How the heck can my Realtek soundchip sound so bad?

Tried using an attenuator? Those IEMs are exceptionally sensitive and might be getting too much power. Read lots of posts where an attenuator has helped IEMs, though I don't use IEMs myself.

That or the phone has lower output impedance. Higher output impedance than the phone's could cause that.

The shure's are 105db, the UE's are 115db, yes, very big difference. The UE's require 1/10th as much power as the Shure's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mralexosborn 

My Shure SE110's sounded fine. 

Shure 16 Ohms

UE 13 Ohms

 

Could it make that much of a difference?

Onboards are pretty much garbage no matter what you plug into them.  I would suggest a different source.
 

Perhaps it could be your files that are of a low bitrate? I have a Realtek sound card as well, but my UE 700s sound pretty good with it. Try going to Control Panel > HD Audio Settings (or something like that) and mess around with the settings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mralexosborn 

Is FLAC not good enough? So what you guys are trying to say, is this wouldn't be improved with say the uDac?

What?  You never mentioned your source material, so it was a logical question.  FLAC is perfect, lossless material.  Your sound experience would probably be improved with a uDAC, but your onboard sound might not be the root of the problem.  Know anyone else with another source?  Does it sound good out of any other onboard solutions?

Laptops and PCs are very noisy environments.  And no PC or laptop manufacturer cares about how good your purchase sounds.  They just want profit, that equals cheap.  Its up to you to work around that.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by mralexosborn 

Is FLAC not good enough? So what you guys are trying to say, is this wouldn't be improved with say the uDac?

Yes.  You never mentioned what you were using for source material.

You only have:

Material->source->headphone or speakers.

Your material is perfect, so it is the source or the headphones.

Some give great opinions on the uDAC and some say it is little more the a external "onboard" audio chip.

I have not personally tested it so I cannot give impressions based on it's specs alone.

Just because the material is flac doesn't necessarily mean it's good. I have a lot of flacs with obvious noise, clipping from loudness war, insane range compression, etc. Even had a few with rip errors, but I delete those.

They are as good as the CD counterpart if not made by an idiot.

Great, has nothing to do with the topic either.

Yeah, the OP is saying his UEs sound bad with his Realtek card beyond all that. Not as good as his other IEMs.

/topic fix

If both headphones are fine on the phone, and one is bad on the onboard, then it's the sensitivity at fault - my suggestion was all he needed. A different dac can solve the problem same as an attenuator, but also costs more.