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Understanding Windows and software EQs

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Jose Hidalgo

Jose Hidalgo

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I honestly don't know. AFAIK latest ASIO4ALL verion is 2.14 from 23 May 2017.

Maybe Amir could answer this, but I don't know how to reach him.
And maybe the problem created by MS was fixed by MS in a subsequent update. That's possible too. So maybe the problem doesn't exist anymore.

Plus like said, there are alternatives to ASIO4ALL if that's required : JACK audio, Virtual Cable, VB-Audio HiFi Cable, DDMF Virtual Stream, JRiver... I guess that's the most difficult part : finding one that really works in all possible scenarios.

But I guess I won't stress because of that : 16/44.1 files account for more than 99% of my 50K audio files, as they surely do for most if not all of you. ;) 354 / 50106 = only 0,7% of "HD" audio files.

2020.10.24 - 23.56.48.jpg
 

JustAnandaDourEyedDude

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But I guess I won't stress because of that : 16/44.1 files account for more than 99% of my 50K audio files, as they surely do for most if not all of you.
If the 16/44.1 files are the FLAC-compressed ones, does that not represent ~ 70% of your collection? Or are there WAV files if you scrolled further down the list? Also curious how much disk space the 35K FLAC files occupy, and how much the 50K overall? That is a collection of impressive size. I have collected a large number of CDs over the years (though they surely amount to fewer tracks than you have), but am reluctant to put in much time ripping them partly because of how much disk space they may occupy, but mostly because the availability of low-cost music streaming services makes ripping my own CDs seem like poor use of time and effort. I have only managed to rip about 300 CDs over the past five years or so :(
 
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JustAnandaDourEyedDude

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Disk space is cheap, it's really about your time spent, as you mention.
True, that. I probably have enough disk space, or can buy more. It is not only the five minutes to rip each CD, but also the time spent in correcting the metadata tags. In earlier years, I used ExactAudioCopy software to rip, but did not subscribe to the music tagging service they could link to. As a result, all of those files are listed as "Track 1", "Track 2", ... and I have to perhaps redo all of those. In the past couple of years, I have been using Windows Media Player to rip to FLAC, and it does tag the files without charging for GraceNote or such, but the tagging is imperfect. Especially with multi-disc sets such as some "Best Of" collections. I have been making corrections manually, which is really time-consuming. I guess I should spend some time to find good software that will recognize the music files correctly and create the metadata tags from free and accurate internet databases.
 
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JustAnandaDourEyedDude

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I also used EAC and it looked up the metadata with a free service, I forgot the name.
Things might have changed since I used it. Will check into it again, thanks.
 

Chromatischism

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I'm thinking that because of all of the complexity of doing this in software, with EQ from the music player only vs system-wide and tradeoffs either way, one could just skip all of that and do it via a miniDSP 2x4 HD. Now, everything going to the speakers will get EQ no matter what you're doing and it will always work from power on without clicking or changing anything.

Just go from there to your amp.

I haven't done that yet but it's looking like the KISS option. Especially as I already have REW setup. Am I wrong?

For the record I also use Foobar2000 with WASAPI.
Just wanted to add a note: I remembered that REW doesn't create FIR filters, so I would need to use different software for that. I did run across Eclipse Audio FIR Designer: https://eclipseaudio.com.au/fir-designer/

Even easier: get a used Denon XT32 AVR with app control and just HDMI out to that.

Anyway, not applicable to Jose's setup, so I'll end here.
 

JustAnandaDourEyedDude

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Jose Hidalgo

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@JustAnandaDourEyedDude : thanks for asking. Get ready for a ride then, here it comes. ;)

Actually all my files beside the 354 "HD" ones are supposed to be 16/44.1. mp3 files are too : bit depth and samplerate aren't related to the used compression algorithm, be it lossless or lossy.

I made a quick query ("%samplerate% LESS 44100") just for you, and I only found 78 files. These are mostly obscure YouTube rips, some of them aren't even music. So 16/44.1 files represent exactly 99,14% of my files. The rest are 354 "HD" files ant 78 "crappy" files.

There are no WAV files in my collection. WAV is a useless format for me, since FLAC can do everything WAV does and more, losslessly and for 60-65% of the size.

The list from my previous post is ranked by bitrate in descending order. The 354 "HD" FLAC have the highest bitrate.

Space-wise, here's how it looks on my hard drive (LL_16 = Lossless, 16bit / LL_24 = Lossless, 24bit) :

2020.10.25 - 01.48.32.png


That makes 22,6 MB per FLAC on average. They are all at compression level 8.
My whole AUDIO folder is close to 1 TB.

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As for the ripping part... OMG, I can't emphasize enough how long and painful it was ! o_O That's a process I started around 2006-2007 if I remember well. One CD at a time, with EAC in secure mode and freedb I think ? (which was the online database that automatically recognized the CDs and tagged them with basic info). It was really painstaking. At that time I had about 1.500 legally-purchased CDs, and that number has been increasing since then. A CD generally has 12-15 tracks, so you get the idea.

One of the worse moments was when I had to manually rip the whole Mozart works by Brilliant Classics. It was a 170 CD boxed edition. One by one, with freedb generally NOT recognizing titles, so I had to tag everything by hand. Again, one CD at a time. I also ripped the whole works by Bach, Beethoven and Chopin (that last one was easier, only 30 CDs). At that time all my free time was devoted to ripping. It was crazy. :eek:

At some point the CDs were taking too much space. They were stored on a number of shelve cabinets that I made myself. But when I ended up the big ripping process (there has been some residual ripping since then), they essentially became useless. I sold my CD player (Marantz CD17-KI Edition, beautiful memories), I boxed all the CDs, stored them elswewhere, and I sold the cabinets to free some serious space, lol. [EDIT] Here's 3 of those old cabinets, stored in a corridor when there was no more space in the living room :

IMG_20190513_225409.jpg


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To top it all, I'm also a tag freak. Artist/Album/Track title isn't enough for me. So of course I needed other tags. Lots of them. Manually entered of course. :facepalm: Here's how they look on all my tracks. Take the time to go through them and realize the time it has taken me :

2020-10-25_020610.png


Not to mention all the covers of course : front, back, booklets... Thankfully most of them could be found on the Internet, so I only had to scan a few of them.

We're of course talking about literally thousands of hours within the last 15 years or so. A big part of my life. It's like building a Spotify of your own, with less albums but with much more information per album, and being all alone to do all the work. It's crazy, I know.

foobar2000 has been extremely helpful since then, as it's simply the best music management software that I know, hands down. And I've tried lots of them, including older versions of JRiver. IMHO nothing else comes close when we're talking power, flexibility, customizability, etc.. I have invested dozens of hours, possibly hundreds, just customizing it to my very liking. Lots of plugins, lots of hand-made internal scripts (foobar has its own scripting language) that became so long and complex at some point that I had to seek help from foobar developers because foobar wasn't accepting my scripts beyond a certain size... But everytyhing works perfectly now. It's fast, stable, reliable, and it gives me all the info I need and more, including of course dynamic playlists, lots of search modes, lyrics, biographies, artist pictures, and eye candy (spectrograms, etc.). Like Roon, maybe less pretty but more customizable, that's for sure.

Every player has its fanbase. Well, I'm a foobar fan / power user. I like to think that I know it inside and out (at least for my use, and not for highly technical stuff). I've fallen in love with it a long time ago, I've been living with it in perfect harmony until now, and I'll probably die with it. I hope you guys can now understand why any other player is simply off the table for me. :)

Well, that was definitely off-topic from me, but I'm glad you asked. :p
 
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JustAnandaDourEyedDude

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Wow! Thanks for the very detailed info in your reply. The insight into the effort it takes to manage a large collection of music files so thoroughly is highly appreciated.

It is a good to know that even such a large collection fits within a TB of disk space, if properly compressed. I can use your 22.6 MB per FLAC track statistic to estimate how much disk space I would need.

The amount of work and time you have put into the metadata tags is just staggering to my mind. Hats off to you for following through on such a giant project. I count 44 categories (fittingly) of metadata tags in your screenshot, far beyond what freedb provides you I am sure. It is a superhuman feat to have identified that info for each CD or track and then to have manually entered it via keyboard. I could never dream of investing that much time and effort into such a project. I expect I do not even have that many years left in my life. I would have trouble with boxed sets, too, of which I have a few. What you had to do with the 170 CD Mozart set takes the cake for effort. I can understand also your love for foobar2000, given the expertise you have developed in using and customizing it. You have scared me sufficiently into reconsidering embarking on systematically ripping my CDs, and I may wind up simply relying instead on the Amazon Music HD streaming service that I subscribe to :). "Simplify, simplify" is going to be the theme of the remainder of my life.
 
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Jose Hidalgo

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Well, I'm... happy to have scared you, I guess ? :D

Of course, ripping such a big collection is not for everybody. I was young and reckless at the time, and streaming services weren't as developed as they are today. I totally understand people paying 10 bucks a month for Spotify & co.. But I'm so happy to have on my hard drive the exact equivalent, bit per bit, of all my physical CDs ! That is quite satisfactory, and it contributes to the global pleasure. Plus of course I don't depend on an Internet connection. And I have backups, obviously.

Yes, the tags may seem overkill, but they help me a lot too. It would be long to explain, but you can imagine what you can do with so many tags.

Anyway, despite being a bit off-topic, I hope my reply to you will at least show some people here that I'm really serious about audio stuff, and that if I'm willing to go to great lengths in order to find the right EQ, or the right ASIO4ALL or equivalent for my headphone setup, it will still be NOTHING compared to the time that I've already spent on audio stuff.

I'm not hoping for any praises for that, I'm not here for that. Maybe just a little bit of respect from a few people here, and we'll be all right. :)

tenor.gif
 

JustAnandaDourEyedDude

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Well, I'm... happy to have scared you, I guess ? :D

Of course, ripping such a big collection is not for everybody. I was young and reckless at the time, and streaming services weren't as developed as they are today. I totally understand people paying 10 bucks a month for Spotify & co.. But I'm so happy to have on my hard drive the exact equivalent, bit per bit, of all my physical CDs ! That is quite satisfactory, and it contributes to the global pleasure. Plus of course I don't depend on an Internet connection. And I have backups, obviously.

Yes, the tags may seem overkill, but they help me a lot too. It would be long to explain, but you can imagine what you can do with so many tags.

Anyway, despite being a bit off-topic, I hope my reply to you will at least show some people here that I'm really serious about audio stuff, and that if I'm willing to go to great lengths in order to find the right EQ, or the right ASIO4ALL or equivalent for my headphone setup, it will still be NOTHING compared to the time that I've already spent on audio stuff.

I'm not hoping for any praises for that, I'm not here for that. Maybe just a little bit of respect from a few people here, and we'll be all right. :)
Yes, I already got that you are painstakingly thorough when it comes to music playback at the very least, just from your persistence in getting to the bottom of the Fletcher-Munson curves in order to EQ for loudness. I can believe the tags give you total control in finding anything in your music collection. None of the streaming services offer such comprehensive metadata, not even Primephonic. You've certainly got my respect for the single-minded dedication you put into the conversion project for that many years. Those filled bookshelves are impressive in their own way.
 

Jimbob54

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Well, I'm... happy to have scared you, I guess ? :D

Of course, ripping such a big collection is not for everybody. I was young and reckless at the time, and streaming services weren't as developed as they are today. I totally understand people paying 10 bucks a month for Spotify & co.. But I'm so happy to have on my hard drive the exact equivalent, bit per bit, of all my physical CDs ! That is quite satisfactory, and it contributes to the global pleasure. Plus of course I don't depend on an Internet connection. And I have backups, obviously.

Yes, the tags may seem overkill, but they help me a lot too. It would be long to explain, but you can imagine what you can do with so many tags.

Anyway, despite being a bit off-topic, I hope my reply to you will at least show some people here that I'm really serious about audio stuff, and that if I'm willing to go to great lengths in order to find the right EQ, or the right ASIO4ALL or equivalent for my headphone setup, it will still be NOTHING compared to the time that I've already spent on audio stuff.

I'm not hoping for any praises for that, I'm not here for that. Maybe just a little bit of respect from a few people here, and we'll be all right. :)

tenor.gif

I ripped about 40k tracks 6 or 7 years ago. Nightmare.

Went to streaming a couple of years ago. Still have a number of "albums" not duplicated on Qobuz. In reality most are CD singles, but that's how I ended up with roon as it allows you to blend libraries from.different sources.
 
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