Why does my music sound better in Windowz?

Ateo · Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2004 9:28 pm Post subject:

Perhaps you have compile time errors. I have a Sounblaster Audigy 2 Platinum that sounds much clearer with the alsa drivers.....

synapscape · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2004 11:33 am Post subject:

Funny thing! For me, the opposite is true: sound under linux is better than under win2k. I am using a very old soundcard with an ess1938 (aka ess solo-1) chip on it - pure stereo, no surround available.
Under windows, sound appears to be kind of muted and it misses some bass. I have to turn up the volume on my stereo-amp to get anything decent. No problem under linux, though.
I don't think it has something to do with mixer-levels under windows, as i don't have many options with this card :wink:

Anyway, i feel rather good with this as i rarely use windows... :wink:

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ragnwald · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2002 Posts: 43 Location: Stockholm

My music sounds terrible under linux with alsa.

Its to much bass and I cant find any way to get rid of it

It sounds like my tiny laptopspeakers will blow any minute

Everyone must have heard that scraping noise...

None of the controls in alsamixer helps...

Any clue?

Moled · l33t Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 635

well which card do you have, which version of alsa etc etc?

ragnwald · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2002 Posts: 43 Location: Stockholm

Ateo · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 9:07 pm Post subject:

This is odd. I, by means of my last trade before becoming an IT geek, used to work as a union projectionist in LA, Vegas and Reno. My ears are fine tuned to the acustics of anything that produces sound, especially in a movie or theatrical environment. I find my soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum produces far superior sound than any M$ OS. I wouldn't trade the sound produced by ALSA + my soundcard for anything.....

ragnwald · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2002 Posts: 43 Location: Stockholm

crimson · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 10:45 pm Post subject:

I'm sorry to say that thats the TRUTH, it sounds way worse in Linux than in Windows. I don't care if you say "maybe its a driver/configuration problem, maybe you didn't rtfm, maybe I'm an ignorant ass that thinks no matter what everything sounds better, works better, looks better in Linux."

People always get defensive when it comes to saying something works better in Windows, but I have the same issue. Alsa sound is distorted as all hell, and with OSS it almost rivaled Windows' quality. The fact that it sounds better for you in Linux doesn't help anyone out with the problem that for most of us without cotton in our ears it does sound worse than Windows

I would downgrade my kernel, but come on.. that's a ton of work just to reinstall OSS.

minimizebeefgoo · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 11:16 pm Post subject:

The fact is that it works for some people and doesn't work for others and the reasons aren't obvious and probably hinge on one detail in some obscure configuration file that got automatically created correctly for some people and incorrectly for others. This is aggravated by the fact that some sound cards get lots of attention and work great with ALSA while others get lousy support and sound like crap. You have no more right to assume that everyone without problems has cotton in their ears and a tin can hooked up to their sound card than anyone else has of accusing you of being an ignorant ass because neither of them have anything to do with the actual problem.

For me, it sounds the same in Linux and Windows, except that the mixers don't scale the same way, so the rear channel is always too loud for my headphones in Linux.

Finally, there's an option to compile OSS support in the 2.6 kernels, so it's more an issue of re-compiling your kernel than downgrading it.