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ASUS Eeepc 1005PX sound quality?

post #1 of 14
1/4/11 at 3:30pm
Thread Starter 

I am currently close to buying a laptop. It's mostly for school work, but I would also use it for listening to music while I type in college. My cans are decent, and I feel I'm more limited by my soundcard than by headphones.

 

So does anyone have any experience with this? Is the soundcard (it's probably onboard, since it's a really small laptop) any good? Is the headphone-out any good?

 

This is about the 10.1 inch laptop, not all those PDA-looking things ASUS developed tongue.gif

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post #2 of 14
1/5/11 at 3:57pm
Thread Starter 

I could really use some help on this...

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post #3 of 14
1/5/11 at 6:21pm

Well, it's not exactly the netbook you're asking about, but I hope this helps. I have an acer aspire one D250, a few days ago I ran it through RMAA. It wasn't pretty, the onboard realtek ALC272x gave this crappy performance:
 

 

75028442.png
 
I think it's safe to assume that almost every netbook is the same on this matter.. as is the base atom cpu and the 945GSE+IC7M/nm10 chipset combo on every one of them out there, apart from AMD or via based ones... My point being, almost all the hardware currently used on them is the same, it may be true as well for the audio codecs used.

Edited by vodkex - 1/5/11 at 10:20pm
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post #4 of 14
1/5/11 at 7:40pm
Thread Starter 

Thanks... that really sucks.

Anyone know of a good portable laptop? Maybe 12 inches

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post #5 of 14
1/5/11 at 10:50pm

Any laptop is going to have bad internal sound. That's just a given. The Dacport is your friend.

 

DACport-above-300.jpg

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post #6 of 14
1/5/11 at 11:00pm

The vast majority of affordable laptops are either Realtek or Intel HD sound chips.  Both basically suck.

 

I would recommend choosing your laptop based on other specs, and then using a USB DAC for any high quality music listening.  There are lots of threads on this site about different USB DACs.  The decent ones start around $99.

 

If you use a USB DAC, the built in sound card doesn't matter, because it's not used.

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post #7 of 14
1/6/11 at 4:08am
Thread Starter 

Ok thanks, I'll think about this. Seems like there aren't many options if you want a good soundrolleyes.gif

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post #8 of 14
1/6/11 at 5:26am

Don't buy a laptop based on the sound quality because they all sound horrible, instead buy a good spec'd laptop and get a dac, i take it you will want the dac to be small and portable look at the fiio e7 or udac.

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post #9 of 14
1/6/11 at 5:29am
Thread Starter 

Fiio E7 sounded like a good alternative. I know there must be a thousand threads for this, but what exactly is the difference between a DAC and an amp? I kind of know what an amp does, but a DAC is new to me.

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post #10 of 14
1/6/11 at 6:28am
Thread Starter 

Was my question so nooby that it didn't deserve an answer? triportsad.gif

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post #11 of 14
1/6/11 at 7:08am

A dac, converts a digital signal, usb , s/pdif , to an anaglog signal , a amp amplies an anaglog signal and most amps change the sound aswell.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to-analog_converter

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplifier

 

The e7 is a dac/amp in 1, it will drive headphones up to 100ohms , if you need more power for bigger headphones when your home then theres the E9.

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post #12 of 14
1/6/11 at 10:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by LizardKing1 View Post

Was my question so nooby that it didn't deserve an answer? triportsad.gif



You just asked your question an hour before this post.  What is newbie is doing a bump or this type of post an hour after asking a question.  Sometimes answers, especially correct answers, can take at least a day or two, especially in non-headphone parts of this forum such as Computer Audio.

 

To answer your question, "DAC" stands for Digital to Analog Converter.  But what it does is get the digital music from your computer into analog form so it can be amplified.  Some products that people call USB DACs contain the headphone amplifier as well, though some do not.


Edited by barleyguy - 1/6/11 at 10:23am
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post #13 of 14
1/6/11 at 11:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JRG1990 View Post

Don't buy a laptop based on the sound quality because they all sound horrible, instead buy a good spec'd laptop and get a dac, i take it you will want the dac to be small and portable look at the fiio e7 or udac.


I would disagree with the statement that all laptops sound horrible. This very much depends on your headphones and the quality of built in audio -- it is heavily different between various notebook brands and models.

 

For instance I happen to own a Eee 1201 netbook from ASUS and it sounds absolutely fantastic on low impedance IEM headphones. I also own a uDAC-2 and must say that the difference between ASUS Eee and the uDAC-2 headphone jack is almost none. Eee jack output is certainly better than Meier Audio Porta Corda and muuuch better than Dell Latitudes "E" and "Z".

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post #14 of 14
1/6/11 at 3:29pm
Thread Starter 

I have subscriptions to several threads, and this one didn't get any replies at the moment, while the others were flaming. I wasn't whining, it was just a joke. I was making fun of myself because I know most people understand how a DAC works, and I only knew that it stands for Digital-Analog Converter.

 

Thank you for the replies, you were really helpful. I'll probably buy the Eeepc anyway and see (aka listen) for myself. I'll probably not be able to tell how good the sound is in comparison to a DAC-AMP since my ear isn't as audiophile as I might wish, but I might consider buying a Fiio E7 later.

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