By all means play uncompressed WAV files. No matter what you play, if you care at all you'll get more out of a system if you spend a little more for proper Digital to Analog conversion. I've been using an RME Hammerfall DSP for several years now. I found some TRS 1/4" to Male XLR cables, so I'm running balanced all the way to the house mixer. That seems to make a the difference in sound -- I think I can even hear the difference DI boxes make. And the RME Multiface in general sounds so much clearer in the high end than built-in laptop sound or M-Audio outboard sound interfaces.
I only got two responses from people with the courage to try and distinguish between 16 bit uncompressed audio and 320KBS MP3. Now it might be that it was an unfair test, but both people who took the challenge guessed wrong -- the MP3 sample was first. The one other response I got was 'I can't hear any difference whatsoever.' I wasn't an objective listener, and was biased toward the 'no difference' position, but I listened to that sample on my studio monitors and headphones for a long time, and I couldn't hear any difference -- even after I actually extracted the difference between the files and amplified it so I could hear it. I guess all I'm saying is that I don't think properly encoded MP3 files sound noticeably different than uncompressed audio. I also think that big systems -- no matter how expensive or carefully configured-- aren't going to make it easier to hear those differences. I don't think that any objective test of those hypotheses would prove otherwise. On the other hand, there's an art and craft to making music sound really good, and everyone has their own formula that's part voodoo. I get all excited about running balanced to the PA, but if you did a blind test with decent DI boxes and properly matched levels, I might not be able to tell the difference either. On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:14 AM, Davor Ostojic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Kent, i was more aiming to the richer, broader and deeper sound i feel > the wav provides on a club soundsystem.
