by Pete10 » Thu Jul 02, 2009 7:01 am
Hi Chris,
What DAC and connection to DAC(optical, usb) you are using, and what operating system? Do you have a DAC that indicates the incoming datarate? That helps.
MM's 2 standard output plugins (DS & Waveout) both use Windows Kmixer. It should be transparent and can produce bitperfect results at 94/24, but there are some pitfalls, as already noted:
First set all volume levels at 100% (main + wave in mixer, and in MM), and set balance at 50/50. Do not use leveling, no DSP plugings, no crossfading.
Second, if you use a usb dac kmixer tries to find out what the dac accepts as input, and if MM delivers data at 94/24 to kmixer and kmixer has learned that this is an acceptable format for the dac it will not do anything to the stream. If you use optical to connect to the dac you should set the datarate in the soundcard's driver and hope the driver works as it should.
Note that other programs may also send sounds to kmixer. Windoes system sounds should be switched of. But if so, kmixer will convert all to the highest quality in your case 94/24. But mixing should probably be avoided.
Kmixer can be bypassed using an ASIO driver and plugin, guaranteeing bitperfect playback an no interference by kmixer. Unfortunately, MM can NOT do gapless playback with ASIO. This is - in my opinion - probably the biggest weakness of MM in the output field (foobar can do it without a problem it seems, so there is no reason).
Another option would be Steve Monks kernel streaming, but my computer freaks out if I try.
Let us know the results..
Pete10
Hi Chris,
What DAC and connection to DAC(optical, usb) you are using, and what operating system? Do you have a DAC that indicates the incoming datarate? That helps.
MM's 2 standard output plugins (DS & Waveout) both use Windows Kmixer. It should be transparent and can produce bitperfect results at 94/24, but there are some pitfalls, as already noted:
First set all volume levels at 100% (main + wave in mixer, and in MM), and set balance at 50/50. Do not use leveling, no DSP plugings, no crossfading.
Second, if you use a usb dac kmixer tries to find out what the dac accepts as input, and if MM delivers data at 94/24 to kmixer and kmixer has learned that this is an acceptable format for the dac it will not do anything to the stream. If you use optical to connect to the dac you should set the datarate in the soundcard's driver and hope the driver works as it should.
Note that other programs may also send sounds to kmixer. Windoes system sounds should be switched of. But if so, kmixer will convert all to the highest quality in your case 94/24. But mixing should probably be avoided.
Kmixer can be bypassed using an ASIO driver and plugin, guaranteeing bitperfect playback an no interference by kmixer. Unfortunately, MM can NOT do gapless playback with ASIO. This is - in my opinion - probably the biggest weakness of MM in the output field (foobar can do it without a problem it seems, so there is no reason).
Another option would be Steve Monks kernel streaming, but my computer freaks out if I try.
Let us know the results..
Pete10