Win 10 sound quality

[Ola]

I have read in various forums that Win 10 sounds better than Win 7. I switched to W10 and sound was clearely worse. Not very much, but clearely: less room, softer and weaker bass, and highs turned down above ca 10 kHz.

Did not change anything but installed W10, and in W7 had not done anything special for sound. Same Steinberg USB ASIO driver on both cases.

What did you do, who got better sound from W10?

 

[JonSnell Electronic]

Windows 10 hasn't got ant audio/video software installed. Use VLC Media Player on both systems and you will here no difference.

 

[JonSnell Electronic]

Or buy a Mac.

 

[SY]

I have read in various forums that Win 10 sounds better than Win 7.

You need to read better forums.

 

[tonitonitoni]

I did have problem with measuring soundcard that i havent had before on 7,in fr graph there is some sort of wave , very small but apparent. I dont hear difference,and maybe measuring software problem.

 

[seoman]

If you want sound to be perfect use ASIO
It will bypass both windows and the crap inside your soundcard.
It will stream the audio straight into the DAC.

You will have no volume setting, no equalizer and most important of all: no windows sounds while the asio source is active!

 

[mcandmar]

It wont sound any different, as long as all your volume levels are the same. As with all versions of windows go into sound preferences, playback, select your playback device, then under "enhancements" tick the option to "Disable all enhancements". Unless you actually like artificial bass boost and loudness added to everything you play.

As above, an even better option is to use ASIO or WASAPI to bypass the Windows Audio stack and stream those bits directly to your DAC unmolested.

 

[jiiteepee]

...
Did not change anything but installed W10, and in W7 had not done anything special for sound. Same Steinberg USB ASIO driver on both cases.

...

By using ASIO you ensure that Windows audio system has no impact.

 

[Ola]

I understand that you write just for youself .... You don't even read the question! Oh, god.....

 

[avddreamr]

If I remember correctly, the "problem" with windows 10 and sound quality, is a kernel related issue, in that how sound events are handled has been changed.

It's a non issue, but I suppose if you're the sort of person that buys ceramic cable elevators for your unobtanium plated speaker cables... then use WASAPI, or ASIO for exclusive access.

 

[hazard500]

I have read in various forums that Win 10 sounds better than Win 7. I switched to W10 and sound was clearely worse. Not very much, but clearely: less room, softer and weaker bass, and highs turned down above ca 10 kHz.

Did not change anything but installed W10, and in W7 had not done anything special for sound. Same Steinberg USB ASIO driver on both cases.

What did you do, who got better sound from W10?

What media player do you use? What sort of DAC?

I got sick of Windows. If you have to install programs like Fidelizer or Audio Optimiser to get it to sound right is just silly (assuming that these programs actually do anything). So I've installed Linux (Ubuntu Studio 16.04) and use it to feed native DSD to my USB DAC (HQplayer upsamples all my PCM files to DSD). I'm now happy with digital sound.

I still need Windows for many tasks so my machine is dual boot. Best of both worlds.