Audigy 2 ZS resampling

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Prajch

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Jan 6, 2004
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Does anyone know if there exists a way to disable the 48khz resampling, or if there's even an audible difference when it's done? Just curious since I just bought the card, though it's not too late to return it.
 
Turn off everything that uses the effects engine. EAX effects, the speaker calibrator, CMSS and even the bass and treble controls have been shown to cause resampling. You might also consider using a kernel streaming output plugin for your audio player. As far as games go, the sound is not exactly high quality to begin with so you're not loosing much by having the card do its thing.
If you are unhappy with the performance of your card ..... then by all means return it and get something better. BTW, even those "better cards" resample to 48khz so all is not that good on the other side of the fence. :D
 
I generally don't like to use anything that colors the audio, so most of that I already turned off. I'm kinda pissed off about having to use that damn Creative volume control instead of the standard Windows version, since you can't really make any quick changes to the volume. Is there any way around that?

Would using a kernel streaming output plugin completely solve the problem? Does anything like that exist for Windows Media Player (don't ask me why I use this piece of crap)?
 
I've heard before that disabling all of those features will stop the resampling, but I have yet to see proof. If someone with a ZS could try playing a Dolby Digital DTS-CD to test it (resampling would destroy the encoding), that should settle the matter.
 
In the Creative Sound Blaster cards, there's no way at all whatsoever to disable the resampling of 44.1kHz material to 48kHz - this resampling is at hardware level. So you're stuck with this resampling if you're using even an Audigy2, no matter what you do.
 
What sort of effect would using the 96khz mode have on the audio?
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Using 24/96KHz output (with music in something like foobar2000) should completely bypass the Audigy 2's resampling since the DSP does not handle the 24 bit/96khz content itself.
 
So why on earth do people even bother using the 48khz mode? Just for compatibility with CDs and what not?
 
The vast majority of music players do not have the ability to output at higher bit rates and word lengths than their source material (for obvious reasons), so most music players will be putting out 16/44.1 content which will then be resampled by the DSP without their say-so.
 
Is the resampling job done by the Audigy 2 ZS better when converting from 44.1 to 96 though?
 
The Audigy2 ZS by itself cannot resample 44.1kHz audio to 96kHz - you'll need a third-party program to do such a thing. The Creative sound cards' resampling of 44.1kHz audio is hard-wired to 48kHz.
 
In what ways is this faulty resampling audibly noticeable? I'm having trouble finding fault in it.
 
In what ways is this faulty resampling audibly noticeable? I'm having trouble finding fault in it.
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It would probably be most audible comparing a digital out signal from an SB Live! versus a digital outputting CD player using the same material on a device that does not resample.
The Live! will resample the 16/44.1 red book CD to 16/48 internally, and then probably downsample back to 44.1 before output, potentially losing data in the process, leading to reduced fidelity.
The Audigy and sucessors have an improved resampling algorithm more akin to the ones used in other DSPs so problems are lessened relative to the Live!.
 
First of all, there's no way you're going to get around resampling anything other than 24/96 (and maybe 24/192, haven't heard anything about that) to 48khz, because all the emu10kx chips do all internal processing at 48khz.

However, I'm doubtful on how much of a problem it causes. Don't the clocks have to be set to the same speed to get bit-perfect accuracy anyway, so your audio is already getting changed unless you're working in a recording studio?
 
I don't have the most incredible setup imagineable; all I've got are some Monsoon MM-1000's, so I probably won't notice the difference.

Is there anyone here that has a genuine high fidelity sound system that can tell me they're bothered by the resampling with absolute confidence, or is this more of a psychological thing?
 
I oversample 44kHz streams to 48kHz because the A2 evidently has poor relative 44kHz playback. I'm not sure how the ZS fares in that situation though.

Otherwise, oversampling is pretty much useless unless it's native sampling frequency is played back defectively.
 
I really can't tell what the difference is. Can anyone give me some pointers? I'm playing mp3s in foobar2000 with the 48khz resampler on, and I really can't differentiate between that and normal playback.
 
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