Benny Sjostrand wrote:
We dont't known what kind of dirty is hack's possibly could be implemented in the Windows driver to compensate the bad sound. We know that the DSP is able to do much more that actually is done in the Linux driver, reverb effects, delay, band pass filters, mp3 decoding etc. For example what about having a light reverb effect on front speakers, and a little bit more reverb on rear speakers + some delay, and let's limit the volume controls a little bit to get rid of the a possible distorcion, and some few band pass filters. Do you think that would improve the sound quality ?I didn't hear this 'bad' sound quality of the GTXP because I've a cs46xx based terratec DMX XFire. The sound quality of the XFire is exactly the same as under windows, i.e. much better than a cheap $10 soundcard. There's not much hardware on the XFire: Basically just the CS4624, a CS4294 codec and two LM386 amplifiers (very cheap 1 watt amps). The windows driver of the XFire doesn't change the sound in any way like adding reverberation, stereo expanding or equalizing (It does only, if you tell it to do), i.e. the card acts as a transparent system that just outputs every sample like it was told by any application. I think that will be also the case for the GTXP under windows (but I can't check as I don't own this card). There seem to be other hardware components on the GTXP wich are not correctly initialized.
What actually Hercules sells is more SW than HW, there is about three version of the Hercules GTXP 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 The the only difference between theese cards seems to be the delivered SW (which you probably never will use under Linux)
I dont discard posibility that there's something specific about the GTXP hw, that we dont know and we should know that could improve sound, but I believe that this posibilty is very small.
If the GTXP is used in the same way as under windows (e.g. line output connected to external amp or active speakers), the sound quality should be more or less the same.- Sound quality under Linux: very very very very bad.It's possible to get good sound quality under Linux with the GTXP, if you use an external amplifier, some options that I can mention:
- External receiver with digital in, using the SPDIF output
- External receiver using the analog inputs, using the un-amplified outputs from the GTXP
- Use any kind of active speakers (speakers with it's own amplifier built-in)
Just dont rely to much on the soundcard amplifier.
As Christian says the sound quality is very ve...ry bad, I think it must be related with card initialization (something like the DC offset problem with the XFire or a not powered up amplifier).
I do not think that the driver has to do some equalization to get good quality. The hardware on this card should deliver good quality without software tricks. (Of course correct initialization is necessary which could perhaps easily done *with some more help provided by this "Cirrus" company*).
Chrisian, perhaps you can specify/describe the type of distortion more precisely so that it's easier to guess the reason for the bad sound.
Does it sound like overload?
Is the output unequalized, i.e. lack of low or high frequency components.
Are quiet sounds also/more/less distorted? Especially: Are sounds below a volume threshold not ouput, quite sounds totally muted?
You reported that lowering pcm/master volume makes the quality somewhat better. What about playing back quiet sounds with pcm/master volume turned up compared to playing back loud sounds with pcm/master volume turned down?
Do you get different quality depending on the analog output used (line out with external amp compered to speaker output)?
I don't know about the possibility of the GTXP to power down the internal amps. If the sound at line output is ok, that could be the reason for the bad quality.
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