i hooked my sound card up to my aiwa shelf system. the stereo is pretty nice, but i get static with alot of my mp3s. the sound card is nothing great. could this be the problem? all of them a re 128 kpbs or higher. i just want to make sure that they don't sound like that in the car. any ideas?

thanks,

jeremy

oh, i wish i wish i had an empeg...

Well, AIWA is not considered the pinnacle of audiophile equipment, and the crummy connectors on the sound card probably don't help much either. I would hesitate to judge MP3s based on your testing equipment.

I tested them using my empeg into a NAD pre-amp, then out to a Bryston 2B 100-watt amp (this was prior to installing into my car). I had no problems with static - moreso with a lack of clarity at the top end, but that is the problem with MP3s, not the system.

I'd be quicker to say it's a problem with your sound card an/or configuration. My IBM Thinkpad 600e laptop has TERRIBLE sound playback. I can't figure out why but I can take an MP3 or WAV file from anywhere and it'll come out crackly with clicks and pops. I put a set of headphones on and heard it in that as well.

I would then transfer this file to my home system which is rather well prepared and the sound will play perfect on it. No pops, no clicks.

From what I can tell, it sounds like a DMA problem. Without DMA configured right, the system merely polls the sound card and puts data into it to play whenever it can. If you're doing some heavy file I/O, you'll easily distrupt this transfer and the output will be a horrible click and pop noise.

---
Shawn Poulson
spoulson@bigfoot.com