Best/Correct mode for foobar2000 drivers?

[MrBrickFish]

Dear All,

I use foobar200 together with various USB DAC/Headphone amps (currently FiiO E10). from my windows 7 laptop. I have downloaded many of the plugins for foobar which allow the drivers to talk to the HW in a variety of modes... with the intention of achieving bit perfect output.... The music I play is all FLAC, the majority of it is 16@44 while there is some experimental hires stuff all the way up to 24@96 and beyond

Currently there are the following options avaliable for the E10 :

DS : SPDIF Interface (FiiO USB DAC-E10)

KS : FiiO USB DAC-E10

WASAPI (Event) SPDIF Interface (FiiO USB DAC-E10)

WASAPI (Push) SPDIF Interface (FiiO USB DAC-E10)

Currently, for reasons I cannot remember, I've opted for WASAPI (Push).

Then there are further options :

Output data format... currently set to 24bit with options of 8, 16 and 32bit

There is also buffer length which I've randomly set to 3380ms

Any comment or advice would be appreciated

Many thanks and Merry Christmas

Cheers

Sean

 

[pauln]

A spot of Googling gets you the answers...

WASAPI - "Both deliver the same audio data and will sound the same. One may work better with specific hardware." Cuts any other sounds/beeps etc. from system or other programmes. Event works better when hardware supports it.

Kernel Streaming more for Windows XP, superceded by WASAPI on Vista and Win 7

DS = direct sound - Windows default but sound quality not so good. Forget it.

Have you listened to all of them? Can you hear a difference? If you can, why not just use the one that sounds best?

 

[MrBrickFish]

Paul,

Many thanks for your swift and helpful reply... I had conducted some listening tests, while I was able to rule out some modes, a number of them sounded very similar.

Merry Christmas and thanks again

Cheers

Sean