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Lets talk PC Audio

Mussels

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Relevant to this thread, since recording and mics are also audio
Every extra step added for noise reduction helps a little bit more, sometimes to where you aren't sure if it helped - until you compare a before and after with all of it combined when it becomes really obvious.
Not every option helps every situation, a floor stand helps remove any vibration from a desk but could *add* some if its on a hardwood floor someone stomps around on.


I have a thing for blue yetis
1690951341854.png



My primary mic for gaming has a sock filter, a pop filter and a Steeve for emotional support attached to my monitor bracket.
I game with speakers under the monitors, this allows me to do so without everyone hearing constant feedback.
This setup filters out plosive popping noises, vibrations, and echoes/all sounds from the sides and rear.
1690950191789.png


The sock and pop filter prevent the Plosive "puh" sound from reaching the mic and resulting in crackling from shitty speakers at the other end (or as a result of compression) like mouthbreathers and a $2 headset mic.
The arm prevents vibrations from reaching the mic - so thuds and whacks from me typing at 9001 WASD's per minute are filtered out if the desk wobbles or gets tapped.
A full sized desk pad also helps here, as it reduces that vibration before it reaches the desk.

The only reason this works so well is the Yeti has a hardware knob for the "Polar pattern" and I use the"cardioid" mode that looks like a butt - the user is at the top of the circle, and the back is filtered out.
1690950438330.png
1690950534253.png


The yeti has two? mics facing front and rear, and the cardioid mode ignores the rear mic and tries to filter that noise out from the signal so I'm not getting any reflected wall noise. Cheaper mics, or a Yeti set to the other modes will get echoes from being close to a wall.
1690950342556.png



Setup 2 is a standalone mic on a tripod with a honking filter to cut down surrounding noise - this is used in a larger living room with a lot more background noise and echoing, especially helpful when we have both VR setups running at once and it's got two people to listen to.
Side by side with the main mic
1690950977123.png


Due to using a pop filter as well, the sock basically only catches audio that'd sneak in from directly above - echoes from the ceiling, more or less. Since only high frequency sounds do that it'd remove something like the drone of a background air conditioner or similar.

It's important to note that entirely closing the filter all the way barely changes the audio for a person its facing towards - a fair bit leaks in that top and the tiny slit without the foam at the front.
What it does change is the ambient noise and echoes, which are basically removed.



My son's cooler than you, sorry.
1690951879162.png
 
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How to get best audio experience out of this setup ? Corsair Virtuoso XT and Headsetstand ST100.
I´m open for buying amp and Dac.
IMG_20230819_204635_138.jpg
 

Mussels

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Not exactly… the stand is technically a dac and presumably an amp, the headphones can be run wired via 3.5mm, not sure why you’d buy both though

But yeah I’d either run the headphones via usb or get a decent dac and run them through that. I’d avoid the stand’s output.
 

Mussels

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I see, usb wired should give 24bit/96hrz sound. 3.5mm jack should give connectivity to dac etc.
If i wanted to raise the quality is was for musik and movies, i presume the latency would not matter, when i game i dont want it to be wired anyway.
 
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They're not good for wired use, period.
Analog audio latency is almost 4x that of their 2.4Ghz wireless, and barely ahead of bluetooth.

View attachment 309932View attachment 309933
No need to be hostile — why do you think I recommended USB lol ;)

In any case, they didn’t test sound quality vs wired, which is where I’d expect an improvement. Latency is cool, but given that USB is still better than Bluetooth in that regard and that the cable might include an additional DAC/amp, it could be a good middle ground

I see, usb wired should give 24bit/96hrz sound. 3.5mm jack should give connectivity to dac etc.
If i wanted to raise the quality is was for musik and movies, i presume the latency would not matter, when i game i dont want it to be wired anyway.
That sounds right. I’d probably stick with wireless usb for gaming/latency and usb for media. Not sure if a dac is worth investing in but I’m sure people who have experience with this set would know more
 

Mussels

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No need to be hostile — why do you think I recommended USB lol
It doesnt matter if they're used over USB, they're still high latency over USB-C and 3.5mm

Hows it hostile to say they're no good for it? He shouldnt waste his money to add more latency and lower the audio quality - they're at their best on the provided wireless dongle.
 
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I mostly agree with the data given, but I am taking it with a pinch of salt. The Wifi test specifies they did not get a fixed result, and on PC as high as 182ms, supposedly 49ms on a laptop.
Well those results are already sketchy, then they decide to advertise the lowest value they randomly came up with. They even say Bluetooth with Android is 68ms.

175ms is pretty terrible (please to not take any offense), especially when audio processing should take no more than a few ms, maybe lower.
I believe the maximum you should ever go is 1000ms (1 second) in latency. 0.0028 ms would be more fitting.

Currently for me, using SPDIF, I get 0.0028 ms execution, with Equaliser APO reporting 0.0ms latency in processing. Certainly not above 20ms.

My optical internet can ping China, the US and Australia from the UK @ 5ms, and we are talking a lot of miles to travel (there and back).
 
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Mussels

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They did re-test, theres comments on that. The fact it had such variance is concerning on its own.
 
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Without a receiver with a HDMI input, you are stuck at stereo. The HDMI specs do not allow you to send the audio to your TV or monitor, and output it back out of the TV as SPDIF. If you think it does, test it yourself. You'll find out it doesnt work. (thanks DRM!)
Wut? I've been doing exactly that for years Mussels...

EDIT: Oh wow this post is old.
 

Mussels

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Wut? I've been doing exactly that for years Mussels...

EDIT: Oh wow this post is old.
HDMI changed with multi channel PCM audio, the early standards (and when using SPDIF based audio) is stereo only without a DD/DTS encoder - that parts been fairly consistent otherwise


It's still an issue when people try to use HDMI audio extractors since they use that old SPDIF standard, so they get stereo only.
 
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Legacy SPDIF makes me QQ. Current consumer SPDIF is miles better. Also my extractor supports 8 channel SPDIF.
 

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Legacy SPDIF makes me QQ. Current consumer SPDIF is miles better. Also my extractor supports 8 channel SPDIF.
Yeah but it needs the source to be in those standards, and things like youtube are only available in stereo.

Stereo through extractors and bouncing through other systems means it's a 2.0 signal being treated as 5.1, so you get front left and right with no bass to the 0.1 and things sound awful. It's why it's best avoided and always has been on gaming PC's - HTPC's using pre-encoded audio work fine, usually.

Logitech Z5500's worked like this, on analog it was fine but gaming on optical was a nightmare - you had zero bass in 2.0 or 5.1 modes unless it was dolby encoded since they didnt have any bass filtering going on.
 
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Did I ever shill the EVGA Nu Audio and its newer Pro revision here? If not, consider it hereby shilled, even if at this point it's a bit of "in memoriam" for it.

Shame they stopped making them too. Reportedly some fire at one of their essential suppliers, EVGA could never get the production chain restarted. Hope mine lasts a few more years with me, I will miss it if I ever have to part with it.

If you have the chance to grab one at a nice price, just do it. It's an amazing audio card. Would not spend a lot though, EVGA all but abandoned driver development for it and the company's in pretty bad shape so if the driver croaks, you've got a paperweight on your hands due to the custom USB bridge solution they use.
 
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Did I ever shill the EVGA Nu Audio and its newer Pro revision here? If not, consider it hereby shilled, even if at this point it's a bit of "in memoriam" for it.

Shame they stopped making them too. Reportedly some fire at one of their essential suppliers, EVGA could never get the production chain restarted. Hope mine lasts a few more years with me, I will miss it if I ever have to part with it.

If you have the chance to grab one at a nice price, just do it. It's an amazing audio card. Would not spend a lot though, EVGA all but abandoned driver development for it and the company's in pretty bad shape so if the driver croaks, you've got a paperweight on your hands due to the custom USB bridge solution they use.

Where it diverges from USB DAC design is expecting higher grade audio inside a 1200w noisy PSU driven, RF contaminated and instable environment. This device was intended to serve that market with gaming PC on through workstations. From an audio signal quality perspective "reviewers" spilled marketing data on top of contempt for what they didn't care to appreciate was the intended use case. Which meant, they didn't sell very well at MSRP on top of lack of PC literacy resolving driver and other issues.

I liked this when it came out. Not sure it checked every box the EVGA CEO intended to hit a set price point consumers would accept.
 
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Yeah but it needs the source to be in those standards, and things like youtube are only available in stereo.

Stereo through extractors and bouncing through other systems means it's a 2.0 signal being treated as 5.1, so you get front left and right with no bass to the 0.1 and things sound awful. It's why it's best avoided and always has been on gaming PC's - HTPC's using pre-encoded audio work fine, usually.

Logitech Z5500's worked like this, on analog it was fine but gaming on optical was a nightmare - you had zero bass in 2.0 or 5.1 modes unless it was dolby encoded since they didnt have any bass filtering going on.

Yeah I had the Z5500's, although I don't remember that issue. Z906 does crossover in 2.0 mode, so always 2.1. Even with DTS Interactive as active 6 channels, 2 channels gets the same response from the Z906.
For example, I am in 6 channel mode, and play YouTube as you said I will only get stereo because the source was stereo, I get 2 channel out 4 empty, and Z906 does crossover as normal.

Some units that receive 6 channels and 4 blank may not respond that way, because it detects 6 not 2. In short no issues with Z906 in any mode.
Mode options for stereo PCM is: 3D 5.1 (equivalent to DTS NEO-PC, but better), 4.1 or 2.1

If I play a stereo only DTS or Dolby track, the 2 channel PCM mode options are available, and its 2.1 by default. 5.1 DTS-Dolby, even with empty 4, no mode options, but still 2.1.
 
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Mussels

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Yeah I had the Z5500's, although I don't remember that issue.
It only happened with stereo audio over optical, if you used the dolby modes to upmix you got the sound elsewhere - but then your actual 5.1 audio was broken.

It was a complicated problem as you had to toggle audio modes every time your audio source changed, which was a total PITA. Most users just ran analogue happily, except those with the dodgy onboard audio from the era.
 
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Where it diverges from USB DAC design is expecting higher grade audio inside a 1200w noisy PSU driven, RF contaminated and instable environment. This device was intended to serve that market with gaming PC on through workstations. From an audio signal quality perspective "reviewers" spilled marketing data on top of contempt for what they didn't care to appreciate was the intended use case. Which meant, they didn't sell very well at MSRP on top of lack of PC literacy resolving driver and other issues.

I liked this when it came out. Not sure it checked every box the EVGA CEO intended to hit a set price point consumers would accept.

It was never noisy to me, but I run an open bench so the faraday cage concern doesn't really apply to me. The power coming from the SATA cable I have run exclusively for it isn't really any dirtier than any other supply I have around anyway. If anything it's some of the cleanest power I've got.
 

Mussels

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It was never noisy to me, but I run an open bench so the faraday cage concern doesn't really apply to me. The power coming from the SATA cable I have run exclusively for it isn't really any dirtier than any other supply I have around anyway. If anything it's some of the cleanest power I've got.
Antec cases from that era stand out, as they commonly forgot to connect the ground wire to the front panel audio on their increasingly plastic cases. You could often remove all the static and crackling just by connecting it to ground. Then boards like the Gigabyte X58-UD3 were prone to whine if C-states weren't disabled, something about the power circuitry was just trash-tier on boards of that era. Moving a USB mouse could control the pitch, you could make music it was so bad.
 
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It was never noisy to me, but I run an open bench so the faraday cage concern doesn't really apply to me. The power coming from the SATA cable I have run exclusively for it isn't really any dirtier than any other supply I have around anyway. If anything it's some of the cleanest power I've got.

PC power supply produce considerably dirtier power than what is specced for audio devices. It serves a purpose by feeding everything from the same source.

I'm sure your equipment is all top tier. For comparison against a scientific power supply I doubt you'd need a scope to arrive at some basic conclusions though.




Just to cut off any leaps of logic for anyone with less technical experience who encountered this conversation. A few points in regards to PC audio.


Powering everything in your PC with a separate discrete PSU doesn't have any good outcomes. Powering an external USB audio device (DAC/NAS/...) with LPU generally does.

Full (or worse, daisy chained) multi-outlet devices rarely produce optimal audio quality. Among the worst is a UPS because of how they work. Surge protectors (MOV) are not great either.

Noisy, as a non-technical term, is being used broadly to depict a range of effects that are being put back into the power line as well as air born RF etc. Gaming PC environments are noisy.
 
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Grounding everything incased with metal (cases of both PC, audio interfaces, speaker back panels etc.) might help with noise reduction. For example, instead of useless Kensington lock on audio stuff, I'd like to see a simple screw for gnd.
 
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Power will always be a problem like that. Same for power based analogue. Makes me wonder how much of a motherboard could be optical transmission (in the silicone).
Anything conductive is capable of working as a receiver (antenna), so any power based EMI will be conducted and added to signal.

EMI will also reduce effective bandwidth, or if you like populate available bandwidth.

Two devices connected together via optical alone, with separate power sources, are isolated from one another.
 
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so i have to ask why is it so complicated connecting surround sound to lets say a gameing laptop that dosent have any dolby software besides for built in speakers? hdmi is supported fully with 5.1-7.1 spdif i can force to do full 5.1 anythang really but in order to make my pc do all of that it took almost 3 long painful exhasting years only found a software solution that works on my pc after finding apo drivers on this form to use dolby digital plus home theater that enabled bitstreaming on any device i want and now i get full 5.1 anythang out of a usb to toslink connection if thats possible why not make it eaiser aswell if open source formats are out thare like lpcm why not make a soundcard with only open soruce software its fully possible why has no one done it? im still trying to learn this world obvi XD
 
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