When I was sort of an audiophile, my first steps were to switch from ALSA to OSS under Linux. I still think I heard the difference for music, and probably yes - because that was OSS without mixing.
And I still think I hear the difference between FreeBSD newpcm and Linux sound stack. newpcm’s mixing is simpler (firefox starting, opening a sound device and music volume sharply dropping in half is not nice), but it seems to spoil the sounds less.
pomfegranate@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Honestly I have no idea how audio encoding works but I just imagined going from 80 decibels to 81 decibels (10x) and an audiophile losing his shit