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Playing FLAC files on PC to MRX500 and Paradigm Studio 100s, Improvement ideas?

post #1 of 8
12/11/11 at 8:25pm
Thread Starter 
Hi,

I am playing FLAC audio files on Sony laptop which is connected to my MRX 500 receiver using HDMI to listen music on my Paradigm Studio 100 speakers.

I ran arc and turned dolby sound off. Audio quality is good but I think still there is much room for improvement. Please advice how can i improve the audio quality further to true audiophile level.

Being not an expert, i am a bit confused that should I buy some external DAC or should i get some pre-amp etc. or should i just convert FLAC files to WAV and play directly from USB (As so far MRX recievers don't support FLAC or ALAC files)
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post #2 of 8
12/11/11 at 9:18pm
Answering the last bit first, the differences if any will be quite subtle there. So unless what you are looking for is small improvement, I would not go there although it is easy enough to convert one file to WAV and test.

What is it that doesn't sound good?
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post #3 of 8
12/12/11 at 6:48am
You can try conversion to WAV, which will exclude Microsoft audio stack (which may influence the sound) from the picture. What player software do you use? You may try foobar2000 player application with ASIO plugin, it may improve sound over MS Media Player.
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post #4 of 8
12/12/11 at 1:39pm
Thread Starter 
yes i currently use foobar2000. I will give WAV file using USB a try.
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post #5 of 8
12/12/11 at 2:24pm
If you are using Windows audio stack make sure to go to the Sound control panel and set the sampling rate to 44.1 Khz. The default is 48 KHz which forces resampling for CD music.
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post #6 of 8
12/24/11 at 8:45pm
Thread Starter 
- I did check and the sampling rate is 44.1 Khz in my PC's Sound Control Panel.
- Also testing playing WAV files directly through USB and there is decent amount of improvement. but navigating it is a bit hard.
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post #7 of 8
12/24/11 at 10:56pm
Assuming that digital is going out the HDMI and your sound card is not doing any conversion at all, that should be as good as it's gonna get.

Have u heard better with the same files somewhere else?

Converting to wav and having your laptop soundcard do the A-to-D in a noisy environment (laptop) and outputting analog-ly (again, computer based analog output stage nothing to write home about) .......uggghhhh.
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post #8 of 8
12/25/11 at 7:19am
Biggest bang for the buck is from adjusting speaker position, and angle.
Probably next is room treatments - first reflection points and bass absobtion.

I'm suprised you can hear a difference between usb wav and flac from your PC. The PC will convert to PCM (essentially wav) before outputting the flac, so, the result should be identical (unless perhaps your PC is doing something else to the signal before sending it out)

Hoppy Holly Daze
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AVS › AVS Forum › Audio › Audio theory, Setup and Chat › Playing FLAC files on PC to MRX500 and Paradigm Studio 100s, Improvement ideas?