Can Dell Venue pro 8 owners do me a quick favor?

[swanlee]

Can you go to the control panel and sound options and see if Windows will allow you to adjust the Default bit rate and resolution?
I have an Acer W4 and this setting is greyed out in windows and was wondering if the Dell Venue Pro 8 had the same issue as they are using the same drivers from what I can tell

Screen shot of what I'm taking about. As you can see it is stuck at 16bit 48K but the actual sound card fully support 24BIT 192KHZ audio. I use my tablet with headphones and high res audio so this setting is important to me.

If you can adjust this setting can you let me know what version of audio driver are on the tablet? I'm not having any luck with Acer getting this resolved and I will resort to making my own driver to fix it if I have to.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Bourbs]

it is greyed out on mine.

 

[swanlee]

Interesting looks like an Intel/Realtek issue then

Thanks for the reply

 

[James8561]

Before you go out and spend time making custom driver (which I've never heard of), do note that research has shown that 24 bit improves nothing over 16 bit audio and anything greater than 48k can even degrade audio quality. Any difference perceived will be placebo at best

 

[JamesPTao]

Before you go out and spend time making custom driver (which I've never heard of), do note that research has shown that 24 bit improves nothing over 16 bit audio and anything greater than 48k can even degrade audio quality. Any difference perceived will be placebo at best

Not true at all, although you would have a hard time hearing the difference through a poor pair of head phones. There is a difference and no it does not defeade the quality.
Reminds me of the argument against super audio playing sound beyond the human hearing range. Sounds pointless, why would they playback sounds we cant hear. The answer is because the harmonics of the sounds outside of our range affect the sound in our hearing range.

 

[JamesPTao]

Now the question is, is how good or poor the headphone preamps are in the dell. If they are garbage even with good headphones you will need a good dac with quality preamps hooked up to get the most out of it.

 

[JamesPTao]

Now the question is, is how good or poor the headphone preamps are in the dell. If they are garbage even with good headphones you will need a good dac with quality presamps hooked up to get the most out of it.

Also a good dac should bypass the card. Much easier solution.
Whoops, didn't mean to quote myself.

 

[swanlee]

I have a good set of headphones and alot of audio in 24bit 96k resolution so I want to play it in it's native resolution, Ill leave arguments about if people can tell the difference alone as they just end up going in circles.

I'm looking at a good usb dac but I bought the acer for portability and long battery life a usb dac dangling out the side kind of kills that.

Bummer that both the acer and dell have this defect, I've never seen a modern windows pc that had this setting greyed out. Looks like a driver issue with intel then. The hardware can handle it so the drivers should allow it. It probably going to be impossible to get a company to own and fix this problem.

 

[James8561]

24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
here's the article.
not trying to start an audio argument (as we know there's no end to these). I just want to share with you some info and help you better decide if it's really worth the effort. do note that this is an inexpensive tablet so don't expect top audio quality. actually I doubt any tablet beside the SP line has audio quality any good. I know that DV8P sounds terrible when I connect direct to speaker.

 

[hs k]

I saw an article similar to this on head-fi long ago, all I reminder about it is now, that they were bickering over some paper having no blind tests as basis. Needless to say, the 50pg long conversation was a blood bath

 

[swanlee]

24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
here's the article.
not trying to start an audio argument (as we know there's no end to these). I just want to share with you some info and help you better decide if it's really worth the effort. do note that this is an inexpensive tablet so don't expect top audio quality. actually I doubt any tablet beside the SP line has audio quality any good. I know that DV8P sounds terrible when I connect direct to speaker.

Thanks but don't care, I literally have hundreds of gigs of 24bit 96k audio that I want to play in it's native resolution on this tablet simple as that. Spare me the rhetoric Im more than aware of all the articles and discussions on the subject it is not relevent to this discussion on why the hardware support 24bit 96k but the drivers are locked down to 16bit. Im very happy with the audio quality of the tablet otherwise I just want to use the hardware to its fullest capacity.

The arguments for or against 24bit audio have nothing to do with what I'm asking and will simply muddy the discussion.

Its simple if the hardware support 24bit audio why don't the drivers allow it?

 

[JamesPTao]

The fiio e7 is a good dac for the money. I'm not positive about the 24 bit support you will have to check on that but very good preamps.

 

[James8561]

maybe drivers don't allow it because:
1. lazy developers
2. it may be unstable (the hardware supports it but it's not quite perfect)
3. it may drains more battery

also, note that this tablet uses audio hardware from Intel, which is worse than realtek, which are an order of magnitude below discrete sound cards (which you probably are used to). honestly the audio output from this tablet, speaker and via 3.5mm, is quite disappointing. I plug my speakers in once and it sounds worse than realtek and miles below creative sound. same if I use headphones.
though if you do find a mod to make audio superior, do tell us

 

[swanlee]

maybe drivers don't allow it because:
1. lazy developers
2. it may be unstable (the hardware supports it but it's not quite perfect)
3. it may drains more battery

also, note that this tablet uses audio hardware from Intel, which is worse than realtek, which are an order of magnitude below discrete sound cards (which you probably are used to). honestly the audio output from this tablet, speaker and via 3.5mm, is quite disappointing. I plug my speakers in once and it sounds worse than realtek and miles below creative sound. same if I use headphones.
though if you do find a mod to make audio superior, do tell us

I'm using an acer w4 and the audio sounds really good with headphones the dell seems to use the same sound card which is a realtek sound card with drivers supplied by intel. I got the audio controller specs from acer and the card in here is not bad, it definitely won't drive speakers as it is not designed to but it is more than good enough to drive a decent pair of headphones.

Wish I could just get ahold of a someone either at intel, acer or realtek that would own the issue and either explain why it is greyed out or provide a registry hack of driver tweak. It is literally impossible to speak to a human being at any of these companies about an issue like this.

This is the audio controller the acer uses which I assume is the same as the dell

realtek ALC5642 audio controller

 

[swanlee]

I got an answer from Acer, this will effect the Dell to and any baytrail tablet. Pretty lame they don;t even give us an option to change the setting and it will not be fixed.

This audio problem is a limitation of the LPE (Low Power Engine) utilized with this Intel Bay Trail solution. They say that all systems that use Intel Bay Trail will have this limitation, regardless of who makes the computer. We have formally requested Intel to improve this in the next generation of CPU solutions but there will not be a fix for the current W4-820. It will only be able to a utilize a 16-bit, 48000 Hz sample rate."

 

[JamesPTao]

I got an answer from Acer, this will effect the Dell to and any baytrail tablet. Pretty lame they don;t even give us an option to change the setting and it will not be fixed.

This audio problem is a limitation of the LPE (Low Power Engine) utilized with this Intel Bay Trail solution. They say that all systems that use Intel Bay Trail will have this limitation, regardless of who makes the computer. We have formally requested Intel to improve this in the next generation of CPU solutions but there will not be a fix for the current W4-820. It will only be able to a utilize a 16-bit, 48000 Hz sample rate."

Sounds like your only option is an external dac that will take over the sound conversion allowing higher bit rates.