M-Audio Revolution's sound is muddier than SB Live! X-Gamer?

[iskim86]

WTF, I switched from X-Gamer to Revolution and sound is a lot more bassier and muddier and not sharp trebly. I can really hear the difference. what's going on, is this what Revolution does?

 

[iskim86]

and also, in Winamp Output plug-in, I changed from DirectSound output to waveOut output. now I get a LOT of treble and a cleaner sound. what's the diffrence between these two and which one is generally better?

 

[JohnPaul]

Somethings wrong there, because I recently switched from the original Audigy, and the Revolution sounds a hell of a lot cleaner to my ears.

 

[iskim86]

grrrrrrr wth. this is making me mad. it's not actually bad sound quality, but music can't reach the peak. there's enough bass and midrange but treble is really low and it's muffled.

 

[TGCid]

Go to the revolution setup and check the surround sound tab. check the trubass boost stuff there. Should fix it.

 

[iskim86]

I already have enough bass, actually more than enough. and I have a 2.1 speaker system.

 

[iskim86]

also doesn't SRS Trusound take a lot of resources?? I only have a Pentium 3 600 with 512mb RAM

 

[TGCid]

I mean to check the setting not check as in turn it on. Mess around with all the settings there. Mine sounds fine. :-/

 

[yhelothar]

try using windows media player.. instead of crappy winamp that's trying to mess up your sound...

 

[skriefal]

Are you sure your Live! wasn't boosting treble frequencies to produce a "sharper" sound? If so, then accurate sound reproduction will initially sound dull. (In fact, most people seem to consider accurate reproduction to be "dull", since they're used to listening to horribly exaggerated treble.) Give it a few days, and you'll realize that the "duller" sound is actually the correct one.

If your Live! really wasn't boosting treble frequencies, then... well... ignore everything I said above!

 

[Nebor]

Agreed, it's like going from a ghetto blaster sony boombox to a Denon personal stereo... you'll think, this thing doesn't thump... but soon enough, you'll realize that your music is supposed to sound like it does on the Denon.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: Nebor
Agreed, it's like going from a ghetto blaster sony boombox to a Denon personal stereo... you'll think, this thing doesn't thump... but soon enough, you'll realize that your music is supposed to sound like it does on the Denon.

It seems more like iskim86 described the reverse. The sound has gone from the clarity of the Denon to the muddy base-head boombox. I am guessing all the cheesy DSP effects need to be disabled.

 

[iskim86]

how do I do that??

 

[Auric]

I don't know, I'm not familiar with it but just assuming. It can't be too complicated. But for testing you may want to avoid compressed music unless you are already sure of the quality and also use a standard decoder like Fraunhofer's MPEG which should be used by default by Windows Media Player (mplayer2.exe) so you don't run into problems as you said with Winamp.

 

[anishbenji]

This might be of help....
Install Foobar2000. You can use the Kernel streaming output to bypass most built in processing (to the best of my knowledge). If you testing the quality of the soundcard using a medium to low bitrate (<160kbit) mp3/wma, you might want to try playing a CD and see if the quality loss could be because you were listening to the compressed file.