Welcome

This website covers the basic of computer audio.
When I started a couple of years ago, I was completely blank.

Yes I knew that you can download a MP3 and play it over a pair of fancy desktop speakers. But I didn't realize that a computer could be a source for high quality audio too.

I entered the world of tagging, ripping, WAV, FLAC, WMP, JRMC, bit rates, drivers, SRC, etc. A fascinating world but it takes some time to find your way.

Visit a couple of audio forums and you will notice that there are as many opinions as forum members. Often very strong opinions, so strong you might call it a passion.

Passion is our driving force it don’t improve our reality testing.
I talk facts but anybody familiar with perception knows that 'facts' are your own Plato’s cave.

The structure of this cave:

The Introduction covers the basic concepts (what is...)

The Hardware and Software sections are about implementation (how to).

The Reference section supplies background information (how it works).

Updates

Isolating the digital audio from the PC is becoming an important design criteria.
Headphone listening made euphonic
Why speakers and headphone sound different
Audio industry discovers the low powered PC
DIY SPDIF out
Using WMP12 and missing the Advanced Tag Editor? Tim de Baets comes to your rescue
JRMC and multiple values
J River web interface
The impact of speaker cables on frequency response
Memory playback using J River
a bit history
24 bits audio gives you a 256 times better resolution than 16 bits! But can you hear the difference?
Eye love it
Getting started

“Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me..”

Gordon Holt, founder Stereophile magazine

Where there's mystery there's margin.

Many people seek advice and they choose who will give it to them. A person chooses an advisor who will give them the answers and advice that they want to hear.

Jean Paul Sartre