Welcome

This website covers the basic of using a computer as an audio source.
When I started a couple of years ago, I was completely blank.

Yes I knew that you can download a MP3 and play it over a pair of fancy desktop speakers. But I didn't realize that a computer could be a source for high quality audio too.

 

I entered the world of ID3, FLAC, WAV, MP3, MP4, AAC, AIFF, APE, WMAL, Codec, Cue sheet, CBR, VBR, WASAPI, DS, ASIO, Kernel, DS, DSP, UPnP, DLNA, Airplay, Freedb, AMG, Gracenotes, cover art, DAC, NAS, Router, adaptive USB, asynchronous USB, Toslink, AES/EBU, SPDIF, I2S, WMP, Foobar, JRiver, dBpoweramp, EAC, bit depth, sample rate, Nyquist, SRC, ASRC, 16/44, 16/48, 24/88, 24/96, 24/172, 24/192, PCM, DSD, DoP, CDtext, EMI, RFI, Transcoding, VST, DPC Lantency, PCI and a couple of other things you need to know.

A fascinating world but it takes some time to find your way.

 

Of course I didn't know this all when I started.

But I found out how to do it.

As I tend to forget these things, I make notes.

As I forget where I have left my notes, I put them all into this website.

This is simply my notebook and of course you are welcome to it too.

Enjoy.

 

Vincent Kars

Updates

May 2013

• Classical music on your Android phone. Can you read the title?

April 2013

• An Ethernet to SPDIF converter

March 2013

• Listening impression Auralic Vega
• The artifacts of lossy compression magnified

• The Broadcast Wave Standard is an extension of the original WAV standard.
  On audio forums it is sometimes recommended to use BWF to overcome the limitations of the original WAV tagging standard.

• There is a lot of talk about optimizing a PC for audio.
  Minimizing is the name of the game. Archimago measured the jitter performance of various interfaces in relation to system load.

• Updated SPDIF vs USB
• Some interesting jitter tests.

February 2013

• Analog vs digital volume control
• Fighting latency
• Tagging classical using MusiCHI
• Inter sample peaks

January 2013

• Moos active speakers wirh 24 bit / 96 kHz wireless input

• Roll your own custom fit in-ear monitors

• Loudness in JRiver

• Expanded the headphone section

• WASAPI event style
• Wrestling with the Parrot Zik

Older

• Comparing a DAC with ASRC on or off
• Is your BNC plug 75 Ohm?
• JRiver bitdepth simulator
• Software induced jitter
• Do you know AVB?

• Media players and classical

• acoustic fingerprints

• Tagging classical using JRiver

• Comparing adaptive and asynchronous USB, a listening impression

• DoP playing DSD over the USB using PCM
• USB Audio is coming to Android

• The portability of tags in WAV is a problem. So big some even believe it is impossible to tag WAV.
  dBpoweramp,,Foobar, JRiver Media Center, MusiCHI and MusicBee use the same convention and therefore can read each other’s tags. More...

• All JRiver's options

• Navigating in JRiver

• How to kill