I had a shocker yesterday. I was trying to tune my Car audio system on my Samsung 3s since I don't have real EQ hardware yet. Google Play had an update which a 5 band EQ I was using, stopped working. Therefor I switched over to WinAmp Pro, which has a more clunky EQ interface but is 10 band. With a flat EQ signal playing the exact same sound file, the difference was immediate to a flat Google Play signal. The sound was cleaner and much more responsive . I looked at the signal on the RTA and sure enough the slope was a lot more smoother and tighter (sorry don't know the correct terminology). Winamp does have a prevent clipping option but even when I turned it off the sound was still better.
I don't know enough on how to test what is going on but it never dawned on me that software could matter so much in regards to sound quality. I don't know what is going on and I would need to play around and test some other software, but what is going on that the difference would be so audible? I don't know the science well enough but I would of thought 256k MP3 should play the same but it is being processed differently somehow.
I had a shocker yesterday. I was trying to tune my Car audio system on my Samsung 3s since I don't have real EQ hardware yet. Google Play had an update which a 5 band EQ I was using, stopped working. Therefor I switched over to WinAmp Pro, which has a more clunky EQ interface but is 10 band. With a flat EQ signal playing the exact same sound file, the difference was immediate to a flat Google Play signal. The sound was cleaner and much more responsive . I looked at the signal on the RTA and sure enough the slope was a lot more smoother and tighter (sorry don't know the correct terminology). Winamp does have a prevent clipping option but even when I turned it off the sound was still better.
I don't know enough on how to test what is going on but it never dawned on me that software could matter so much in regards to sound quality. I don't know what is going on and I would need to play around and test some other software, but what is going on that the difference would be so audible? I don't know the science well enough but I would of thought 256k MP3 should play the same but it is being processed differently somehow.