Macbook Air DAC/Sound Quality?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeusEx 

Does anyone know what kind of DAC the new Macbook Air (the 13", specifically) uses?  Or how good the stock SQ of Macbooks are in general?

My 5 year old MacBook is still running well and over all am more than pleased with it. The only downfall is the noisy sound coming out of it. I can't stand the SQ straight out of it, but of course a good DAC/amp does it wonders 

The signal from my mid-2009 macbook pro is noisy as hell, but with an attenuator the noise disappears and it's decent-sounding.

Moving to an external DAC is another level entirely, though.

The signal from my 2010 17" MBP is fairly good, it lacks power if you try to use it directly with headphones, but as a line out, it's good easily on the some level as entry level DACs.

I have no idea Since I don't own any IEMs, but I suppose it would be powerful enough since IEMs are not exactly know as power hungry.

Any Apple store in your area?

There is an extensive (5 page) write up of the new MBAs in the current edition of the  Australian magazine 'Macworld'. Despite reading through it twice, I can find absolutely zero mention of the sound from anything other than the (wow) onboard speakers. In the same issue, they rate the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 as the best on-ear headphone they can find - pretty much sums up the intended readership, but they do run a lot of the ads for discount Macs here in Oz - without the eye candy, it could easily have been written by any first-year University student with a spell checker and the ability to regurgitate Apple's product pages.

This is an example of one of their speaker comparisons - again, I'm not seeing anything here that makes me leap up and exclaim 'Whoa ! These guys really know their stuff !' ...

http://www.macworld.com.au/reviews/lab-test-speakers-of-the-house-20841/ 

the 17" MBP I have is more than powerful enough and sounds great through my pair of Grado 225s. I wouldn't expect the same performance from an Air but it can't be horrible, and a decent portable usb dac would most certainly clean things up (with a little battery life loss)

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeusEx 

^^How well does it do with the JH customs?

I mean, it sounds okay. Apple's lineup has higher quality as a part of the brand, but since it is indeed laptop audio the signal is noisy. Details get lost in the noise. WIth the UE attenuator, the noise is no longer present and the audio clears up some, so it sounds fine, basically. With my firewire hookup, the highs get crisper and the low end fills in while tightening up.

Straight out of the port is definitely listenable, it's just not as good as it could be. The level is a bit high for my IEMs, so the attenuator solves both that problem and the problem of noise.

Cirrus Logic CS4206A in mine

I'll confirm later when I'm back home, but I think it's what the device manager says under windows.

Confirmed