20-20,000 Hz
I'm reminded of something my Father said to me a long time ago. We must have been discussing audio frequency ranges of amplifiers and speakers, and he said something like, "I can't even hear those higher ranges." Eventually I got to the time of life when sounds beyond 12,000 Hz were not heard either.
But hats off to those seeking
bit-perfect audio (
https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/BitPerfect.htm).
I'm on the edge of respectability (I hope) with regard to music playback and streaming. I'm listening to Spotify (highly recommend Release Radar channel there). Their audio is streaming at something called Very high quality, “Equivalent to approximately 320kbit/s.” Okay, that's a careful dodge, and I realize the stream is not true CD quality.
This music is also affected by many local features. For instance this is a partial listing from the command line
$ inxi -Fxz
Code:
Audio:
Device-1: Intel 82801I HD Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0
Device-2: AMD RV710/730 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 4000 series]
vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.3.0-46-generic
That explains some of the audio handling in a PC or notebook. My devices 1 and 2 have specifications I'll skip over for now. The sound server Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) is "... a software framework and part of the Linux kernel that provides an application programming interface (API) for sound card device drivers." Ref:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture
The wiki reference explains more about the interaction of ALSA and the sound card (or chip). It also mentions two applications using ALSA:
“The sound servers PulseAudio and JACK (low-latency professional-grade audio editing and mixing), the higher-level abstraction APIs OpenAL, SDL audio, etc. work on top of ALSA and implemented sound card device drivers.”
And all of that just gets the system ready to accept an input source such as MP3 file, instrument, or streaming.
My source, Spotify, has settings that impact the audio delivery. For example, the
Music Quality can be changed from Auto to one of the following. The default Auto setting hopefully takes me to Very high quality on a wired or WiFi connection. I switched from Auto to Very high with no noticeable change.Low – Equivalent to approximately 24kbit/s
Normal – Equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s
High – Equivalent to approximately 160kbit/s
Very high (Premium only) - Equivalent to approximately 320kbit/s
Another Spotify setting is
Normalize. I turned this off since I'm using PulseAudio as my software equalizer. I mentioned earlier that I'm using one PulseAudio Equalizer pre-set called
ziyad_perfecteq. It works for me.
From PulseAudio sound leaves the notebook's audio output jack and connects to my PC multimedia speaker system (Altec Lansing ACS340). That's 2.1-channel with a subwoofer. Output is 40 Watt with Frequency Response 30 - 20000 Hz. I leave the dial controls at neutral settings.
My setup is different than what's been discussed by true audiophiles above. Their approach strives for
bit-perfect-ness, and uses an application (like deadbeef) which passes the raw quality of sound file to external devices such as DAC (Digital-to-Audio Converter), amplifier, and high-quality speakers. Or at least I'm hoping that's how things work!
