Question for audiophiles

I just purchased m-audio powered speakers for mac pro. My question is about volume control: is it better set the volume in computer high and then fine tune with speaker control or vice versa? Which one is going to give less distortion and max. bass effect? These speakers don't have optical input. Is it going to make much difference? How is the DAC (digital to analogue converter) in macpro sound card? I'll be using them mainly to listen the music (mostly classical).

Thanks
Krishna

This will bypass the sound card and deliver the best possible sound from your Mac, http://www.highresolutiontechnologies.com/istreamer/

There are other similar devices that will do the same. The sound card in a pc/mac is the weakest link in the chain to get the best sound.

--
Mikael

Have you tried using your ears? These M-Powered speakers are unlikely to be great and the amplifier gain will depend on where the sweet spot for those speakers is.

I would start with the speakers at about 60% and adjust the Mac's volume until you get the volume level you want. You might find that the speakers need to be higher or lower, but surely your ears can decide. If not, then what does it matter? Running the speakers at full volume is likely to be less heathy for the long term reliability of the amplifiers, but anything less will probably be okay.

Similarly with the DA converters... if they sound alright to you, what does it matter? Even a relatively cheap audio interface (USB/Firewire) is likely to outperform your built in sound card, but if it sounds okay to you, what does it matter?

Audiophiles tend to get hung up on numbers. Do what most recording engineers do - trust your ears.

KrishnaM said:

I just purchased m-audio powered speakers for mac pro. My question is about volume control: is it better set the volume in computer high and then fine tune with speaker control or vice versa? Which one is going to give less distortion and max. bass effect? These speakers don't have optical input. Is it going to make much difference? How is the DAC (digital to analogue converter) in macpro sound card? I'll be using them mainly to listen the music (mostly classical).

Thanks
Krishna

Click to expand...

KrishnaM said:

Which one is going to give less distortion and max. bass effect?

Click to expand...

If you can't hear a difference either way, then what difference will it make? Set them up how you think they sound best for the things you want to listen to.

(But generally speaking I'd set the machine to 50% and control it via the speakers.)

(But then again my gear is all hooked up via optical connections)

Thanks everybody for responding. I am no audio expert but I do enjoy listening to music. I did try listening to the speakers before posting here. I noticed that when I go up on computer volume, clarity of the sound improves. But when I go to extreme in computer, the sound becomes harsher. When I increase the speaker volume, the sound gets warmer up to some point and after that the distortion start to appear. I agree that I noticed best sound when I set the computer volume around 60% and not increase the speaker volume knob beyond 40%. I presume going higher in either produces the distortion. I asked you guys as I just wanted to know the technical difference between increasing the volume in computer vs speaker. Also before committing to these spakers, I wanted to know if going optical route will make much difference. I tried google search before asking here (please do not consider me lazy). These speakers sound fine (definitely better than my old creative lab speakers). I'll appreciate if you all can suggest me any better option (not just louder or with booming bass).

Using an optical output won't necessarily improve the quality, it just moves the point of the DA converter. If you get speakers with poor DA converters, then it could easily sound worse than running analog out of the sound card. Again, I wouldn't get hung up on it. Enjoy what you have... if you can't enjoy it, then it could be time for an upgrade.

What you're talking about (the various points at which you can boost/attenuate the original signal) is called gain structure.

KrishnaM said:

Thanks everybody for responding. I am no audio expert but I do enjoy listening to music. I did try listening to the speakers before posting here. I noticed that when I go up on computer volume, clarity of the sound improves. But when I go to extreme in computer, the sound becomes harsher. When I increase the speaker volume, the sound gets warmer up to some point and after that the distortion start to appear. I agree that I noticed best sound when I set the computer volume around 60% and not increase the speaker volume knob beyond 40%. I presume going higher in either produces the distortion. I asked you guys as I just wanted to know the technical difference between increasing the volume in computer vs speaker. Also before committing to these spakers, I wanted to know if going optical route will make much difference. I tried google search before asking here (please do not consider me lazy). These speakers sound fine (definitely better than my old creative lab speakers). I'll appreciate if you all can suggest me any better option (not just louder or with booming bass).

Click to expand...

I agree with others, enjoy what you have, and trust your ears.

If you ever feel the need to upgrade, the hrt streamer II is a good option that will live up to the hype and upscale good while you upgrade other sections of the audio path. Second to that you could replace your m-audio with audioengine A5s, they're active speakers very much like the m-audio, but with much better sound quality (I've heard both).

I've never heard a good sounding set of active speakers with digital input, so don't think that will give you any better sound quality just because they have optical input, but finding a better digital to analog converter that the one in your mac is the best path you can take right now, that's why the hrt was recommended, but there are many options in the market right now, from $100 to $3k or $5k, choose your poison, but the sweetspot between sound and price seems to be in the 250 to 500 bucks, options from hrt, audio-gd, nuforce, musical fidelity and many other brands are around and will work out the best of your m-audios.

Research about software also, there are many add-ons for i-tunes that will improve it's output, and thinking about a good and small subwoofer will be a good thing too.

To your volume question, general advice is to keep attenuation in the analog domain, as keeps the small details better than digital attenuation that drops bits to do it, but, and it's a big but, it depend on wich attenuator is better built in your audio chain, so, as said befor by others, balance it between both to where your ears like it best, but try to give the analog in the m-audio the priority and move from there.

A tweek that cost no money, but takes most of the time of us audiophools is speaker placement, don't just set them on your desk where you think they look cool, move them around, toe them in and out and find that sweet spot where they "dissapear" and instead of hearing two speakers you can hear music reproduction to the highest fidelity you can get from your audio chain.

And one more word of advice, you can get incredible sound out of headphones this days and for a lot less than with speakers, if you're interested in this route, head-fi.org is your place to go, just try to filter all the crap and find those nuggets of advice, and if not, audiocircle.com is a great community to learn about speakers, amps, pre-amps, turntables, software, and most importantly, music, after all, music is your final goal, never forget that.

I hope all this helps, and enjoy your music.

KrishnaM said:

Thanks everybody for responding. I am no audio expert but I do enjoy listening to music. I did try listening to the speakers before posting here. I noticed that when I go up on computer volume, clarity of the sound improves. But when I go to extreme in computer, the sound becomes harsher. When I increase the speaker volume, the sound gets warmer up to some point and after that the distortion start to appear. I agree that I noticed best sound when I set the computer volume around 60% and not increase the speaker volume knob beyond 40%. I presume going higher in either produces the distortion. I asked you guys as I just wanted to know the technical difference between increasing the volume in computer vs speaker. Also before committing to these spakers, I wanted to know if going optical route will make much difference. I tried google search before asking here (please do not consider me lazy). These speakers sound fine (definitely better than my old creative lab speakers). I'll appreciate if you all can suggest me any better option (not just louder or with booming bass).

Click to expand...

Optical still needs a DAC if I understand it correct (how else would the signal be optical all of a sudden?) and what I suggested above is pretty much the best you can do within reasonable price. It will completely bypass the sound card in your computer and get the digital stream from the disk. I'm sure you can try this http://www.highresolutiontechnologies.com/istreamer/ and if it doesn't change anything just send it back.

--
Mikael

Thanks for the detailed answer. I think I'll keep these speakers for now as they are fine for the price and continue to do research. How to include a subwoofer to the system? Using optical connection? The speakers don't have any out put connection for subwoofer. M-audio speakers definitely lag in bass.

You mentioned 'keep attenuation in the analog domain'. Does it mean keeping the volume knob on speakers at lower setting? Also, please let me know about the software add ons for itunes to make the sound better.

Thanks
Krishna

Really good powered speakers cost about $800 to $1400 EACH. See models made by Genelec. The ones that cost $169 or $300 a pair are likely to be junk, period. The best of the junk ones I've heard(and own) are the Advent AV570 Powered Partners(($300/pair). The 570's are outstanding for TV sound, which is compressed and highly processed anyway.. Less so for real high fidelity.

I get lovely desktop(not full room)sound from my MBPro analogue audio out(headphone Jack) running to a 34 watt per channel current model Marantz integrated amp($300 used but never used) running Tannoy System 600 loudspeakers($350 used). Would a separate D/A converter give better sound? Maybe. But I'd love to eliminate using the idiot stereo mini headphone jack, a noisy and generally poor way to hook up audio.

One thing I've noticed when playing iTunes sound through a large, real high-quality home stereo is that the "preamp" setting in the iTunes equalizer will cause distortion if set too high. I settled on having it about 1/3 up from bottom.
--
-KB-

The istreamer seems to be for ios devices.

Check out their other products, like this one http://www.highresolutiontechnologies.com/pdf/HRT-Music-Streamer-II.pdf

I have a similar product from years ago. Made a huge difference when I wanted better sound from an old crappy laptop. Just plugs in the USB port, no drivers, nothing to install. Just the audio output in the other end.

--
Mikael

Amazon has them, and reviews. http://www.amazon.com/HRT-Music-Streamer-II-Resolution/dp/B0038O4UFQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

--
Mikael

So one takes the sound out from usb port and not optical. I was wondering yesterday when I noticed that this device doesn't have optical input and I thought it is only meant for ipod like devices.

KrishnaM said:

So one takes the sound out from usb port and not optical. I was wondering yesterday when I noticed that this device doesn't have optical input and I thought it is only meant for ipod like devices.

Click to expand...

The one I linked to first was for iDevices, sorry, they have other products that works with USB ports on any machine. It's not optical (why are you hooked on that, it's just a transport format). This will get the file itself from the disc, bypassing the crappy sound card in the pc and convert the data in it's highend DAC and pass it on through a normal Audio output. This will give you full CD quality or even better if you have a higher sample rate on the sound file on the computer.

--
Mikael

Just to clarify, it's NOT the sound you get from the USB port. It's the raw sound file from disk.

KrishnaM said:

So one takes the sound out from usb port and not optical. I was wondering yesterday when I noticed that this device doesn't have optical input and I thought it is only meant for ipod like devices.

Click to expand...

--
Mikael

webfrasse said:

Just to clarify, it's NOT the sound you get from the USB port. It's the raw sound file from disk.

Click to expand...

Well, that's not really accurate either, the raw file contains the sound data encoded in some format, either lossy compressed like mp3, vorbis, etc (less prefered), lossless compressed like flac or alac, or uncompressed like wav, the player software is in charge of taking this file and turn it into linear pulse code modulation data, lpcm, in the case of stereo sound, and this lpcm data is what goes out the usb or firewire or s/pdif connection to the external DAC that transforms this lpcm into analog for so that the speakers can do what they do.

KrishnaM said:

Thanks for the detailed answer. I think I'll keep these speakers for now as they are fine for the price and continue to do research. How to include a subwoofer to the system? Using optical connection? The speakers don't have any out put connection for subwoofer. M-audio speakers definitely lag in bass.

Click to expand...

In the case of your m-audios, the least bad option to add a subwoofer would be to get an active sub (most of them are this days), with stereo input, and use a stereo Y splitter out of your mac into both maudio and sub, with a little loss in signal and probably quiality too, and the big downside that you have to level the volume of both sub and speakers manually and then use your volume control in the mac as main volume.

If you want to add a sub, please get a quality one, not too big (8" is more than enough), with adjustable level. You want quality and not quantity when it comes to low frequencies, the sound must be tight and controlled, not wobly and out of proportion... when a sub is best set up, you should not be able to tell the thing is there. HSU, Paradigm and many others have great small subs for good prices.

KrishnaM said:

You mentioned 'keep attenuation in the analog domain'. Does it mean keeping the volume knob on speakers at lower setting? Also, please let me know about the software add ons for itunes to make the sound better.

Click to expand...

Regarding the volume, what I would do is set the mac to max, then set the maudio to a low volume (so you don't hurt your ears) and start adjusting in the maudios until you find the level you want. If you get some distortion in a low volume in the maudio, lower the mac to 90% and try again.

Software wise I can't tell you much, as I don't use itunes at all, but I do know that "Amarra" is the prefered plugin and some consider it a must have, it'll cost some money... $99 for the junior version and up from there.

I like to use XBMC, it's open source and the sound quality is not bad at all, plus it plays whatever I throw at it, music and videos.

Now, if you're serious about getting good music quality, the question "how much do you want to spend?" comes in order, for example a peachtree audio iDecco or iNova, together with wharfadales diamond 10.1 or 10.2 speakers, or paradigm atom monitors, plus maybe a good subwoofer will get you top quality sound for your desktop, or in the headphone world a burson audio HA-160D paired with senheinser hd-600 or akg 701 headphones will do great too. But all this options will be as much as for a new body or a fast zoom from nikon or canon, and it can only get worst from here, but is well worth it.

Thanks.

I am leaning now towards the Audioengines (due to lack of bass in m-audio av30) rather then spending money towards adding subwoofer. These are only for listening to music while I am working on computer (i.e. don't need the loud booming bass for watching movies but enough to play the nice resonating sound of tabla drums in indian classical music and m-audio's totally suck there). I don't mind the price of A5s but they are little big for desk top purpose. How are the Audioengine A2 speakers? or any other option?

Thanks
Krishna