Titanium hifi Solution Update

[Tarik Bilgin]

So,

after a few weeks of ripping my CDs using iTunes to aiff and then lame 
ripping, I started doing some audio tests to take stock of my new mp3 
archive.

I was at first rather disappointed with 2 things:

a) a few of my mp3's have pops in, 99.9% most likely introduced at the 
ripping stage. I am still searching for a ripper that incroporates 
"paranoia" style algorithms for macosx

b) the sound quality was poor compared to my CD player (through my hifi 
amp + speakers).

in this post i'll focus on b). I started to wonder about the sound card 
in my Ti.

After some testing, I discovered that the headphones output on the side 
of my Rev A Ti, gives a noisy, low dynamic range signal.

There is a lot of "hiss" and bass notes sound muffled and treble notes 
are fat,  compressed sounding.

I then did the same listening tests with the Griffin iMic

http://griffintechnology.com/

Results:

An immediate difference. This sub 50 dollar USB device gives a crisper, 
clearer sound and the dynamic range is better with less hiss.

Next I tested the M-Audio Sonica Theater

http://www.m-audio.net/

Results:

Again and immediate, and this time truly startling difference. This is 
a ~75 dollar USB box that supports Dolby surround up to 7.1 and is true 
24/96 audio fidelity.

It also comes with a well written application that is used for 
configuring the device, with several knobs to play with to tweak the 
sound. this is especially useful for doing positioning tests for Dolby 
surround I believe.

The music begins to come to life, cellos and violins start to have 
their true colour in the mix, bass notes are accurate in attack and die 
away into nothing  when listening to Hip-Hop/Urban music. The 
background hiss is now gone.

I would definitely recommend this product for audio enthusiasts.

Next i plan to purchase and test an Echo Indigo PC Card slot based 
audio device.

The reviews on their website http://www.echoindigo.com are very 
positive, and from (usually) reliable sources like Tom's Hardware.

This device weighs in at a 100 dollar price tag, and does _not_ support 
Dolby, though does boast 24/96 fidelity, and some rather (almost too 
good to be true) good audio specifications according to manufacturer's 
tests.

The key here is that the device is on a PCMCIA card, saving valuable 
space and clock cycles as it is a physical sound card. It also has 2 
outputs with separate analogue stages for your headphones and your hifi.

The only doubt in my mind is whether the casing of the card is thick 
enough to effectively shield the electronics inside from the electronic 
noise present inside my Ti.

I'll give it a shot and let you know what you think.

(in the next update i'll give results of my audio compression listening 
tests)


--
Tarik Bilgin
Opalblue
tarik at opalblue.com