff.

For me, I am concerned with sound quality, but probably not into DVD playback at the moment. So, for 16bit/24bit issue, this should make no difference to me. All CD audio is recorded at 16 bit/44.1KHz (Unless its DVD audio, but have not seen any of this about). So whatever the sound card is capable of, the initial recording was done at 16 bit/44.1KHz. I cannot recover info that was not there in the first place.

I know that DVD is 24bits, so playing this back through a 16 bit card would be undersampling the audio would it not?

Sound quality should really be down to the quality of the DAC's and good circuit design. Pretty hard to eliminate all that noise inside a PC case though, so an external one could be better, but the car is an electrically noisy place anyway. Better shielding is required. But noise couples in through any copper cables/connectors anyway.

Cables:

Agree with the gold bit, its inert. Keep it short, thats good. Shielding and twisted pair for noise cancellation too.

Oxygen free copper is a load of crap really. Large diameter, low resistance, thats all thats needed. Anyone who talks about directional cable is mad. Audio signals are AC, it has a polarity iether side of zero volts. A resistive cable cannot be directional, unless it has some reactive components in it, but as far as I know cables are cables and thats it.

But, I might be wrong....

Originally Posted by LESLIEx317537

Yes, the drivers and software is very important. SB wins hands over.

I have the Audigy 2 NX in my room hooked up to my 1Ghz P3-M and my DVD playback is fine.

I was wondering if the MP3+ comes out of hibernation without any problems. I've got a Sonica and have a problem with the timing of it coming out of hibernation. I'm guessing that no USB sound card would work for my setup, but here's the problem that I experienced. If I left an MP3 playing in MediaCar and hibernated the pc when the computer came back out of hibernation the Sonica hadn't been detected yet. I would get an from winamp that the playback device wasn't found. The work around for me was to pause the music before I shut the pc down, but this was a hassle and sometimes I'd forget to do it. I went back to the onboard sound on my Epia M10K.

Sound Blaster MP3+ works fine after hibernation.