New Sound Drivers Coming In Linux 4.16 Kernel

[zvober]

It's a big pain that "Lenovo Y700-17ISK subwoofer problem" hasn't been solved for almost two years now:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/1553685

[pmorph]

Our environments now are littered with constant meaningless noises, if anything, evolution will just degrade our hearing.
E: if there are new audio chip manufacturers, I suspect it's just because they think they can do it cheaper than others.

[pgoetz]

Human ear gains more resolution as a result of human gene evolution. Your parents might have been happy with C cassettes (SNR around 70 dB), but now people desire continuous upgrades.

This comment hurt my brain in so many ways. A while back someone conducted a double blind study with a group of self-professed audiophiles who listened to CD quality FLAC clips as well as 256K mp3 and were asked to decide which of the clips were CD quality and which were mp3's. The outcome was worse than random; i.e. they identified the mp3's as being CD quality more than 50% of the time. Evolution works on a time scale of millions of years, not the decades that separate different levels of audio technology.

[starshipeleven]

Our environments now are littered with constant meaningless noises, if anything, evolution will just degrade our hearing.

evolution is just an effect of natural selection. Natural selection happens when individuals with "bad" traits that can't reproduce because of some reason (die sooner, disliked by the opposite sex, whatever).
So unless people with worse hearing will somehow manage to make more children than those with normal hearing, this won't happen.

What is happening is that people with "bad" traits like genetic illnesses (mild or even very bad) or whatever now can still live fine because of modern technology and medicine, so the gene pool is getting more and more individuals with "bad" traits than back in the day. Back in the "golden days" when men were men, women were women and children were exploited in mines and factories, these individuals would die off or not reproduce as well as the ones with "good" traits.

But this has nothing to do with being in a very noisy environment or not.

[aht0]

Evolution works on a time scale of millions of years, not the decades that separate different levels of audio technology.

Within limited populations some prefered trait may express itself in a span of handful generations.

For example: Czarist Russia had compulsory army service of 25 years. Wanted to skip it? Hard to avoid unless you were clearly physically not 'normal'. Better have some finger or toe missing... or weird enough, extra. Former was achieved by way of an axe and a chopping block, latter was more a matter of genetic luck. And over a time some regions appeared in Russian Empire where a lot of men had 6th digit - they did not qualify for army service, could create families before getting into late middle age and were thus in a 'much prefered' category as prospective husbands.

[dwagner]

The thing with audio hardware is, the numbers will continue to grow and they're actually real. A 32 bit DAC indeed has 32 bit slots for input. A 140 dB SNR in a DAC really is 140 dB.

Sure, but one will hardly find any spot where unavoidable ambient noise, either at recording or playback time, thwarts attempts to get anywhere near such "fidelity" for listening to music. It's great if my amplifier has a < 1dbA noise floor, but what good is this if the white noise from some wind around the house or the pipes of the central heating emit much more noise, already?

[F.Ultra]

P.M.P.O Watts died already. Nobody uses them anymore. The thing with audio hardware is, the numbers will continue to grow and they're actually real. A 32 bit DAC indeed has 32 bit slots for input. A 140 dB SNR in a DAC really is 140 dB. That old 10000W PMPO amplifier OTOH was just a 5W DIN A-weighted amplifier. People think that their ears are golden, when they really aren't. But that doesn't matter, it's business. How businesses work, they need to generate revenue and not only a constant stream, but also annual growth, e.g. 8%.

No they are not real. Do you even understand the extreme precision that would be needed in order to create a true 32-bit output of -1.736 to +1.736 volts? That is a span of less than 4 volts that you accurately need to create over 2 billion different levels of. Some of the best 16-bit DACs used in professional equipment ever used was close to 12-bits of performance.

[starshipeleven]

No they are not real.

Then what do they represent? Are they just a lie or are they some theoretical max?

[caligula]

No they are not real. Do you even understand the extreme precision that would be needed in order to create a true 32-bit output of -1.736 to +1.736 volts? That is a span of less than 4 volts that you accurately need to create over 2 billion different levels of. Some of the best 16-bit DACs used in professional equipment ever used was close to 12-bits of performance.

So you think this is fake news?

http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/ess-technology-introduces-sabre-pro-series-dacs-setting-new-performance-bar-with-unprecedented-2085982.htm

"This first member of the ESS PRO SABRE series sets a new benchmark in high-end audio by offering the industry's highest dynamic range (DNR) of 140dB. The ES9038PRO also offers impressively low total harmonic distortion plus noise (THD+N) at -122dB in a 32-bit, 8-channel DAC."

[caligula]

The problem with true HiFi sound chips is that the content is sucky. Most audio is just 48 kHz 24 bit studio material. It's too weak for HiFi experts who expect 32 bits and 192 kHz (nowadays 384 kHz). Also most records are stereo, which is quite weak compared to 7.1.