I read your first "The Digital
Domain" and I admired your passion for great sound. If you have free time I would
like to ask you for some advice.
I have a Pioneer DJM 400 mixer, which I connect with my
stereo amplifier and my personal computer. I had an M-Audio 24/96 soundcard and now have
ESI Juli@ and would like to improve the sound, but I have a dilemma. Should I buy a better
soundcard or buy a DAC? Also, is MP3 at 320kbps good enough or is FLAC a better idea? I am
interested only in sound reproduction, not in recording or MIDI. I am not a musician, just
an audiophile. Thanks for your time!
Spiro
The trouble with internal computer soundcards is that
they are subjected to the harsh electromagnetic environment inside a computer and they
share the same power supply as the rest of the PC. These factors can affect sound quality.
A problem I'm personally experiencing with my HT Omega Striker 7.1 is that the company
doesn't have Windows 7 drivers capable of 24/96 data transfer, a fact that appears to be
true of all cards based on the CMI8770 chipset. This doesn't affect USB D/A converters
like the Simaudio 300D I have now, which doesn’t need drivers and is
plug’n’play.
As for the quality of music file formats, I think you'll
find that FLAC is vastly superior to MP3. The MP3 file format cuts out a lot of music data
to make small files and is like a person with no head and no feet: they might look like a
person, but they don't work too well. On the other hand, FLAC files are lossless and so
you get smaller file sizes without compromising performance. Try the free ripping program
Exact Audio Copy and the free player foobar2000 to hear how good PC-based audio can sound.
. . . Colin Smith
Gallo speaker impressions
March 5, 2010
To Doug Schneider,
As much as I wanted to attend CES this year, I was unable
to. I would have gone just to hear the Gallo Reference 3.5 speakers. I heard the 3.1s for
a short time and was knocked out by them, only wanting a bit more bass impact. Can you
tell me how the bass sounded with the new 3.5s? I am thinking of purchasing these
speakers, but am trying to gain as much information on them as I can.
Best regards,
Bill Demars
Designer Anthony Gallo drove these speakers hard for us
during our CES demo and I was blown away by the 3.5’s bass depth and impact.
I never expected it from such a compact speaker design. I only heard the 3.1 casually,
never critically, so I have no idea how they’d compare. But the 3.5 certainly
impressed me. . . . Doug Schneider
