Audio settings

Playback devices

I use Windows 7 Ultimate NL with the English language pack.
But sometimes things are not translated like ‘Luidspreker’ (Loudspeaker of course).


I set the onboard speakers to default and mute the speaker.
In the media player I select the outboard DAC.

As all other applications use the default playback device, no more system sounds at full blast over the audio!

Configure

In the Sound panel, choose your playback device and click Configure.

The options available depend on the capabilities of the playback device

Check if the channels matches your setup.

Test if speakers and the channels match by clicking the speaker icons.

In this case (onboard speakers) I leave Full Range unchecked.

If you are using external full-range speakers, check Full-range otherwise you get a rather funny sound out of them.

Properties

General

 

The general tab allows you to change the description and the icon.

Benchmark icons (and a lot more) by Zelak

No, changing the Icon into a very prestigious DAC won't affect sound quality.

Driver

Properties in this tab gives you information about the driver.

Often a third party driver comes with your sound card.
It might be that this driver is not an improvement as far as sound quality is concerned, compared with the default Win7 HD audio driver.
A simple way to try:

Source: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=60928

Levels

You can adjust volume and the balance.

If you prefer analogue volume control, set both volume and balance to 100 to eliminate any impact of the digital volume control.

Enhancements

I belong to those silly purist who think the greatest enhancement is to disable them all.

Advanced

 

The Default Format is the one used by Windows in shared mode.

The audio engine will mix and resample all the streams to the rate set in this panel.


24 bits: my DAC is 24 bit.

Playing 16 bit using this setting won’t do any harm  as simply 8 zero’s are padded.


I set the sample rate to CD quality as almost all of my audio is 44.1 kHz.

 

Allow applications to take exclusive control should be checked if you plan to use WASAPI.
Give exclusive mode applications priority might save you a couple of drop outs.

WASAPI

WASAPI is Microsoft’s own ASIO, it talks straight to the soundcard if set to exclusive mode.
In shared mode it still uses the windows audio engine.

WASAPI in exclusive mode allows you to play all audio at its native sample rate (if your audio device supports this rate, if not it is silence).

In exclusive mode it bypasses the Windows audio engine entirely, no mixing and no resampling will take place.

As a consequence, only 1 and only 1 audio stream is playing.

Another consequence is that what the media player is sending to the soundcard must exactly match the capabilities of the sound card.

You must configure your media player to use WASAPI in exclusive mode.
The settings are media player dependent.
Crucial is that you match the bit depth.

16 or 24 depending on the capabilities of the DAC.
If you play 16 bits audio (CD) on a 24 DAC using WASAPI, the media player will append 8 zero's to get the required number of bits.
This won't affect sound quality.
In fact, there is a benefit, you can probably use digital volume control without noticeable impact on sound quality.

©Vincent Kars