captaincranky
Posts: 19,689 +8,831
I have a pretty decent home theater system, completely separate from any computer.I'm currently driving it from DVD/Blu-ray, and a CD changer
I have two "spare PCs", One .an old XP dual core Pentium (E-2200), G-31 micro board.
The other, a Celeron 900 laptop, running Vista. So, it's SATA 2, and would benefit from an SSD upgrade.
I buy CDs, and rip them lossless, with Window Media Player. (I'm assuming they print back to CD with no difference in sound quality, at least I can hear any).
Either machine only has "line out" (headphones), and no SPDIF.
I'm wondering what anybody thinks, as to whether there would be any difference in sound quality between the sound driver in the laptop, and the Realtek audio in the XP desktop? Or would I need to buy an add-in sound card for the desktop, to get the CD quality I'm looking for.
I know somebody out there is thinking, "you're lazy, why not just try it". Well it does involve installing an SSD in the laptop, along with transferring a few hundred GB of files to both machines, just to put me in a position to A/B them.
All hints, speculations, experiences, wild guesses, and opinions, are welcomed, and appreciated.
CODA: I obviously would prefer to use the lappy if I could. It would boot like crazy, and take up 1/10 the space. An SSD in the XP box would be useless, since the machine is SATA 1, and running the HDDs as IDE.
I have two "spare PCs", One .an old XP dual core Pentium (E-2200), G-31 micro board.
The other, a Celeron 900 laptop, running Vista. So, it's SATA 2, and would benefit from an SSD upgrade.
I buy CDs, and rip them lossless, with Window Media Player. (I'm assuming they print back to CD with no difference in sound quality, at least I can hear any).
Either machine only has "line out" (headphones), and no SPDIF.
I'm wondering what anybody thinks, as to whether there would be any difference in sound quality between the sound driver in the laptop, and the Realtek audio in the XP desktop? Or would I need to buy an add-in sound card for the desktop, to get the CD quality I'm looking for.
I know somebody out there is thinking, "you're lazy, why not just try it". Well it does involve installing an SSD in the laptop, along with transferring a few hundred GB of files to both machines, just to put me in a position to A/B them.
All hints, speculations, experiences, wild guesses, and opinions, are welcomed, and appreciated.
CODA: I obviously would prefer to use the lappy if I could. It would boot like crazy, and take up 1/10 the space. An SSD in the XP box would be useless, since the machine is SATA 1, and running the HDDs as IDE.
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