[Goi]

Hi guys

I have the M-Audio Audiophile 2496, and Winamp 2.7 with the MAD Plugin 0.14b, which has an option for 24bit output. However, when I chose that it says its unsupported or something, but clearly I know that the 2496 will do 24bit output. Setting it to 16bit works, but I didn't get the 2496 for 16bit output.


What's wrong?

 

[JohnAd]

'm also getting this problem, latest MADplugin, win2k with latest Cliff recomended driver, waveout plug-in with buffer sizes from the website.


Does it only work in 98/ME?


John

 

[Goi]

Hmmn, I'm also using Win2K Pro SP2, with the latest soundcard drivers.

 

[Hepcat]

Same problem here. Haven't messed with it after first putting my AP2496 in though. Is it really going to make much of a difference? If the MP3 is encoded at 16bit, will playback at 24bit be any better? I mean 1 is the same as 1.0000000 and you can't get 1.00113717 if you only have 1 written down, so what does enabling 24bit playback get you?


Is there anyway to encode MP3s at 24/96?


-will

 

[Goi]

There is a difference actually, assuming your outboard DAC has the same resolution, if not higher. The MAD plugin uses a dithering algorithm to approximate the increased resolution gained by going from 16bit to 24bit. In actual measurements its more like 23bit so I read(in normal mode, not fast mode) It has nothing to do with the compression.

 

[kaiwei]

Well, I got it working under Windows 2000, service pack 2 running a Delta Dio 2496.


I hope this helps you audiophile ppl but it should be the same since both uses the same driver.


Before you start, go to the Midiman website & download the NT drivers.


Firstly, Remove the WDM audiophile driver under systems, then use the delta uninstaller to remove all traces of the Delta WDM driver.


Reboot, when "New Hardware Found", point your installer to the folder where you have extracted the NT drivers eariler. For full detail on this part, read the readme.txt in the NT drivers.


Then go to multimedia/sound to adjust your settings & you're done! START WINAMP & let the music flow.


*Remember to set MAD to 24bit. there's no difference between 24bit or 32bit as 32bit is just padded 24bit to let some equipment have a easier time.


**DOWNSIDE TO THIS

you can only have 1 program accessing the soundcard at any time.

 

[Goi]

So by using the NT drivers rather than the Win2K/XP drivers you got it to work. Does it spoil anything else though? AC3/DTS passthrough, etc? I'm already having problems with AC3/DTS with anything other than the WinDVD 2.8 that I've tried...and I'd hate to mess things up even more.

 

[CoryW]

I'm using the latest WinAmp 2.76 and MAD plug-in 0.14.2b with WinXP Pro and it only works at 16bit. I am, however, using the latest M-Audio drivers for Win2K/XP drivers -- not the NT drivers. I may try that.

 

[Karnis]

I've actually gone another route: I've upsampled all my .wav files to 96KHz using Sonic Foundrys' Batch Converter program, and then use the Winamp waveout plug-in to change them to 24-bit. Sounds pretty darn good and a noticeable improvement in SQ, albeit at a large penalty in file size....not a big deal since I have a 60Gb HD for .wav files.

 

[Goi]

Karnis, are you using Win2K SP2 though? I've heard that Win2K SP2 downsamples 24bit signals into 16bit ones.