WhoCaresAnymore
Posts: 775 +1,221
I can't stand headphones, hats, or anything on my head. It causes my Tourette to act up for some reason. I think it's a sensory thing. Makes me twitch like crazy. That's the only thing that does that.
Sound Cards: Worth Buying or Just a Niche Product?
- Thread starter neeyik
- Start date
Tran Bronstein
Posts: 11 +18
I use a set of neck speakers - they're like a lightweight collar containing small speakers and bluetooth. I barely know I'm wearing them but the sound is fairly decent. If you want great sound then try the Bose Soundwear or the Sony SRS NS7. There's still sound leakage so you couldn't sit in an office with them but they're great for not annoying the wife, neighbours etc.
BogdanR
Posts: 75 +28
Actually that is not true. The DAC/ Amp in the original SE was excellent. Measurably so. And it was capable of driving reasonably sensitive headphones with ease. My PSB or my HiFiMan for instance, even though the latter, being a planar, open design was not all that easy to drive.
I kept my old SE for exactly this reason: it works as a portable player better than most of the dedicated players of that era. You’re invited to drop by and give it a listen anytime you wish.
Gimp65
Posts: 84 +169
I owned quite a few soundscards, STX II, Soundblasters(all kinds), Yamaha etc etc. I gotta say that the soundblaster Z and ZxR was some of the worst, they color the sound way to much, pushing it away from the original sound, they went back after few days. Now im using onboard with an external Quad vena II DAC/amp via optical, pretty satisfied. Was also happy with the STX II + analog amp combo.
Oh man, I still miss my SoundBlaster Live! and make it work even on Windows 7 with modified drivers. I still remember how for some reason a PCI line burned and I fixed it with a fine wire and solder. should have kept it in my hardware collection and not given it away like I did.
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Okay there neck beard, I'll be sure to use obsolete TOSLINK cables, to connect my PC powered with it's "Plutonium 50+" efficiency rating PSU for the best results to "reject noise". Great advice... Please tell us more about all this digital noise rejection that's so problematic...
Bullwinkle M
Posts: 911 +817
The free power supply that came with a $40 case that I spoke of has an efficiency rating of 60% and produces a considerable amount of noise
It is used only as a testbed for noise rejection of my DAC's over USB
Certainly optical connections will reject the noise unless the DACs power were suppied by the noisy computer in question
Noise is "generally" not problematic with quality brands of modern power supplies rated at bronze or above
I have never had a noise problem using a modern Corsair, EVGA or Seasonic of Bronze rating or above
I have many DACs that completely reject all noise from the test system over a USB connection even when using a 10 foot cable, and I have some DACs that do not reject the noise even over a short cable
For DAC's that do not reject all noise over USB, I use an optical toslink cable and a separate power supply that will not create a ground loop problem for the DAC
I never use a noisy test system for daily use
I only keep it for testing noise rejection of DAC's
How do YOU test for noise rejection?
By the way, Toslink cables are not obsolete!
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Bullwinkle M
Posts: 911 +817
Actually, it IS true!
You are clearly wrong about its DAC quality
I still use the original iphone SE almost daily, but not for the sound quality
I also have HiFiMan Planars and several dongles to choose from
Even the $10 Apple Lightning Dongle is vastly superior to the internal DAC on the original SE
The lightning dongle drives more headphones, gets louder and has significantly cleaner sound quality with better detail
Even a modern free phone you get with cell service (like the Samsung A12) has a vastly superior DAC to the SE
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All in all nice(ish) article except for one point, there is no hardware audio processing since vista when microsoft decided to kill it. Every bit of audio on windows is processed by the CPU. You MIGHT have some channel mixing on the fancier (read the most expensive) soundcards but even then it's mostly done by the audio driver and the CPU muscle.
It's not microsoft's problem. You can easily output hight quality analog audio with a basic ALC1200 and a mobo that supports 5.1 or 7.1 outputs, or a fancier sound card. The key word is analog. If you want your audio through a digital output and a receiver you can have PCM but that's limited to stereo, anything else requires an encoder (dolby, dts...) which means you need to pay a license fee. You're indirectly paying that license on a console since it's basically included in the price.
That was true for Vista and Windows 7, but hardware processing was brought back in with Windows 8 onwards [source].
etempest
Posts: 64 +38
Creative made great hardware, but their drivers typically sucked after the Windows 9x era. "Daniel K" came along and made unofficial drivers using creative's official driver's to fix a lot of their issues and restore features Creative tried to artificially remove from certain configuration. The only time I saw creative care about their drivers was when they were competing with Aureal (RIP).
Neutronman
Posts: 32 +45
Interesting post.
Like everything IT, the law of diminishing returns applies!
I built pc's with and without sound cards over the years, favoring Creative until I got fed up with their crappy, bloated drivers. After this I tried various onboard solutions in high end motherboards. The DAC's were OK, but the headphone amps were terrible. So my go to solution for sound these days is a reasonably priced external DAC/AMP and headphone combo. I use this for gaming, watching video and listening to music.
Currently I have a Topping DX3Pro+ and Hifiman 400SE which I paid $320 in total. The DAC/AMP was $199. I auditioned other DAC/AMPs costing 4 times more and $600 headphones, but to be honest really could not tell the difference between my cheaper solution and the more expensive solutions. Perhaps my old, hairy ears are the limiting factor, or the actual source of music etc!!!
Can you get away without a dedicated sound card? Sure you can, but will it give you a premium experience?
Like everything IT, the law of diminishing returns applies!
I built pc's with and without sound cards over the years, favoring Creative until I got fed up with their crappy, bloated drivers. After this I tried various onboard solutions in high end motherboards. The DAC's were OK, but the headphone amps were terrible. So my go to solution for sound these days is a reasonably priced external DAC/AMP and headphone combo. I use this for gaming, watching video and listening to music.
Currently I have a Topping DX3Pro+ and Hifiman 400SE which I paid $320 in total. The DAC/AMP was $199. I auditioned other DAC/AMPs costing 4 times more and $600 headphones, but to be honest really could not tell the difference between my cheaper solution and the more expensive solutions. Perhaps my old, hairy ears are the limiting factor, or the actual source of music etc!!!
Can you get away without a dedicated sound card? Sure you can, but will it give you a premium experience?
Neutronman
Posts: 32 +45
Ludak021
Posts: 775 +590
BogdanR
Posts: 75 +28
Yes, newer hardware is a little better, especially the inexpensive dongle which measures well, no dispute there. That however doesn’t make the original SE poor.
“Vastly superior“ you say. Care to back up this claim with some measurements?
Bullwinkle M
Posts: 911 +817
What for?
Most of us can clearly hear the difference
Maybe I should have said CLEARLY superior but you'd still likely gripe
The combination of improvements I described add up to a huge improvement overall, so the word "vastly" was accurate
Measurements alone would not tell you what the improvements were....
The $10 dongle supports a wider range of headphones and gives improved Volume on harder to drive headphones
Greater clarity and detail as well
If you cannot appreciate the vast improvements then I am sorry for your hearing loss
Now, is there anything else I can help you with today?
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I just bought a Sound blaster G6 three months ago and I am still loving it even I am switched from gaming headsets to mid-end hifi headphones
No mention of HDMI audio in the article that I saw. Video card EMI was mentioned. I dunno how that got missed.
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