tekszi
tekszi t1_iydjsj0 wrote
Reply to comment by Nadeoki in Is this min-maxing obsession or are there benefits to be had by tweaking things on the OS or digital side and using 'audiophile' footers? by Orangutan_Ulti
100% true, I feel that I may have worded my sentences so that it looks like I think otherwise but that is not the case
tekszi t1_iyd7c0z wrote
Reply to Is this min-maxing obsession or are there benefits to be had by tweaking things on the OS or digital side and using 'audiophile' footers? by Orangutan_Ulti
As someone who is a tester of a heavily customized Windows os used by thousands, I can tell you for 100% that the answer is no. You can achieve a lot lower audio latency but that doesn't mean better quality, setting CPU processor affinities to your desired audio player or driver (for example ASIO) could theoretically help but even though I've been testing this for months, it seems like a complete placebo when it comes to actual audio quality. I'd still recommend setting affinities if you are running lower audio buffers since windows has this tendency to focus most processes to core 0 and by making it run on a different core, processing audio shouldn't be as resource-heavy as it is typically. And even this is a very rare case that I can only imagine happening on 25-year-old hardware.
Regarding "optimization"/"tweaking" software, most of their code has been sourced out by information you can access freely, or most of it can be plain wrong or hardware dependent which means they may not even work. Please do not consider ever buying such products for audio, gaming or any use case where it could come to mind.
tekszi t1_iyegc6c wrote
Reply to comment by Nadeoki in Is this min-maxing obsession or are there benefits to be had by tweaking things on the OS or digital side and using 'audiophile' footers? by Orangutan_Ulti
No, I said that tweaking anything mentioned by the op's post won't help you get more out of using ASIO, WASAPI or even Windows Direct Audio , I never mentioned that either of those protocols were placebo. What I was talking about was the case of setting their process to a dedicated processor core and that affecting their sound quality.