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Topic: Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling? (Read 7196 times) previous topic - next topic
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Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

I'm looking for a soundcard that doesn't have the 48khz resampling "feature" that comes with AC97 compliant soundcards. AFAIK, the CL Live/Audigy1/2 cards, TB Santa Cruz and Herc Game Theater XP all have this bug. Are there any cheap alternatives to buying a Envy24 based soundcard?

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #1 –
The 48 kHz resampling is not a bug... It's specified in the AC97 specs by Intel... They have to resample to 48 kHz for being AC97 compatible... Only ASIO and "such" allows higher frequencies... You'll just have to blaim Intel for yet another crappy standard... 

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #2 –
Yes, but is it so hard to make 48kHz resampling an option rather than mandatory?

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #3 –
IIRC SoundBlaster 128 doesn't resample - if You can get one it'll be very cheap, and it has decent sound quality, too...

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #4 –
Quote
The 48 kHz resampling is not a bug... It's specified in the AC97 specs by Intel... They have to resample to 48 kHz for being AC97 compatible... Only ASIO and "such" allows higher frequencies... You'll just have to blaim Intel for yet another crappy standard... 

Yikes, does that mean that my AC97 on-board sound will benefit from SSRC resampling?

Edit: I mean, I heard Live and Audigy cards are notorious for bad resampling. Does the average AC97 card suffer from bad resampling too? The one I've got is a via8233.

TIA : )

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #5 –
i don't quite get it, why are people so afraid of the 48kHz resampling? there should not be any audible problems if done properly, and it does make sense from a standards point of view where you have to consider that signal will still need to go through an analog lowpass filter after the DAC stage.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #6 –
Quote
i don't quite get it, why are people so afraid of the 48kHz resampling? there should not be any audible problems if done properly, and it does make sense from a standards point of view where you have to consider that signal will still need to go through an analog lowpass filter after the DAC stage.

Even if it isn't hearable, it's still not good since it destroys some of the audio and therefor should not be considered a good thing... My guess is that most people on this board will probably agree with me on that, or I'd be rather surprised...

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #7 –
<sarcasm> SSRC'd playback takes 20% of my Athlon CPU so it must be sounding better, maybe i just can't notice it sometimes </sarcasm>
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #8 –
Quote
i don't quite get it, why are people so afraid of the 48kHz resampling? there should not be any audible problems if done properly

The SB Live resampling loss has all the same been blindly recognized among 7 samples by one person : http://www.audiofora.com/yabbse/index.php?...lay;threadid=86

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #9 –
Zoltrix Nightingale Pro 6

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #10 –
Do SB Live cards resample if you use the digital SPDIF output. I think 48k audio sounds pretty good coming through my kenwood reciever.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #11 –
Quote
Do SB Live cards resample if you use the digital SPDIF output. I think 48k audio sounds pretty good coming through my kenwood reciever.

Yes, even the S/P-DIF is resampled... Pretty funny, don't you think?

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #12 –
CMI 8738 based cards.
A cheap sulution if you intend to use SP/DIF in/out.
(44.1/48 kHz 24 bit)
Can output 11 and 22 kHz system sounds on Windows as 44.1
Works with linux as well.
Dos emulation of SB16.

Analog quality is bad.!!!(in my opinion)

There are lots of variants including one without SP/DIF out.

Latest ones work 5+1 channels.

Should cost you around $20


Regards,
Asral

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #13 –
Quote
<sarcasm> SSRC'd playback takes 20% of my Athlon CPU so it must be sounding better, maybe i just can't notice it sometimes </sarcasm>

Hey, the plugin's free (thanks!) and it makes music "sound" better (kinda like those tree-trunk sized power cables I have connected to my stereo). I bet most people don't have anything better to do with their Athlon, anyway... you can run superfluous SSRC resampling programs or "discover the biggest number EVAR!!!" with some distributed computing application. Either way, you can sleep more soundly at night, knowing you've put your computer to good use.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #14 –
Quote
Quote
i don't quite get it, why are people so afraid of the 48kHz resampling? there should not be any audible problems if done properly

The SB Live resampling loss has all the same been blindly recognized among 7 samples by one person : http://www.audiofora.com/yabbse/index.php?...lay;threadid=86

Wee! 404 from the links from that page.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #15 –
Quote
Quote
<sarcasm> SSRC'd playback takes 20% of my Athlon CPU so it must be sounding better, maybe i just can't notice it sometimes </sarcasm>

Hey, the plugin's free (thanks!) and it makes music "sound" better (kinda like those tree-trunk sized power cables I have connected to my stereo). I bet most people don't have anything better to do with their Athlon, anyway... you can run superfluous SSRC resampling programs or "discover the biggest number EVAR!!!" with some distributed computing application. Either way, you can sleep more soundly at night, knowing you've put your computer to good use.

True!

I never heard any difference either so I switched back to on board resampling recently. There never were any "problem samples" that I heard any clear problems with.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #16 –
Quote
Even if it isn't hearable, it's still not good since it destroys some of the audio and therefor should not be considered a good thing... My guess is that most people on this board will probably agree with me on that, or I'd be rather surprised...

Resampling does not destroy the audio. Properly done, there should not be be an audible difference. The alternative to not sampling is to have a whole bank of output lowpass filters, one for each sampling rate which software might want to output to the DAC. Not a good idea for a standard if you think about it, so the AC'97 standard is not as retarded as you think. It's just practical.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #17 –
Quote
The SB Live resampling loss has all the same been blindly recognized among 7 samples by one person : http://www.audiofora.com/yabbse/index.php?...lay;threadid=86

You see the point now? Just because some idiot screwed up their resampling routine, everyone assumes that resampling is bad. This is exactly the same thing as people assuming that Joint Stereo is bad because FHg screwed up their JS routines.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #18 –
I agree with tangent.

And I can also recommend you sound card that resamples well and is cheap: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.
You can see that it is rated very high on PCAVTech Sound Card Comparison, and my own RMAA tests don't show any issues with resampling either, unlike they do for the other card.

TBSC 44kHz
TBSC 48kHz
The other card 44kHz
The other card 48kHz

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #19 –
Quote
The 48 kHz resampling is not a bug... It's specified in the AC97 specs by Intel... They have to resample to 48 kHz for being AC97 compatible...


Resampling is optional in AC '97, they don't have to do it. See Intel's spec (712 kB), bottom of page 66:

ftp://download.intel.com/labs/media/audio...oad/ac97r22.pdf


  Make

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #20 –
I guess the companies use the 48khz resampling a gimmick to get consumers to think the higher the better? 
-=MusePack... Living Audio Compression=-

Honda - The Power of Dreams

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #21 –
so with this plug it is like:

music -> ssrc 2 48khz -> card 2 96khz -> mixer -> card 2 48 khz -> out

or what?

(in the case of sblive)
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #22 –
A:
Cards based on the C-Media (CMI) 8738 chip - i.e. WinFast 6X (€30) - have optional resampling. The WinFast 6X even has connectors coated with gold. The analog-out quality is however terrible. The windows drivers has gotten better lately, but are not updateable thru windowsupdate.
Such a card is acceptable if you have an external DAC, but I do not recommend it for analog out.

B:
Windows has an option for resampling quality. Whether is applies to the sound adapter or to the DirectSound driver, I cannot say. The default setting is like this:
Win98: Worst, Win2000: Middle, WinXP: Best.
It is found here: Control Panel, Sound and Audio Devices, Speaker Settings, Advanced, Performance, Sample Rate Conversion Quality.

C:
It is very difficult to ABX the SSRC resampling plugin. There is a vast difference in volume. When comparing two tracks of different volume, the loudest normally sounds best. I found myself unable to adjust the volume by hand. A little to much and the SSRC sounded superior, a little less and the original was superior. Guess you have to have a dB-meter to adjust properly.
BTW: The SSRC plugin/best quality uses only 2% CPU time on my 1,8G P4.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #23 –
Quote
Windows has an option for resampling quality. Whether is applies to the sound adapter or to the DirectSound driver, I cannot say. The default setting is like this:
Win98: Worst, Win2000: Middle, WinXP: Best.
It is found here: Control Panel, Sound and Audio Devices, Speaker Settings, Advanced, Performance, Sample Rate Conversion Quality.

So that's what it's for! I was always wondering... thanks for that information

I guess it applies to the sound adapter. I used to have the option set to "best", and sometimes playback through Winamp with WaveOut would lag. Now I have it set to "low", and I've had no trouble so far. Maybe that's just coincidence, I don't know for sure. Just a guess.

Any Cheap Soundcards W/o Ac97 48khz Resampling?

Reply #24 –
Quote
It is very difficult to ABX the SSRC resampling plugin. There is a vast difference in volume.

Then use the original SSRC program, it doesn't change the volume.

Quote
Wee! 404 from the links from that page.

The samples have not been online for a long time (they were hosted by CDRW.org). The link towards the starting post is dead, since, like HA, R3mix.net has changed its server ansd all URLs became dead.
I can reupload the samples if you want to listen to them, but I don't now if I have enough space left on my account. 

Quote
I guess the companies use the 48khz resampling a gimmick to get consumers to think the higher the better?  

No, it is necesary to play several sounds at the same time.
Without resampling, Windows must interupt your 44.1 kHz MP3 or CD playback in order to play the 22 kHz new mail notification, then switch back to 44.1 kHz to go on with your music.

The best use being playing games with your own CD as background music.