Alpha’s Top Tips for Better Sound
Listening to some nice music is only part of our Hi-Fi Hobby. Although that should be the main thing of course. It is also the fine-tuning of our lovely systems. Putting those ‘oh-so-important’ dots on the i. A little sharper focus, a little tighter and more beautiful bass. More balance… Does that cost a lot […]
Audible differences Codecs – MP3 – AAC – Ogg – FLAC
After the story about audio codecs, we felt strongly about putting them to the test. What do they sound like? What are the differences? And how can we easily demonstrate that? And of course: let you hear it. We grab our reference track and get to work with Foobar and Adobe Audition!
From AAC, DSF and Flac to Mp3, Ogg Vorbis and WAV – Codecs
We stream a lot. Especially among you – the readers – streaming has become very common. We hardly ever think about what format we are streaming. AAC? ALAC? WAV? FLAC? We list these formats for you. Because one codec really isn’t the other!
Get the best sound quality from Foobar 2000
Those who work a lot on the PC will find it useful to be able to play music on the PC in a decent way. Now there are – not entirely surprisingly – countless media players. From the built-in media player to very decent paid options. We choose one of the more popular packages: Foobar […]
Alpha Audio – 2020 – Fast forward to 2021!
We are not going to repeat ourselves by saying that 2020 was a crazy year. Everyone knows that. Still, crazy doesn’t mean it was a worthless year. Of course it has been exciting. And even disastrous for many entrepreneurs. For the audio / hi-fi it certainly didn’t turn out to be a bad year after […]
UPNP: is it OK? And what can you do with it? Audirvana V3 under the microscope
Your editor has long ago purchased a license of the music player Audirvana. When I used iTunes as a music player, this was an ideal way to combine the ease of use of iTunes with the much better playback quality that Audirvana offers. With the arrival of ROON I used Audirvana less and less. Until […]
G’s G-Spot – Taylor Swift: Folklore
Taylor Swift on Alpha-Audio. Yes, because with Folklore this ‘queen of pop’ has made a very nice album. An album full of nostalgic songs that effortlessly takes me back to my own carefree youth, but at the same time full of references to the present. My present in any case.
Video Interview Trptk – Recording: gear
What gear does Trptk use? What’s their secret sauce? We talk to Brendon Heinst about their recording equipment in the final part of the trilogy around Trptk. Think DPA microphones, Grimm clocks and Merging converters. Nice stuff. But nice stuff by itself won’t get you there… …so Bendon says
Video Interview Trptk – All About Dithering
Nerd Alert: we’re going into depth here. But that’s okay, is it? In this interview with Brendon Heinst from Trptk, we talk about Dithering. The ‘art’ of adding ‘noise’, to prevent noise. We ask whether it is also necessary with High-Res files. Or DSD. In short: it’s an in-depth interview about an interesting technique that […]
Video interview Trptk – High Res Audio, DXD and DSD
What’s DXD? Or DSD? What’s the difference? And what about MQA? We talk – extensively – with Brendon Heinst from Trptk studios in Utrecht, Netherlands. He explains to us – you – in detail, what high-res audio is, and why 32 bit floating point DXD can be useful. We take a nice sip from our […]