The 11Ls
So, I’ve been pretty laid back in playing around with these new Quad 11Ls. I got all of the good stuff sorted: new 33 pre-amp, new Audigy 2 ZS soundcard and a bunch of my albums ripped to FLACs.
Past that I sort of haven’t had a lot of time to really sit down and listen to it all. One thing that had been really annoying me was the fact that the output from the soundcard was so noisy: I previously tried this with Windows and found things to be different, so I assumed it to be a Linux thing. After messing around with the OSS modules (instead of ALSA) I re-checked Windows and realised I’d messed it all up and that it was a soundcard/cable issue.
That said… I played around with all of the options in the mixer and managed to improve things a lot: turns out that the Audigy cards have about a zillion different inputs, channels and options. I’ve managed to crank some of them up a lot, mute all of the others and the net result is that the soundcard output is plenty louder and the noise is down (well, only because the output is higher). Things are much better, anyway.
It all sounds great: just sat down and listened to an album (Regina Spektor’s Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories) and the bass was incredible, especially considering they’re sat down on my desk, no spikes, no stands, none of that fancy stuff.
Definitely a good investment! :)
Tags: general