[vorbis] Compression Artifacts at -q 5. Help!

[Lawrence Wade]

At 05:25 PM 6/15/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Do you have an SB16 that you've retrofitted a bunch of the discrete amp
>components, or are there two free software audio users who've done sound
>with Garth Brooks?

    I've seen a couple of guys - pro audio guys, in fact - do the same 
thing. Mostly we try to stick with the old ISA-based SoundBlasters, since 
it's easier to change DIP-based ICs and discrete components. The earliest 
SB-16s (nearly full-length cards with IRQ jumpers and excellent quality D/A 
converters) used LM741 in 8-pin DIP; clip 'em out, desolder the pins, 
solder in a good quality socket and put in an LF351 (I think that's the 
number) for an instant upgrade.

    However, I'm the guy who has hacked a 12AX7-based preamp into my 
SoundBlaster. (Someday, I'll put a page up on my site explaining how to do 
it.)

    Rationale? I like tubes (mostly sentimental rather than practical, 
though they have a couple of quantifiable sound quality advantages).

    Either way, the interior of a computer is still a crappy place to try 
to make good sound, so you do what you have to do - best quality 
components, lots of shielded boxes for the analog stages, ground plane 
under the analog board to cut RF, linear power supply to keep down 
switching noise. Leaving it inside the computer is an unfortunate 
compromise for practicality.

    Noting that ISA-based SoundBlasters require ISA slots, we're wedded to 
old hardware... This hasn't become a problem yet, because most PII and many 
PIII-vintage machines still have ISA slots and will run modern software. 
But the time is coming when a PII/III will become as hard to install a 
useful distro as my 486s currently are. I'm still running a PIII-600 
because I want my hacked SoundBlaster 16 to work.

    Moral: Keep the requirements low. You never know what the end user may 
be doing with it.

    Lawrence

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