Help me improve my PC sound

EndersShadow

Regarding TV software personally just upgrade to Windows 7 if you can. I use the built in Media Player in 7 for my TV Tuner and it works GREAT!!!

dkr919

blakeh wrote: »

dkr919- welcome to Club Polk!

Here's a recent review I did on an inexpensive USB DAC:

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115108&highlight=blakeh

Thanks, nice review. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

olilugo

I am afraid to upgrade my machine to windows 7, I have some modeling software that cost upwards of 5K and I could not afford to upgrade it.

The Rokit 6's are even bigger... just to give you some perspective the monitor is 24" and it looks like it is a 15".
between the monitor and the speakers they use 2/3 of my entire desk... but I am happy...
I could not imagen how it will sound once I put a more advance DAC, keep in mind that my current sound card is the one that comes as part of the motherboard, not only that it is a dell. so I didn't expect much...
I look forward to next month...

olilugo

blakeh wrote: »

dkr919- welcome to Club Polk!

Here's a recent review I did on an inexpensive USB DAC:

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115108&highlight=blakeh

I can't wait to buying this DAC.

EndersShadow

olilugo wrote: »

I am afraid to upgrade my machine to windows 7, I have some modeling software that cost upwards of 5K and I could not afford to upgrade it.

The Rokit 6's are even bigger... just to give you some perspective the monitor is 24" and it looks like it is a 15".
between the monitor and the speakers they use 2/3 of my entire desk... but I am happy...
I could not imagen how it will sound once I put a more advance DAC, keep in mind that my current sound card is the one that comes as part of the motherboard, not only that it is a dell. so I didn't expect much...
I look forward to next month...

What isnt compatible w/ Windows 7? I used to use 3dsMax, Rhino, the entire Adobe and Macromedia Suite, AutoCad, ect.....

just curious and trust me well aware of the cost of those stupid programs lol....

newrival

EndersShadow wrote: »

Also looking forward to what he thinks. Haven't ever got my ears on AudioEngine's speakers yet....

I'll bring em in April

newrival

EndersShadow wrote: »

What isnt compatible w/ Windows 7? I used to use 3dsMax, Rhino, the entire Adobe and Macromedia Suite, AutoCad, ect.....

just curious and trust me well aware of the cost of those stupid programs lol....

All the same programs I use. What industry are you in?

newrival

ps if you get windows 7 ultimate, you can run it in XP mode so you can insure your modeling software will work. I do that to run a copy of SigmaPlot I'd rather not pay to upgrade and doesnt quite run correctly on Win7.

Windos Media Center is definitely the best DVR ever created. In my ever so humble opinion :biggrin:

EndersShadow

newrival wrote: »

All the same programs I use. What industry are you in?

LOL.... I am in IT now, but I majored in computer graphics and got my BA in it w/ a specialization in animation but thats been a few years....

Dream job was a graphic animator for Bungie or EA Sports, but it was a hard market to get a job in, so the IT job came along and I jumped lol...

It will be nice to hear the AudioEngines. Like I said heard lots o good things bout em, but nothing better than getting your own ears on em

FlyenBrian

Once you get your hardware all sorted, I would spend a little time reviewing software playback options. If you CAN get to Windows 7, there are some features there that some players (Foobar) can take advantage of that might possibly make some remarkable differences in sound quality.

olilugo

EndersShadow wrote: »

What isnt compatible w/ Windows 7? I used to use 3dsMax, Rhino, the entire Adobe and Macromedia Suite, AutoCad, ect.....

just curious and trust me well aware of the cost of those stupid programs lol....

I use a product called ERWin by Computer Associates and it is a Data Modeling tool I really like for modeling databases realtional and dimentional.
I have an old copy 4.x which I was not even able to upgrade to the newest version I think is 7.x.

olilugo

Well the audioengine 2's are in the house.

For now I have moved the Rokit 5's out of the way and I am going to spend a few days just with these speakers.

Sorry I don't have a review yet. I just got them one hour ago!.

I have added a few pics so you can see first impression as least in the size.

More later!

EndersShadow

olilugo wrote: »

Well the audioengine 2's are in the house.

For now I have moved the Rokit 5's out of the way and I am going to spend a few days just with these speakers.

Sorry I don't have a review yet. I just got them one hour ago!.

I have added a few pics so you can see first impression as least in the size.

More later!

Man they look soo small compared to those Rokit 5's. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts....

olilugo

On a more direct note to my thread.

Here is the issue I am having.
New TV card is it(Kworld PC150-U. TV drivers are good. TV software is horrible and it has the same look and feel as windows XP multimedia which I hate.
I have tried many, many tv software which I am sick of installing and uninstalling.
The one I liked the most as you know from previous thread is KMPlayer.

KMplayer uses the same audio drivers as winamp and it sound incredible.
OK... PROBLEM.... the sound is delayed or out-of-sync with the people talking.

After many, many days to tweaking, it turns out that programs like winamp, foobar; seem to be using software improvement of the sound, meaning they process the sound instead of the sound card and then somehow send it to the sound card(not sure of the process ) and comes out on the speakers.

If I use the TV software that came with the card then, the sound is like dead, low and crap to say the least. Using KMPlayer the sound is great, big? but I can?t stand it that the sound is delayed.

I am about to just scrap everything?
The question I have is, if I buy the external DAC or a new PCI sound card would this problem go away or is it that no matter what because we are talking software processing then unless I change to a faster PC, then I have no way to fix this problem?

Is a better card, faster at decoding/process sound than the internal PC card? Or is it my video card?

The only reason I never notice this before is because I never used a media player to do TV, music, dvd and so on? I always had different programs for each?

I am including two pics so that you can see the minimalist footprint of KMPlayer which is the one in the dark picture

cokewithvanilla

I am unfamiliar with those programs, but I do not think your hardware is to blame. Almost any soundcard/videocard can keep with with tv.

I had a lot of issues at first when I was setting up my HTPC.. Ihad audio sync issues, choppy video on a seemingly regular schedule. The issues were compounded because I was using around 10 different audio/video formats.

All problems had to do with codecs. Finding the proper codecs and setting them up properly solved all my issues. Now, I was using WMF, so making it use certain codecs was no big deal... however, with your software I don't know.

Basically, blame your software before your hardware... especially since you are having different problems with different players. Try playing a DVD in WMP and see what happens.

olilugo

I wanted to report about my journey to improve my PC sound.

Top priorities:
1. And at the top of my list is to keep it minimalist
2. Improve the sound

My PC setup is as follows:
Dell XPS 400, 3G Ram, everything else is as it came with my PC.
Only extra component : an old Hauppauge TV card. The TV card is very important as I used it 90% of the time.

Old speakers: Harman Kardon 02320v which came with my PC: paid $25.00 for them.

Ok time to buy!!!
First, I decided to replace my TV card, I bought the KWorld Hybrid HDTV Card PC150-U PCI Interface.
The TV software that came with the TV card is crappy. Replaced it with a freeware software called KMplayer, very impressive software. Used to have an issue with sound, video latency. But I solved it by playing with the settings. !!!! Done.

Next, speakers:
I listened to many speakers, at the end only two made to my house:
AudioEngine 2, and the KRK rokit 5’s.

Comparing both of them I would say the KRK’s are better in that their size and amp section is just in a different class of speakers. The audioEngine 2 are the best speakers I hear in their size, the problem I found with speakers on the small size is that they sound narrower; however you will only notice this if you happened to bring into the mix a bigger speaker, as I did with the KRK. The AE 2 also have a problem with boom heavy, however I was able to adjust this using some setting in the EQ.
In my system the AE 2 was wining the battle as most of my listening is done in low volume and using the built-in sound card these speakers were nice and quite.
The KRK on the other hand when connected directly into the onboard sound card and nothing playing it sounded like I was in front of a nuclear reactor…

Now introducing the HRT Music Streamer II (MS II), I decided on this USB DAC, based on the many nice write-up I saw in this forum. However I did some homework and right before deciding my choices were: the MS II for $149.00, the Music Land Monitor 02 US for $189.00. and the NuForce Icon uDAC-2 for $130.
As it turns out I found a review that happened to state that the MSII was their top pic of the three if you only looking at sound. If your preference is SPDIF then the Music land was the top choice especially because the MS II does not have SPDIF out.
It seam to me that the NuForce was always number 3 in the list.
So I order the MSII, basically I don’t need SPDIF, nor headphone support.

With the MSII in the mix and connected as follows:
PC USB -> USB cable -> HRT MSII – stereo cables out -> KRK RCA in.
PC USB -> USB cable -> HRT MSII – stereo cables out -> AudioEng 2 RCA in.

All I can say is the KRK is now dead quite when no sound is being played just like the AE 2.
Once that was fixed, is when I had no choice but to decided that the KRK are just a better speaker considering they are only $100 more than the AE2. Maybe if I would have purchased the AE 5’s then it would have been a better test.

So OK I am very impressed with the HRT + KRK’s the sound, is nicer, cleaner, bigger, and punchier.

At the end I am not completely happy. As it turns out the HRT while very impressive, was not design for what I am trying to do, especially if you have windows XP.
The HRT was design for connecting it from the PC to a pre-amp or receiver. According to their support they want you to use the volume control on the AVR/pre-amp. Even more in windows XP the volume control is disable and the full sound is pass to the RCA outs.
In my case the AE 2 do have a volume control but the KRK does not.

I happened to have a laptop with windows vista and the volume control is accessible. But that would mean I will have to upgrade my OS to windows 7 which I am trying to avoid.

Conclusion: I would highly recommend the HRT + KRK if you have the space, and if you have windows vista or windows 7 so that you can control the volume for within the OS volume control . Done! Enjoy!!! You will not be disappointed.

Total investment:
KRK $300.00 pair
HRT MS II $ 149.00
Cables, you will need a USB cable which I already had one
RCA interconnects, which I already had some, I might try Audioquest King Cobra’s. But I am very happy with the sound as is.

If you don’t have the space, then AE is the top choice as long as you always compare speakers of the same size, for example: Bose companion, Logitech, klipsch, and so on… as long as the speakers are in the 2.5 and 3” woofer. The AE are just far and above the better speakers.

Two last comments: The AE’s are distributed here in the US but the bill is out of Hong Kong, if you order these speakers you will be charge another 3% international exchange fee by your credit card. It turned out to be about $6.00 which is not much but was not stated anywhere when you order them.

In my setup the HRT is always showing 44.1K. I have ripped all my CD’s using winamp, and choosing Flac as my file type. I guess all of my CD’s are in 44.1 KHz, I would have love to try the 96KHz and see the difference but I don’t have any music unless I am doing something wrong.

EndersShadow

Glad you liked the KRK's.... I did as well and am still possibly going to get a pair in my office at some point lol....

newrival

Nice review! Glad to hear about al the things you tried. And you're right, there's no comparison, generally speaking, when dealing with a 3" woofer vs. a 6" woofer inregards to impactful bass. I'm wondering, though, did you get them up on stands, or at least on wedges? IMO, they sound terrible sitting flat on the desk firing into your chest.

I'm soon going to be doing a shootout between my A5's and some new Swan M200 mkIII's should be fun.

EndersShadow

newrival wrote: »

Nice review! Glad to hear about al the things you tried. And you're right, there's no comparison, generally speaking, when dealing with a 3" woofer vs. a 6" woofer inregards to impactful bass. I'm wondering, though, did you get them up on stands, or at least on wedges? IMO, they sound terrible sitting flat on the desk firing into your chest.

I'm soon going to be doing a shootout between my A5's and some new Swan M200 mkIII's should be fun.

Yippee....another shootout to look foward to!!!! :eek::biggrin:

MADGSF

I am very happy with the HRT MSII that I recently purchased. Currently I have just the m-audio AV30 which sound great to me but do not have any bass. By the way they are going on 3 years old with zero problems.

Just to keep this thread going, my long term plan is keep the HRT and add either Dynaudio BM5a MKII. Or Blackstone TL3s with a Cambridge Audio Minx x200 sub and an Audioengine N22 amp. Or Cambridge Audio Minx M10 and x200 sub off either the N22 or maybe a Miniwatt N3. I worry that the Miniwatt N3 would not be enough for the TL3 but toneaudio liked the TL2 with a Miniwatt N3.

Any of these will run me over $1000.00 so it will be a while before I make a move.

nguyendot

I think I'm going to use a cheap Creative MP3+ DAC > GFA-555 > Paradigm Atom MK1

EndersShadow

Still Computer -> HK3490-> Infinity Primus 162's

Want to go Computer-> HK Streamer -> KRK Rokit 6's someday while maybe keeping the HK setup as well....

want to have my cake and eat it too :biggrin:

olilugo

newrival wrote: »

Nice review! Glad to hear about al the things you tried. And you're right, there's no comparison, generally speaking, when dealing with a 3" woofer vs. a 6" woofer inregards to impactful bass. I'm wondering, though, did you get them up on stands, or at least on wedges? IMO, they sound terrible sitting flat on the desk firing into your chest.

I'm soon going to be doing a shootout between my A5's and some new Swan M200 mkIII's should be fun.

I did try positioning the AE 2 and the KRKs at ear level, tilted backwards, far apart closer together, chaning different types of RCA cables and so on. The only constant was the USB cable, since I was not getting any drop outs or any feedback or hum I figure the usb is working great.

At the end I think was mess me up was comparing the two, I think based on what I experience using the AE 2s, I think the AE 5's could be the same or better than the KRK's.
The KRK's have a bigger woofer and more power per speaker, each speaker has its own power amp, not like the AE 2's that only one of the speakers have the amp.
But I have to be honest, I was very close to keeping the AE 2's. as they sounded very good and you can not overlook their size was perfect.

When using the HRT MSII at moderate levels at least om my setup the KRK was able to get louder and remain clear.
What made me decide was that without the HRT the KRK's had way too much hum, but the AE2 was nice and no hum.

One thing I tried was to purcahse a 1/8 stereo connector to XLR balance ends to see if I was ble to get rid of the hum from the KRK's... that just goes to show you how serious I was considering and trying many combinations to give a proper chance to both speakers.

What I found is that using the XLR connection, the hum desapered but the sound was reduced at 10db. it just took the life out of the KRK's. I was very surprised because everyone seam to always talk very highly of XLR balance connection.

I know for a fact that what save the day for the KRK was the HRT dac, once I was able to use the USB instaed of line out on the on-board sound card the KRK has no hum and then I was able to test the qulity of the sound on both sets of speakers.

I wounder how the NuForce would sound, considering it has a volume control? which is what I am lacking on my setup, right now I am using a combination of volume control on the application I am using and the Wave volume control on the OS. for some reason in my XP machine the volume and wave control both are additive sound, not that either one can control sound is more like you can go as high as possible in the main volume control and them even louder sound as you go up using the wave volume control.

More testing ahead ....

EndersShadow

Checking in to see your thoughts after having the KRK's for a bit. I am highly debating this exact setup (albeit w/ the Rokit 6's and Windows 7).

I have heard that with Windows 7 and Vista you get volume control in the OS and was wondering how that sounded to you. Even adding a volume control of some sort should still keep me under 200 for the entire DAC deal which is about what I wanted.

Also debating the A5's myself since like you said they have a volume control, however the Rokit 6's have more power and their own dedicated amp....

Also how did you connect the A2's to the HRT? I see a single 3.5mm audio input and then a Line Out and connections for the other speaker but no set of RCA in's? Am I missing something???

Wish I could hear the A5's without buying them next to some Rokit 6's lol.....

EndersShadow

olilugo wrote: »

I did some homework and right before deciding my choices were: the MS II for $149.00, the Music Land Monitor 02 US for $189.00. and the NuForce Icon uDAC-2 for $130.
As it turns out I found a review that happened to state that the MSII was their top pic of the three if you only looking at sound. If your preference is SPDIF then the Music land was the top choice especially because the MS II does not have SPDIF out.
It seam to me that the NuForce was always number 3 in the list.

Thought I would post this review of the uDAC-2 here since you reference it....makes me glad I didnt even look at it lol...

olilugo

Wow now that is a review. Uncompromised and basically this is what it is no matter price range and other factors.

Going back to my setup; I have decided to scrap the entire project. after spending close to $600.00 between DACs, speakers, cables and other PC improvements I just could not believe that I was not happy. I am not willing to compromise.
Not having a way to properly control the volume was a big issue.
The KRK's while very impressive, I have to say way to big for my space and that also bother me.

I also tested a different (NEW) setup: PC -> 1/8 stereo to L+R RCA out -> CD channel in AVR(pioneer 1018) -> speaker cables out to RTi6.
I just wanted to see what having an out-of-the-PC volume control would give me.
and of-course I also added the MSII in this setup as well.
Not much difference between having/and not having the MSII if the pioneer AVR is in the middle.

At the end one thing came to my mind while testing and pluging and un-pluging all these components.
Is it possible that software wise can improve the internal crappy sound card?
This came to me as I was using windows media as my player, and striping all components and just having my PC and my old PC speakers.
Then I decided to install winamp, the sound improved considerable, according to winamp they use other sound codec software not included in windows media player.
Then I install foobar2000 and the sound became even better.
I am also using KMplayer and my TV sound is way better than it was when using the TV software that came with my card.

OK all that said, here is what I wonder. Is it possible to obtain better/or equal results from software as I would from hardware. All my testing which is non professional off-course; seems to indicate that given the proper sound codec’s and the proper speed of a computer I can obtain the same of very close results from having a dedicated DAC in the middle of my system, under my testing environment and using the parts I use to test.
So I decided to scrap everything as I didn’t see a $600.00 improvement other than to be able to brag that I have the setup I have… which is not that important to me.

After spending close to $100.00 to return everything; I am going to start all over. I am going to continue to research for speakers with the sound as good as KRK’s which I really liked, but in a smaller format, (8”H, 6”W,?”D) don’t really care for how deep the speaker is. I think I will wait a bit more until there is a possible proper solution, to have an external volume control, a headphone connection, in case I wanted to ever have that choice, and a possible and I am shutting for the moon here to properly support 2.1 as I think devises should properly support it.

AudioFilet

+1 on the Audioengine A5's. Hooked up to a really cool Chinese DAC & my MAC.

Those things are freaking me out.

coolsax

while the soundstaging obviously would suffer the most, have you considered possibly going the Headphone route as well since it looks like you are sitting at your PC most of the time.

EndersShadow

olilugo wrote: »

After spending close to $100.00 to return everything; I am going to start all over. I am going to continue to research for speakers with the sound as good as KRK?s which I really liked, but in a smaller format, (8?H, 6?W,??D) don?t really care for how deep the speaker is. I think I will wait a bit more until there is a possible proper solution, to have an external volume control, a headphone connection, in case I wanted to ever have that choice, and a possible and I am shutting for the moon here to properly support 2.1 as I think devises should properly support it.

Wow, that sucks...you have me on a similar research journey. I thought I would throw this out to you to use instead of the HRT:

Audnst HUD-MX1 (179): http://www.headfonia.com/audinst-hud-mx1-dac/

Has powered headphone jacks and volume control. The reviewer likes the HRT Media Streamer's DAC better by a slight margin, but with your KRK's you might not notice.....

I also am debating the HRT Streamer II + AudioEngine A5's since then I would get a volume knob as well as headphone jack...but I really like the true active crossovers in the KRK's against the passive's in the Audioengines....

If your looking for some more speakers to research, let me know, I got a small list of other brands I am researching myself (Swan is one for sure)