Setting up a DAC/Amp

Disabling Windows "enhancements"

Windows loves to mess with your sound. Be it pre-installed equalizers, the recently added sonic feature, bundled Dolby options or simply default settings that are not optimal.

When it comes to music playback you ideally want unaltered and pure 2 channel stereo sound. How do you get that? Follow these steps:

Go to your onboard audio driver codec and make sure that your PC is set to 2.0 stereo and the box "Full-range speakers is checked. The options and features of your codec can vary drastically depending on the driver software.
Disable all enhancements and ensure that all windows sonic features are disabled.
Set your bit depth and sample rate to 24bit / 44.1Khz, all your music will have this format and up-sampling with the windows audio stack isn't great.
(OPTIONAL) Use the WASAPI output plugin to force bit-perfect audio playback. This output option is not supported by all music players, but the ones mentioned above (MB / F2K) support it. WASAPI is basically a very strict mode, telling the PC that audio sent to the DAC cannot be altered in any way (EQ,DSP, whatever). While WASAPI playback is activated in a music player all other programs on the PC are prevented from playing back any sound and cannot play sound until the music library is closed.

Digital vs. Analog volume control

Where should you control your volume? Ideally every single software slider you can find should be set to 100% and only the analog volume knob of your amplifier should be used to dial in the volume of your headphones. The presentation below goes into a rather technical and lengthy explanation about how reducing digital volume sliders can harm the fidelity of your music.

ESS Presentation: Digital vs. Analog Volume Control

Of course this is only a possibility when you actually own an amplifier with a physical volume knob.

High quality music files

Upgrading to good headphones often leads to the realization that your music library is not up to snuff. A detailed headphone will reveal flaws in poorly mastered tracks and make low quality files not enjoyable. Getting your hands on high quality files is crucial to get the most out of your audio equipment. For the sake of keeping this section short, the following recommendations will only focus on digital music sources and we will postpone the Digital vs. Analog discussion for now.

Streaming services

Spotify Premium: Probably the largest music portfolio and a fair price for a good set of features, sound quality (320kbit OGG Vorbis) and good UI
Google Play Music: Same as Spotify, plus you get rid of YouTube advertisements. Sound quality (320kbits Mp3) is totally fine.
Tidal: Music choices mainly revolve around Hip-Hop and related genres. Mobile UI was greatly improved with recent updates, but the higher price is barely justified.

Free Music Players / Libraries

Music Bee: A great library for users who prefer ease of use over millions of customization options. Music Bee has tons of features and is ready to go within minutes.
Foobar 2000: Endless customization and a sheer insane amount of plugins and features make F2K the best choice for users who want to spend hours creating the perfect player. The initial setup is easy, but it will take some time to customize everything to your liking.

Want to own your Music?

Bandcamp: Buy directly from the artist and choose the quality you want. Many artists available that haven't been picked up by the large steaming players.
Buying CDs: Still and option...just rip them with a program like Exact Audio Copy and off you go.

FLAC vs. mp3

The age old debate whether one format is better than the other. Given that you have a good source file the difference is minimal; and especially for portable use storing files in FLAC is a waste of disk space. Maintaining and collecting a library in FLAC at home is fine, but generally speaking you'll be fine if your portable files are CBR or VBR mp3.

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