Improve Laptop Sound Quality

Welcome, and sorry for your wallet

 

Any half decent DAC will improve your SQ significantly. It all depends on your budget.

 

You can get a HRT Music Streamer II, a Musiland Monitor 02, a Centrance DACport, among many others. You will notice a vast improvement in sound with any of these, as onboard chipsets that come on both desktops and laptops are bad, real bad.

 

There's also the different purpose gear out there, audiophile interfaces, pro audio interfaces, DJ interfaces, all of those have differences. If price is a concern, then cost/performance ratio is something to consider.

Edited by Roller - 4/12/11 at 11:23am

The HRT Music Streamer II  , fiio E7/E9 , Audio-GD NFB-12 , are all good options and well sound way better than a standard laptop soundcard, you will need something with RCA out to hook up your receiver.

The E9 alone is just a amp/preamp, the E7 alone is a dac/headphone amp it has no rca out for receivers thats why you need both.

I'm also in a similar situation.

I connect my laptop to a pioneer hi-fi system via a jack to RCA cable, the hi-fi system is connected to a pair of JVC speakers.

I would like to improve the audio quality,as i'm sure the onboard sound is not that good at all.

I also listen to music on my laptop using my new Shure SRH840's. Therefore i would like something that will work at improving the sound quality from my laptop when its connected to my hi-fi aswell as my Shures.

Improving the source of my music is very important to me , since i recently got the new headphones and i'm sure the laptop is not doing them justice.

I really have no idea if i should get a DAC like the E7 or something like this instead.

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=usb+sound+card&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=14477361060386358704&sa=X&ei=Iv2kTdyvLIK4hAexw7nTCQ&ved=0CDkQ8wIwAg#

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD Sound card is about £10-15 more than the E7. Which im fine with.

I listen to all types of music usually in FLAC or high VBR mp3's.
Edited by gurpswu - 4/12/11 at 6:39pm

What did you end up getting? I went with the X-FI USB, and use it with my SRH840's...love it so far.

uca202

You will most likely not hear a difference between this and much higher end dacs.

Why wouldn't he?

Because the uca202 is very good and there aren't big differences between dac's.

I have tested several dac's and done blind tests and the differences are minute and non-existent in most cases.

Then clearly state that it's your personal experience, not a rule of thumb.

 

While it's easy to understand that people who spend thousands on high end DACs do feel the need to justify their purchases, with the differences likely to be much smaller than claimed by some, I do believe and have heard clear differences between DACs.

 

Oh, and there are plenty of people who agree that the UCA202 is quite good, but just can't drive more power hungry headphones properly.

Edited by Roller - 5/25/11 at 9:43am

I believe pretty much all dacs above $50 sound the same, excluding coloured dacs.

The op can also just buy a headphone amplifier to go with the uca202 if he needs more power.

Ok, that's your opinion.

 

I've found that even similarly priced DACs sound different.

 

Basically, everyone has different ears.