MP3s in Windows ****

[Raven 10+ year member]

Just booted up Windows XP for the first time in days to check up on automatic updates and play FEAR. My latest observation: Windows sucks at music! Winamp, Windows Media Player, and Media Player classis can't play music to save their life. The bass is muddy and the highs sounds like they're playing through cloth. Doesn't matter what format I play; MP3, OGG, WMA, even straight CDs. I made sure all equalization was off to double check, and sure enough it still sounds like mud.

*shrugs*

+1 for Fedora Core Linux. Hope you guys enjoy substandard SQ out of your Windows based PCs. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

Click to read more...

 

[90accordman 5,000+ posts]

maybe your computer sucks, mine plays on all of those players just fine

 

[skadude016 5,000+ posts]

could it be the speakers?

 

[skadude016 5,000+ posts]

maybe your computer sucks, mine plays on all of those players just fine

x2. I use that and Itunes

 

[Chevyaudio 5,000+ posts]

I save the SQ for the Home audio and car audio system...right now I have a set of altec lansing mids, and a Dayton ref 6 inch sub. so Im really not to concerned with my Laptops SQ

 

[90accordman 5,000+ posts]

im running a Klipch setup on mine 5 satelites and a 10" sub, bass is great and the sound is great also...good speakers and decent sound card are what you need.

Cant just expect on board sound and 2.99 speakers to do the duty

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

I disabled my onboard when I got my SB Live card, it *was* top of the line when I got it. It's attached to a 1950-ish Westinghouse vacuum tube headphone amp (Converted from a high end turntable) pushing a pair of the cheap $10 Sony earbud headphones with about 1.5 watts per side. The earbuds sound decent... until you get about 10 times over their rated power or 80 mw per side. Then they come alive. Going to replace them with some Sennheiser earbuds when they die.

Cheap earbuds or not, the difference is there. No new drivers for the sound card since 2003. Going back to Linux now.

 

[90accordman 5,000+ posts]

lol as said before mine sounds fine sucks to see someone whocarn buy/configure right move onto another program but oh well

 

[MikeofTulsa Moderator]

so, let me get this straight, your complaining that your cheap head phones dont sound awesome when your running them on a windows based pc? you do realize if anything its probably not the os. i'd say quality of media, quality of cheap headphones, or user error.

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

so, let me get this straight, your complaining that your cheap head phones dont sound awesome when your running them on a windows based pc? you do realize if anything its probably not the os. i'd say quality of media, quality of cheap headphones, or user error.

The quality of the media, the cheap headphones, and the amp don't change between operating systems, so you an count those factors out.

I'm not getting any smarter or dumber (Dumber would be hard to do //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif) by dual booting, so by disabling all equalization on both OSes I can pretty much count out human error unless there's a "****" dial in the Creative drivers somewhere.

That leaves the operating system and the software that plays the music.

Bet yes, you got the basics down. I'm complaining because my cheap headphones don't sound as good in Windows as they do in Linux on this dual boot machine.

 

[MikeofTulsa Moderator]

cant say its the os. if u do then how do you explain the millions of people that dont have your problem?

 

[yne721 10+ year member]

cant say its the os. if u do then how do you explain the millions of people that dont have your problem?

x Millions(yes i'm speaking on behalf of everyone but OP)

 

[90accordman 5,000+ posts]

soundblaster live, what year did you buy that thing anyhow lol

 

[flakko 5,000+ posts]

OR you can try maybe using the built in eq of the player, and turning off the WoW effects and bass boost and all that stuff.

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

cant say its the os. if u do then how do you explain the millions of people that dont have your problem?

Millions of people don't dual boot. If you've never heard a CD, you could live your whole life content with the quality of a tape deck. I stopped a song in Linux (Iced Earth - Last December; 192KBPS VBR OGG/Vorbis direct rip off original CD) halfway through, booted into Windows, restarted the song, and thought "**** what happened to my highs?"

Flakko: all software equalization and effects have been disabled and untouched on this machine since I installed the operating systems a year and a half ago. By "disabling them" I went through and just made sure they were all still off. All equalizing is done through the tube amp. Since they didn't make drivers in the '50s and the only thing connecting the amp to the sound card is a stereo jack, I'd guess that any software can't mess with those settings.

90accordman: Not sure. Got it with the rest of the PC. For what it's worth, Socket A was top dog, PCI Express did not exist, and 512 megs of RAM was a lot when I built it.