Audio player Foobar 2000 version 1.67 introduce exclusive mode output

[badsykes]

Hi ALl

foobar 1.67 with exclusive mode output released.There is a big difference in sound quality out of the box.


https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=121192

Enjoy!

[Trunks0]

Sorta. This shouldn't change the quality of your output unless there is a problem else where. All exclusive mode does is prevent interruption of the audio device from anything else. So unless you got multiple apps going that can screw with the audio, this doesn't do anything.

That said... I always have multiple apps going and like exclusive mode just to essentially mute them out when listening to music

[badsykes]

Ya... i founded this weird.So i was thinking i forgot something and i remebered...
The Nu Audio have this filters "Sound Color digital filter" ... The default one when the card installs was not the one that i used often.
But still even with the the filter that i usually used there is a more spatial and more clarity.
This was usually achieved by enabling fidelizer.

[drumphil]

This was usually achieved by enabling fidelizer.

Placebo.

[badsykes]

Placebo.

Nope ...

[drumphil]

What, because of all the reduced noise from the computer, with a sound card that already has filtering caps capable of producing results where the noise is 100db or more down from full scale?

Give me a break.

Any audio device that can be made audibly better by controlling other external factors (within reason) should have been designed better so that those external factors don't matter. If you need to do something else to fix it, you should have just got something that wasn't broken, and didn't need fixing.

The EVGA Nu Audio doesn't need fixing, unless you have a ground loop noise issue, which has other solutions, or you have a million dollar room and speaker system where the sound card would be the weakest link.

Even then, the Nu Audio is unlikely to be the thing you'd spend more money on to improve. It's not a stellar sound card, but it's still pretty good.

If you can really hear "computer noise" that can be reduced by reducing the amount of computing being done in your computer, then you either have a poor quality audio device, or you have ground loop issues.

It's nearly always ground loop issues.

Here is a proper review with proper measurements if you're curious of exactly what level of fidelity your card has, without any software tricks.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-pc-card.9137/

[badsykes]

What, because of all the reduced noise from the computer, with a sound card that already has filtering caps capable of producing results where the noise is 100db or more down from full scale?

Give me a break.

Any audio device that can be made audibly better by controlling other external factors (within reason) should have been designed better so that those external factors don't matter. If you need to do something else to fix it, you should have just got something that wasn't broken, and didn't need fixing.

The EVGA Nu Audio doesn't need fixing, unless you have a ground loop noise issue, which has other solutions, or you have a million dollar room and speaker system where the sound card would be the weakest link.

Even then, the Nu Audio is unlikely to be the thing you'd spend more money on to improve. It's not a stellar sound card, but it's still pretty good.

If you can really hear "computer noise" that can be reduced by reducing the amount of computing being done in your computer, then you either have a poor quality audio device, or you have ground loop issues.

It's nearly always ground loop issues.

Here is a proper review with proper measurements if you're curious of exactly what level of fidelity your card has, without any software tricks.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-pc-card.9137/

I spent a couple of years with free fidelizer and then move to the paid one.
I tested with and without many times and the difference is very noticeble.
I can tell you that with fidelizer pro (that i have now) the sound is much gentle and spatial than without the fidelizer.This was done with foobar 1.6.6 and below !
Foobar 1.6.7 has a noticeble different sound than previous versions.Some fidelizer options are implemented out of box in the new foobar.

[drumphil]

Let's have a look at the claims made about what it does, and what that achieves.

Improve audio performance by giving audio task more priority, improve low latency stability, and increase accuracy of clock resolution.

Take control of system and network utilization completely by optimizing Windows multimedia scheduling platform.

This makes no sense. The sound card has internal clocking. Audio is moved in fixed buffer size units. The sound card plays this data at a rate fixed by it's own internal clock. Either the audio chunks make it through in time, for perfect playback, or they don't and you get clicks and pops.

There is no range of quality. The card gets the chunks of audio in time to avoid dropping a buffer, or it doesn't and you get clicks and pops.

Isolate non-audio processes and reduce its priority to minimize any possible interference to audio task and related processes.

Launch music player application at high priority without interference from user permissions for solid performance.

Again, if you aren't getting clicks and pops, the sound card is getting the data fast enough, and audio quality isn't improved by giving these processes higher priority.

Stop/Disable most non-audio system services greatly reducing system footprints for pure audio performance.

Smartly adjust system services based on audio profiles to maintain required features like network and remote control on demand.

OK, now we get to a concept that could in theory (sorta kind of) improve audio fidelity, but would only matter if your sound device has a broken design.

Reducing system activity can in theory reduce the amount of noise the sound card is exposed to, through the PCIE data and power lanes, and from RF radiation inside the computer case.

But, playing around with process priorities doesn't stop the rest of the system from making this noise. Even if the audio processes are given a higher priority, doing stuff that puts load on the system will still cause the hardware to create this noise. Doing something that causes high CPU load will still make the same amount of noise. Process priorities may give the audio services higher priority, but they only have so much work to do, and the rest of the time will be spent running whatever else needs doing as fast as it can be done.

Any sound card that achieves good fidelity successfully filters out this noise in the first place. Designs that fail at this have measurable noise problems. The solution is to get a card that doesn't have a faulty design. If the Nu Audio didn't do this successfully, you wouldn't see the low noise levels shown in the measurements from the review I linked to. Sure, there are cards that do better, but the results are still pretty good, and if you want better than that, get a better sound card.

Now, if you have a crappy enough sound card, and a crappy enough PSU, and a crappy enough motherboard, there may be enough noise to be audible, but in general, a well designed sound card shouldn't care, and the claims made by fidelizer about reducing this noise are faulty anyway.

So why is it that in some combinations of computer, amp, speakers and sound card, even with a good sound card, that noise can be heard from high load, especially high GPU load?

The answer is ground loops. This happens when your computer has a PSU power cable with a ground pin, and your amp, or speaker with amp in it, has a PSU cable with a ground pin.

Because amateur gear like the Nu Audio has unbalanced outputs, with left signal, right signal, and an audio ground, you now have two ground paths between the computer and the speakers. The audio ground between the sound card and the amp, and the PSU ground from the computer and the amp.

For electrical engineering reasons that would take a few hours to explain properly, this is a fundamentally incompatible connection system. Ground loops mean that using sound cards that are well designed and do properly filter the internal noise from the PC, can still end up with noise being induced when connected to an amp that has a safety pin on it's PSU cable (three pin power plug). No amount of extra filtering on the sound card can avoid this, and even if you reduce system load, the noise will still happen.

Even professional gear that uses balanced connections can have this problem. Balanced connections don't use a signal and ground wire. They use a positive polarity signal, and a negative polarity signal connection, with a shield that isn't used as an audio signal ground.

Even then to avoid ground loop noise the shield often has to be disconnected between devices.

Some enterprising minds have though to themselves that if two connected grounds cause problems, how about snipping the ground plug off the PSU cable to break the ground loop while leaving the audio ground connected so that the audio circuit is still complete.... Bad idea, because now your PSU has no safety ground!

So, the options are, use an amp that is double insulated and requires no safety ground, use balanced IO like professional gear where you can break the ground path by disconnecting the shield without breaking the audio circuit because ground isn't needed for signal flow, or use a DI box that can convert the unbalanced signal to a balanced signal and can disconnect the ground path.


Gawd, I was going to try and give a "short version" answer, but as is usually the case it's turned into an essay.

I'm the technical officer for a recording and video production studio. If you have audio fidelity problems with your system I'm happy to help you sort them out, but the answers aren't found in snake oil placebo stuff like fidelizer.

What system do you have? What amps and speakers?

[badsykes]

Cheers for big answer.
My rig is on the left in "System Spec" under my nickname.
I haven't dive so deep in the engineering of the audio card.Fidelizer had an effect on other high end cards ohter than Nu Audio.I had Asus Essence ST and PowerColor Devil HDX.As i told you i used free fidelizer for many years before buying pro paid version.
With Nu audio have been complaints about noise from AIO pumps and gpu's and to put the card as faar as possible.
The Nu Audio Pro fixed this mostly with a backplate.
I own headphones Audio Technica ATH AD2000x.The speakers are Cambridge Audio SX50 plugged to an amp Onkyo a-9010 and plugged with RCA cables to the Nu Audio.

[drumphil]

Fidelizer had an effect on other high end cards ohter than Nu Audio.I had Asus Essence ST and PowerColor Devil HDX.As i told you i used free fidelizer for many years before buying pro paid version.

If fidelizer could actually reduce noise using the methods it claims are used to do this, and that made an audible difference to how those cards sounded, then their design was very poor.

But I can't see how the desired effect could be achieved using the methods they claim anyway.

Regarding noise from other internal components, like pumps, if your sound card doesn't filter or shield this out, the design is poor. More likely is noise from the pumps getting into the audio path due to ground loops.

I'll put money on it that no significant recording studio on the planet uses fidelizer. And that's where you're getting the audio from that you're listening to while deciding fidelizer makes and audible improvement.

It's a faulty solution that can't do what it claims, to a problem that has real solutions.


Human perception and preference is a funny thing. If you expect or want to hear a difference, chances are much higher that you will, even if there is no difference.


I believe your onkyo 9010 has a three prong power plug? And your computer does too? You got a ground loop. The connection between the safety ground's on the PSU's in computer and amp, and the audio ground between the sound card and the amp.

That will introduce noise into the system, that will vary with system load, but basically be there all the time to some level. The solution isn't to use software to reduce the system load in order to produce less noise, which can't really be done, and wouldn't make much difference anyway if you could. Breaking the loop would remove far more noise than fidelizer could, if it could do what it claims, which it can't. Playing around with process priorities could theoretically possibly, somewhat, maybe, make a tiny difference, semi plausibly, but much better to fix the ground loop that is responsible for allowing the vast majority of this noise into the audio signal path in the first place.

Most people have experienced ground loop noise without knowing what is the cause of the computer noise they hear. When you get into recording studios or radio studios, it quickly becomes apparent just how impossible it is to achieve low noise when you start connecting 10 things together, not just one computer and one amp, without eliminating ground loops. It's a common problem, but until you're faced with a situation where the noise is BAD, and you get rid of it by breaking a ground loop, only then do most people realize just how important it is to keeping noise out of your signal path.

[badsykes]

If fidelizer could actually reduce noise using the methods it claims are used to do this, and that made an audible difference to how those cards sounded, then their design was very poor.

But I can't see how the desired effect could be achieved using the methods they claim anyway.

Regarding noise from other internal components, like pumps, if your sound card doesn't filter or shield this out, the design is poor. More likely is noise from the pumps getting into the audio path due to ground loops.

I'll put money on it that no significant recording studio on the planet uses fidelizer. And that's where you're getting the audio from that you're listening to while deciding fidelizer makes and audible improvement.

It's a faulty solution that can't do what it claims, to a problem that has real solutions.


Human perception and preference is a funny thing. If you expect or want to hear a difference, chances are much higher that you will, even if there is no difference.


I believe your onkyo 9010 has a three prong power plug? And your computer does too? You got a ground loop. The connection between the safety ground's on the PSU's in computer and amp, and the audio ground between the sound card and the amp.

That will introduce noise into the system, that will vary with system load, but basically be there all the time to some level. The solution isn't to use software to reduce the system load in order to produce less noise, which can't really be done, and wouldn't make much difference anyway if you could. Breaking the loop would remove far more noise than fidelizer could, if it could do what it claims, which it can't. Playing around with process priorities could theoretically possibly, somewhat, maybe, make a tiny difference, semi plausibly, but much better to fix the ground loop that is responsible for allowing the vast majority of this noise into the audio signal path in the first place.

Most people have experienced ground loop noise without knowing what is the cause of the computer noise they hear. When you get into recording studios or radio studios, it quickly becomes apparent just how impossible it is to achieve low noise when you start connecting 10 things together, not just one computer and one amp, without eliminating ground loops. It's a common problem, but until you're faced with a situation where the noise is BAD, and you get rid of it by breaking a ground loop, only then do most people realize just how important it is to keeping noise out of your signal path.

Nothing is grounded because the wall socket doesn't have any.This was how the building was built.

[drumphil]

Can you hear noise from system activity on your computer when no audio/music is playing?

[badsykes]

Can you hear noise from system activity on your computer when no audio/music is playing?

Nope.It's fine.No abnormal sounds durring silence.

[drumphil]

In that case you don't even have the kind of problem that fidelizer could fix, if it could do what it said it can, which it can't.

What can playing around with process priorities possibly do that can possibly make a difference to the output of the DAC on the sound card? The answer is that it can't do anything to make any difference to that.

If you really want to be sure download a copy of Right Mark Audio Analyzer.

connect the output of your sound card back to the input on your sound card, and use RMAA to do a loopback test.

It plays a set of test signals, records them back in though the input, and measures exactly how degraded the result is compared to the original test signal.

Do it with and without fidelizer. If you get the exact same results, then fidelizer is doing nothing.

I noticed the creator of fidelizer takes issue with this, and uses diffmaker to try and prove his point, but he uses VB-Audio Virtual Cable as his digital loop back, and it isn't a bit perfect loopback! He says he's using it to make sure no hardware errors are involved, but it doesn't claim to be bit perfect anyway. I can't follow exactly what his methodology is anyway, and usually if I can't make sense of it, it's because some of it doesn't make sense.

If I send audio to the digital outputs on an audio device I own, and I don't get a bit perfect bitstream, I declare the device broken, and use something else that isn't broken. Even if I'm running a massive project with multiple video files and a hundred audio tracks, putting large load on the CPU and graphics card, a non broken sound device should still get the exact same sequence of 1's and 0's as what the DAW software sent it.


I think it helps if you understand exactly how audio is passed from a bit of software to the sound card. The playback software sends chunks of audio data, which is ultimately a sequence of 1's and 0's. Assuming you're not running through a resampling process in shared mode, and the drivers for the audio device aren't broken, and that the volume is set to 0db, that exact sequence of 0's and 1's is what the sound card gets. Computers don't mix up the occasional 1 or 0 when they are under high load. If they do, then they are broken somehow. This is actually how CPU stress test programs work. They perform a series of calculations over and over, and check the results from the CPU against the correct result for that calculation that is already known. If the CPU ever comes back with an answer that doesn't match the known correct answer, then it declares an error has been made. This is usually used to check for faulty hardware, or to verify that an overclocked system hasn't been pushed too far. If the computer is broken enough to mix up the 1's and 0's sometimes under high load, then the answer isn't to play with process priorities, but to fix whatever is broken in the hardware.

[badsykes]

In that case you don't even have the kind of problem that fidelizer could fix, if it could do what it said it can, which it can't.

What can playing around with process priorities possibly do that can possibly make a difference to the output of the DAC on the sound card? The answer is that it can't do anything to make any difference to that.

If you really want to be sure download a copy of Right Mark Audio Analyzer.

connect the output of your sound card back to the input on your sound card, and use RMAA to do a loopback test.

It plays a set of test signals, records them back in though the input, and measures exactly how degraded the result is compared to the original test signal.

Do it with and without fidelizer. If you get the exact same results, then fidelizer is doing nothing.

I noticed the creator of fidelizer takes issue with this, and uses diffmaker to try and prove his point, but he uses VB-Audio Virtual Cable as his digital loop back, and it isn't a bit perfect loopback! He says he's using it to make sure no hardware errors are involved, but it doesn't claim to be bit perfect anyway. I can't follow exactly what his methodology is anyway, and usually if I can't make sense of it, it's because some of it doesn't make sense.

If I send audio to the digital outputs on an audio device I own, and I don't get a bit perfect bitstream, I declare the device broken, and use something else that isn't broken. Even if I'm running a massive project with multiple video files and a hundred audio tracks, putting large load on the CPU and graphics card, a non broken sound device should still get the exact same sequence of 1's and 0's as what the DAW software sent it.


I think it helps if you understand exactly how audio is passed from a bit of software to the sound card. The playback software sends chunks of audio data, which is ultimately a sequence of 1's and 0's. Assuming you're not running through a resampling process in shared mode, and the drivers for the audio device aren't broken, and that the volume is set to 0db, that exact sequence of 0's and 1's is what the sound card gets. Computers don't mix up the occasional 1 or 0 when they are under high load. If they do, then they are broken somehow. This is actually how CPU stress test programs work. They perform a series of calculations over and over, and check the results from the CPU against the correct result for that calculation that is already known. If the CPU ever comes back with an answer that doesn't match the known correct answer, then it declares an error has been made. This is usually used to check for faulty hardware, or to verify that an overclocked system hasn't been pushed too far. If the computer is broken enough to mix up the 1's and 0's sometimes under high load, then the answer isn't to play with process priorities, but to fix whatever is broken in the hardware.

The sound quality Foobar 1.67 offers is aproaching very very close to same quality as with applied fidelizer pro with 1.66 and below.I am talking about

With fidelizer 8.7 pro the instruments get more clarity, clean sound.The fidelizer filter some background noise durring song playback.I can't hear it but with fidelizer the silence is differennt.I am not talking about Wasapi exclusive mode and Asio here.I listened with my headphones Audio technica ATH-AD2000x.I hear the lyrics much easier than without fidelizer.

[drumphil]

Do the RMAA loopback test. Run the test three or four times with and without fidelizer. If you get the same results with and without fidelizer then you know you're having yourself on.

I've fooled myself when I expected or wanted to hear a difference from something, and then actually measured the results.... no change!

If fidelizer is actually doing something, you'll get different results from the loopback with and without it. If you don't get different results, then you know your expectation bias has led to you fooling yourself.

Frankly, the guy who makes fidelizer is a bit nuts, a bit of a fraud, or a bit of both.

Look at post number 369 on this page:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/fide...795259/page-25

Somebody pointed out what I mentioned about his diffmaker test being faulty, because he uses a software loopback that isn't bit perfect. The guy calling him out then makes a bit perfect recording connecting a digital spdif output back to a digital spdif input. Perfect null. No fidelizer used.

You've been had. Your money taken in return for snake oil.

[drumphil]

Lol, I just noticed that amirm, who runs audio science review has commented in that thread!

Post number 478.

Please forgive me for reciting a bit of my resume before commenting on this . Some two decades of my professional experience was in operating system ("kernel") development and I managed the digital media division at Microsoft for a decade where the entire audio/video/imaging subsystem was part of my group.

In a nutshell, what these tools do has little merit and may actually make things worse, not better!

Here is the reason: the moment you boot up a modern operating system, on a CPU this day and age, massive amount of activity is going on in your system. No amount of "simplification" of what is running will do but a trickle to slow this down. The moment you try to read the audio file, tons of activity may occur to free memory, prefetch the file, filling CPU caches, virtual memory faults, etc., etc. No user optimization process can impact these activities because they run at the kernel privilege and are below any program/process running in the system. To think you can clamp this down is like thinking you can tell quiet down the sound in a loud concert by asking the person next to you to not talk .

There is also confusion on what is a fidelity improvement and what is a performance improvement. Let's look at what fidelizer says they do:



Everything they mention is aimed at one thing: to make sure your music plays without interrupts. Is that what you are trying to fix? If not, and that is the case for just about every situation, then you don't need any of this.

Your audio subsystem is designed to be robust in the face of chaotic operation of the system as it is. As such, there is fair amount of "buffering" where audios amples are read ahead and placed in temporary places for the audio hardware to draw and play. With the workload of playing music not even needing 1% of the CPU resources these days, even when the system falls behind, it can catch up at lightning speed. This is why even on your everyday machine or even phone you can play music with no interruptions.

More goodness here is not more goodness. Your system only needs to keep up with the audio being played. It is a relay team and going any faster than the rest of the members (i.e playing music) makes no difference.



This is more of the same. Much of the music playback process is already running at higher privilege than any normal program. When your DAC needs an audio sample, it gets it with extreme priority already (from the buffer). Yes the music player can fall behind but again, if it did, you would get an audio glitch. The fidelity would not change at all. It is just a pause and if there is no pause, you are good to go!



They are making a mixed claim here. One of them is the same as above. That is they stop any other process that may get in the way of playing music. Again, if the music is not pausing, this is of zero value.

The second part is where they hat on for fidelity. The idea is that by having less activity in the system, there is must be less noise, and hence better fidelity. As I explained at the outset, this is a fantasy. There is a reason this impact can't be measured in noise performance of the PC playing back with any half decent hardware. The machine is extremely noise at all times whether this optimization is done or not.

Yes, there is poorly designed hardware that I have measured that shows impact based on CPU activity. The solution there is to simply avoid that hardware. Vast majority of devices I have tested even at subh $60 price points don't have any issues here.

On timing, with an asynchronous DAC which you should be using, none of that comes from the operating system. The DAC hardware has its own and nothing you can do in the OS will change that.

I explain all of this so that you don't go into evaluating such a solution as "it must make things better." Because if you do, you absolutely will think that it does! Know that from someone who has worked on every line of such code and managed teams that built the same that what they think they have built is not what is built. They are taking advantage of concepts that are way too advanced for just about anyone to understand to imply that there is improvement. If there were any, we could trivially measure it.

Finally, I can make a fake program that says it does all of this but in reality doesn't, give it to you, have you run it and you will swear that it made audible improvements! I can do that even you are skeptical that it can!!! Our audio evaluation process is this broken.

You know, for the cost of a Nu Audio card, and a copy of fidelizer, you could have just got an external DAC with far superior audio fidelity!

Frankly, if fidelizer actually did what it claimed to do, then none of the digital audio links in the studios I manage would work without it! And they all do. If the problem it claims to solve was real, then the stuff I do wouldn't work, and it does.

[drumphil]

Ah **** it. I'm stupid enough to actually bother with this, because I care about audio fidelity, and apparently I have way too much time on my hands (thank you covid lockdown).

He claims that that his program results in a difference that can be detected, not just in the analog output of sound cards, but with a digital loopback. So even if the sound never gets converted to analog, just a digital recording of digital playback, that audio fidelity will be improved.

So, I'm going to test that. I'll have drag to a sound card out of storage that has digital outputs and inputs. I'll run RMAA, and I'll make a recording to feed into diffmaker, with and without fidelizer. I could do this right now in the studio, but covid lockdown prevents me from doing that, so I'll have to build a test rig at home.

Let's see what's what.

[badsykes]

Can't wait to see what you get.
I would suggest to just listen with fidelizer and without.Just download foobar 1.67 and use it as the player of choice.
If you will use the free fidelizer version it will apply settings and then after PC restart they will go away.
I have the pro version that after every pc restart fidelizer settings will not go away.They have to be unninstalled mannually.

[drumphil]

I would suggest to just listen with fidelizer

Why would I do that when I can actually measure what difference, if any, there is? Far more reliable method than relying on my fallible human perception.

If I think I can hear it, but I can prove it's not there, then I know I've fooled myself.

If I take a pill that promises to make my dick bigger, I might feel like it is, but if I get out a ruler and check, and it's the exact same size, then I know it was wishful thinking and really wanting it to be true.

He says it isn't just magical thinking, and is not just his perception, and that he can produce measurable results showing a difference. So, I'll see if his claims stack up.

[badsykes]

Lol, I just noticed that amirm, who runs audio science review has commented in that thread!

Post number 478.



You know, for the cost of a Nu Audio card, and a copy of fidelizer, you could have just got an external DAC with far superior audio fidelity!

Frankly, if fidelizer actually did what it claimed to do, then none of the digital audio links in the studios I manage would work without it! And they all do. If the problem it claims to solve was real, then the stuff I do wouldn't work, and it does.

The NU audio is actually an external DAC converted to be an internal card.
Audio Note are those who designed the card.Unfortunetly audio note has no experience in building audio internal cards hence the challenges.
They released a revised card Nu Audio Pro that addresses many of the initial problems.

[drumphil]

Looks like they managed to make it a bit better than the last one. (Yellow and blue lines in the middle of the pack)



https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...nd-card.19728/

Headphone amp seems decent, and it can output 8 channels for 7.1 surround sound, so that's not bad for the price. Probably beyond the limits of human perception at that point, so I'm not sure what could be gained spending money on software tricks like fidelizer (that doesn't work) that wouldn't be better spent on just getting a higher fidelity audio device if you really think getting better fidelity than that matters.

Any time you spend $50 on something to improve the audio fidelity of a sound card, you've gotta ask yourself why you didn't just put that $50 into getting a sound card with better fidelity. That can go on until you've got a $5,000 sound card, at which point you've gotta wonder how on earth a $5,000 sound card can have it's audio fidelity improved by a $50 bit of software, and what magical thing is it that the maker of such software knows that the makers of the sound card don't.

[badsykes]

Looks like they managed to make it a bit better than the last one. (Yellow and blue lines in the middle of the pack)



https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...nd-card.19728/

Headphone amp seems decent, and it can output 8 channels for 7.1 surround sound, so that's not bad for the price. Probably beyond the limits of human perception at that point, so I'm not sure what could be gained spending money on software tricks like fidelizer (that doesn't work) that wouldn't be better spent on just getting a higher fidelity audio device if you really think getting better fidelity than that matters.

Any time you spend $50 on something to improve the audio fidelity of a sound card, you've gotta ask yourself why you didn't just put that $50 into getting a sound card with better fidelity. That can go on until you've got a $5,000 sound card, at which point you've gotta wonder how on earth a $5,000 sound card can have it's audio fidelity improved by a $50 bit of software, and what magical thing is it that the maker of such software knows that the makers of the sound card don't.

Thx for the graph...There will not be a 5000$ audio card for gaming/mainstream segment.The most expensive sound card that i know is the creative AE-9 but because it has external modules and stuff.It costs around 500$.
I am not speaking about studio/production sound cards with balanced outputs and stuff.Just plain gaming / audiophile sound cards.
Another thing is MOST PC users are on the onboard soundcards like Realtek.The thing mainboard manufacturers tried to do a little bit more about the sound so they isolated the circuits on mainboard and put quality caps.
The discreete sound card segments like Nu Audio and Creative Ae-7 and Ae-9 is considered luxury in the pc market.Keep that in mind.Vast majority of users are ok with onboard sound card.
From a professional like it may seem decent/ bugdet level what is on Nu audio pro but for PC community is luxurious.

[metroidfox]

Just keep in mind that 16-bit audio is intended to be ~96 dB of dynamic range, so having anything more than that is pointless.

There are no devices that can do 24-bit's 144 dB range.

These kinds of dynamic ranges are really useful for mastering or even mixing where certain operations would cause you to lose bit depth. They are not useful to listeners.

Also, most music has single digit dynamic range. So we're barely even using anywhere close to the amount of data 16-bit provides.