I got the soundblaster ae 5 soundcard to power my Sennheiser hd 660s headphones. I like it, however, I learned that the soundblaster ae 9 is for audiophiles? should i pay the extra 200$ to get that to drive my headphones and will the dac used in the ae9 be better than the ae 5 and make a major difference in imaging and sound or soundstage?
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soundcard help
- Thread starter dsjds1010
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twsecrest
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Yea, I would just stick to the AE-5.
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whats the difference between 32/284 and 32/784 for music on tidal is it a massive upgrade in sound? is a topping ex5 a big upgrade over ae 5
twsecrest
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Me, 24-bit/96K is about as high as I go (CD-audio), I mostly listen to 256k mp3 music files.
32-bit/284k or 32-bit/784 is not something I'm into.
32-bit/284k or 32-bit/784 is not something I'm into.
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whys that sorry for all the questions im a noob. whats bad about the higher bits?
twsecrest
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Nothing wrong with higher bits, as you might(?) just hear a difference.
Have you tried listening to the same song, in both CD-audio (16-bit/44.1k) and 32/284 (or 32-bit/784k)?
See if you can notice any difference.
But if you have easy access to 32/284 or 32/784, might as well just go ahead and use it.
ZolaIII
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AE-9 makes sense for surround audio thanks to better DAC (still from earlier ESS 32 days but in the world of AVR's still ahead of most) and not that much for stereo. I hate they don't have remote option anymore (like back in the days). If you are satisfied with AE-5 there is little you might gain (regarding DAC amp in generally). Difrence between 110 dB DAC and and 120 dB (or a rather good and a great) one is less than two bits integer (19/21), everything about 100 ~ 107 dB SINAD is perfectly fine for pretty much anything ever recorded and if you don't want to end up deff before the time.
But it's not about line out standard mesured @1KHz SINAD it's about how much of it is retained on nedded power output from it's amplifier to drive specific headaphones at desired loudness level's (see Ohm's load plots for the hedaphone amp section of reviews, as long SINAD is higher than loudness level at nedded voltage for such it's transparent). Forget about digital domain hi sample/bit rates they are good for DSP purposes it's what you get out of DAC and up to 18~19 KHz with intact perfect 10/10 hearing (about 12.5 really regarding most recorded materials disregarding of the state of hearing) retaining 18/19 bits of integer precision. There are various reasons why you may want more than enough strong amp/preamp (EBU R128 loudness normalization, in case of DSD sources and such).
I hope this whose at least remotely understandable if not start with a series of what measurements are and how to understand them videos from Amir's YouTube channel.
Best regards.
But it's not about line out standard mesured @1KHz SINAD it's about how much of it is retained on nedded power output from it's amplifier to drive specific headaphones at desired loudness level's (see Ohm's load plots for the hedaphone amp section of reviews, as long SINAD is higher than loudness level at nedded voltage for such it's transparent). Forget about digital domain hi sample/bit rates they are good for DSP purposes it's what you get out of DAC and up to 18~19 KHz with intact perfect 10/10 hearing (about 12.5 really regarding most recorded materials disregarding of the state of hearing) retaining 18/19 bits of integer precision. There are various reasons why you may want more than enough strong amp/preamp (EBU R128 loudness normalization, in case of DSD sources and such).
I hope this whose at least remotely understandable if not start with a series of what measurements are and how to understand them videos from Amir's YouTube channel.
Best regards.
It doesn't really give you anything more within the audibility envelope, so it isn't necessarily bad, it's just not going to make anything better.
16/44.1, which is CD or 'Redbook' quality, gives you 96dB of dynamic range, and will let you recreate the original sounds up to 22.05kHz, which is higher than we can hear.
32 bits gives you 192dB of dynamic range, and the only thing you get from the higher sampling rate is higher frequency capture, not more accuracy.
24/96 gives you 144dB of dynamic range, and up to 48kHz (1/2 of 96) in the band limit.
Sampling Theory isn't intuitive at all really, but is worth understanding at least conceptually to realize you aren't missing out on anything with these silly high sample rate recordings.
Monty is the go-to around here, and well worth the time if you haven't seen it.
32 bit fixed does - 32 bit float gives you more like 1536dB.
AnalogSteph
Major Contributor
Well, if we are going to nitpick, it's more like any 144 dB out of a total 1667 dB if I'm not mistaken. (If you have two signals, one much smaller than the other, the smaller one will eventually get rounded into oblivion once the bigger one exceeds a certain threshold, and the determining factor is mantissa precision. That's the limiting factor for instantaneous dynamic range.)
Binary32 floating point format according to IEEE 754 has a 24 bit mantissa and 8 bit exponent, the latter covering -126 to +127. Hence you are getting a basic 20log (2^24) dB + 20log (2^127/2^-126) dB = ~144.5 dB + ~1523.2 dB.
So, given that we have come to within spitting distance of 24-bit limits, a scenario where 32-bit float strictly speaking is not cutting it is not unfathomable. The good news is that we still have float64 should it ever come to that - with a 53-bit mantissa (319 dB) we'll be all set.
Gradius
Addicted to Fun and Learning
There is no such thing as 284.
You mean 384KHz. 24-bit @ 96KHz already is studio quality.
You don't need anything beyond that. It would be totally overkill, unless for dogs probably.
For 200€ you can get an excellent external DAC or Audio interface.
I would not go for any Gaming/consumer soundblaster product.
You can get WAY better actual performance from an proper DAC with "Only" 24Bit/192Khz.
but this are theoretical and measurable improvements. very unlikely audible improvements
I would not go for any Gaming/consumer soundblaster product.
That's only marketing.
You can get WAY better actual performance from an proper DAC with "Only" 24Bit/192Khz.
but this are theoretical and measurable improvements. very unlikely audible improvements
There seems to be ESS hump issues with AE-9.
Left is AE-9, right is AE-5. When the graphs are set to -1dB, the results are not too different:
...but AE-9 is much worse for example if the graph is set to -24dB:
For the rather off-topic 32-bit integer vs float part, the link in my signature could be interesting to some.
Left is AE-9, right is AE-5. When the graphs are set to -1dB, the results are not too different:
...but AE-9 is much worse for example if the graph is set to -24dB:
For the rather off-topic 32-bit integer vs float part, the link in my signature could be interesting to some.
AnalogSteph
Major Contributor
Whoops. Still not terrible by the looks of it (the worst I saw was a dominant H5 about 86 dB below fundamental on 1 kHz @ -30 dBFS), but it's hilarious how the card with the fancy ES9038PRO gets beaten out by the much more modest ES9016K2M job in this regard.
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