i can't hear a difference between fiio e7 and my onboard sound. - Page 2

Just get rid of it, being indecisive is not a quality trait.

EDIT

My friends love and hate me for my honesty so it's not a personal attack.

E7 and your on-board sound the same? That's kindda odd.

It is hard to believe that 2 sources with different chips and components would sound exactly the same.

Maybe it is because you lack of experience in this hobby and don't know what to listen for when comparing sources.

How about you force yourself to only use fiio e7 for weeks to get used to the sound? That might help you hear the different easier.

To be honest, there should be quite a difference. It's not like the headphones you are using are of bad quality, so I think only your ears are to blame. Did you sit down and actually listen to the music? Because if you didn't, music will just become "background" noise, and the differences will drown out.

When I bought my iBasso D10, I was actually surprised that there was such a big difference compared to my MacBook Pro's headphone out. I even had my girlfriend at the time do some blind testing, and she also said the iBasso D10 sounded way better.

Guys, let him figure it out.  I don't know how people can just say you should hear a difference.  We all have different hearing, experience, and etc  Sound is subjective.  What may be music to one may be noise to the other.  Let us know how it turns out in a month.  

I've listened to E5, E7, E9.   They do not improve SQ.  They are cheap I know,but they are a waste of money from the fact that they do not cause any noticible improvements.   If you have a laptop with high signal to noise ratio(you don't hear hiss), forget the E7, it will not make it sound better. If you don't hear hiss, I'm guessing you have a headphone that is not that sensitive.  If you do pick up hiss, any external sound card will work fine(don't get rapped up into the hype here), external(not dongles, it will pick up noise).  

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcasey25raptor 

then the people on this forum were very misleading because i was under the impression it would improve sound quality. but what i got was the same performance as before.

1. Welcome to the real world. It sux when hype is greater than reality.

2. Even the most hardened opponents of burn-in would seem prepared to give a new piece of kit more than an hour to 'bed in' - in your case, I think you gave it half a song, judging by your postings in the E7 thread and the creation of this thread.

You seem to be under the impression that a sub-$100 DAC/amp was going to completely rock your world straight out of the box. If I had adopted the same attitude to the E9, it wouldnt have made it to the 50-hour mark : fortunately, I was prepared to give it time and now I spend a large chunk of my weekends enjoying the amp for what it is, not for what other people tried to tell me it was.

The sooner you start to filter out a lot of the 'OMG! THIS THING ROCKS!' brigade on HF, the happier you will be. Several of these people are repeat offenders, and will proclaim every new ultra-cheap gadget to be 'the Messiah' - that said, I believe the E7 is probably better than you are prepared to give it credit.

The questions is, what and why are you trying to improve?

Onboard soundcard can vary from the really cheap stuff (Realtek lower end), to the semi-decent (Sigmatel, Realtek higher end) and even the really good one (ASUS SonicMaster, Creative SoundBlaster, etc). E7 is not meant to improve everything, so you have to expect accordingly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcasey25raptor 

hello everyone. i ordered a fiio e7 a few weeks ago because i had onboard audio and i was told it would make a difference. well in all honesty i hear no significance between my onboard sound and my new fiio e7. if anything my onboard sounds better and clearer. seriously guys is this some kind of joke? i spend $100 i expected a difference.

This is great, it means that you are impervious to all the snake oil on this forum and will not head into a downward spiral of pissing cash away on unnecessary audio products. Be happy with the gear you have and enjoy a fatter bank account.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hotsport 

It is hard to believe that 2 sources with different chips and components would sound exactly the same.

Not really.  Look up the Carver challenge where Carver built amps to specifically mimic other amps (including tubes) matching the sound to where DBT was impossible.  Those were for amps that were made to sound different . . . many amps have astronomically lower differences that are nigh impossible to DBT already unless built deficient.  In this case, the biggest tell would be a noisy on-board . . . but if it isn't already filled with noise the odds telling the difference will probably be low to impossible.  He would probably need some severely power hungry headphone making the on-board clip before an external amp is worth considering.

@User02

I can think of times where you're wrong actually.  Many motherboards would probably clip with a 300 ohm load, so more power is beneficial in such a case to prevent distortion.  There's also output impedance which can cause frequency response deviation on mostly reactive loads.  The real question is: do the headphones need more power, consist of a reactive load that the current amp messes up, or is the current output noisy?  If no to all of those then a new amp/dac isn't worthwhile.

^You mean lower efficency headphones.  LCD-2 has 50ohm impedance, and it's not easy to drive.  I wouldn't drive it from a laptop nor E9.  I'm just saying none of the 3 I have mentioned is worth it, even at a cheap price.  If I had hard to drive headphones of low sensitivity like HD800 or LCD-2, E9 would be on the bottom of the list.  There is no point of purchasing those headphones if I only had a E9.

Can you give us some background re your low opinion of the E9 as a desktop amp ? I dont have the LCD2, but I'd be happy to give them a shot from the E9.

I'm surprised no one has brought up the headphones he's using. The question is, does Shure SRH840 really benefit from amping? 

^I've owned the 840 in the past, and to my experience it does not.  I was surprised how sensitive it was.  It had no problem being driven from a tiny mp3 player.  It's sensitivity is 102 dB/mW.