2. pc-audio
  3. 1173483403

Wow Windows Vista sounds sooo much better

I just installed Vista. I was not happy with the sound I was getting from my benchmark dac1. This thing got such great reviews but it never sounded right to me. It was way to soft with some voices and drums. Like there was this huge suckout. It drove me nuts. Certain ranges were way to low and behind a vail. I knew this coundn't be right. I could never get into the music enough.

Foobar2000 and Asio was better than not having it. But not what it should be. I did every thing. I did the whole asio, kernal streaming, asio4all, bitmatched, etc. Checked all settings. Tried different digital cables. Messed with EVERYTHING in my drivers and foobar2000.

As a last ditch effort before selling the DAC I thought I'd try Windows Vista. After all I knew Microsoft completely revamped its audio section. No more k-mixer was the big plus. Sounded good on paper anyway.... but lets see if it was truely implemented well.

I get home, install Vista (clean install). Go through all the settings first. Turn off any extra junk that comes turned on with the x-fi drivers.

Went to windows settings.... how pleasantly surprised to find setting for 24 bit, 96 khz setting (and any other settings too).

Went to foobar2000... how pleasantly surprised to find an option for "spdif out". That option allows for direct by-pass now. No longer routing through anything in windows. I tried this but it was full blast. I needed a volume control though. Again pleasantly surprised that using windows Vista volume sounds just as amazing. No loss in quality what so ever.

I no longer need any special asio drivers, or kernal streamers or any of that junk. I can now use all my audio and video apps and have just as great of sound.

I'm really floored what a difference Vista makes. All the power and dynamics and soundstage is there. Just how it should sound. A big thumbs up to microsoft for fixing all tha was wrong with xp's sound. I highly recommend upgrading. Thumbs up!
kacz
kmkhcso
9 posts
 
Hello Kacz,

Yes I do believe and agree with you that Vista sound better than XP Pro. PC or Mac it does not matter as well as you know how to operate right? I have both PC and Mac- Vista and Leopard X. I compared PC and Mac on sound only. And YES MAC/Leopard will give you much much better sound than PC/Vista. I don't know that you are agree with me or not but that what I compared and that what I heard. I would not mind to tell you that I'm very fresh to MAC and I have posted my question on Gon to get help from our Fans. I used PC since I was in hi-school and college. I'm very dummy on MAC but after I switch to MAC for "Sound" it gave me a very big impress about MAC. And now as I owned one and learn about it I love it.
djembeplay
179 posts
 
Hey, I don't mean to hi-jack this thread... but I have a relevant question. I am about to buy a squeezebox and am running XP. Would it be advantageous to upgrade to vista for this as well? Will the digital audio quality streaming through the squeezebox software also be affected?

That would be sad if vista would be advantageous... because I had Vista... and it strongly resembled dried zebra feces under a file of flies in a dry field in africa. I'm a filmmaker and all my editing software ran like garbage compared to XP... with 4 gigs of fast RAM. So, now I'm back to XP.
wshields
12 posts
 
xp is fine with Squeezebox. Slimserver sends the file via network to squeezebox player. Squeezebox does all processing on the music file. The pc doesn't do anything other than act as a server.
jkalman
298 posts
 
Rush Limbaugh is (or was) a Mac head.

I thought he is (or was) a pill head?

Rush Limbaugh is a man of many heads.

Don't you mean to say "Rush Limbaugh is a man of many chins?"

In any case, my experience with Vista and sound quality isn't terribly great so far. I still experience a lot of stuttering and other sound issues, especially if I multi-task. I use XP still on my two channel system, since I don't want to bother with all the Vista sound issues.

If I weren't so into PC gaming, I would just use a Mac as a music server. It is a much more efficient and elegantly designed GUI (graphical user interface) compared to any Windows OS (operating system). There is more finesse in the interface design IME. Unfortunately, there are not as many games for the Mac and I can't easily upgrade the components to keep it up to date as a top of the line gaming system...
unclejeff
1,313 posts
 
Yeah. I use Mac at home and PC at work. Yes, PCs have lots of neat software available that is not written for Mac.

Still, whenever it is available for Mac it just runs so much better.
More to discover