Available Soundcards

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSleip 
I wan't to know how would you rate the SQ of a Sonar X-Fi Titanium, and a 2010 iMac (please don't stray off topic), and what would be their audio dedicated counterparts (meaning how much it would take for a market dac/amp to overcome that SQ)

So, Asus Xonar Essence STX? ($180), Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium HD? ($140), and built in sound on a 2010 Apple iMac? (price?).

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSleip 

 

 

I don't think it is possible to buy the gear that comes with the iMac, it's got a IntelHd something but it also has 20 w amps, meaning that the output can't be actually rated by the specs. Anyways, I was asking how much of an investment would a dac/amp combo require to surpass their SQ as they are not bad.

 

you went to asking about DAC's and amplifier's to naming a Mac's ... i don't even know. the Mac's all use Cirrus Logic DAC's with an amp that is approx or believed to be about 90mW @ 16 ohms. The Macintosh line is the computer line with the best standard audio i have ever heard..don't know any other company that beats it. as in mass marketed company. even my gaming motherboard(self buitl deskopt) onboard sound which is leagues ahead of what other windows laptops and desktops use..is crap compared to my Macbook's...did i mention they also do..optical.....standard?
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSleip 
I don't think it is possible to buy the gear that comes with the iMac, it's got a IntelHd something but it also has 20 w amps, meaning that the output can't be actually rated by the specs. Anyways, I was asking how much of an investment would a dac/amp combo require to surpass their SQ as they are not bad.

 

A Objective 2 (external) headphone amplifier ($155) and a Fiio D3 or D5 DAC ($30) should at least equal or better the Asus Xonar Essence.

The Xonar Essence and Titanium HD are about equal in sound quality, edge to Xonar Essence.

The Fiio E10 USB/DAC/Headphone amplifier ($76) should beat whatever built-in sound is on the iMac.

I like the E17 just putting that out there. I use it with a heft opticable cable from the Mac.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

A Objective 2 (external) headphone amplifier ($155) and a Fiio D3 or D5 DAC ($30) should at least equal or better the Asus Xonar Essence.

This is not true. Even the Xonar D1 has a better DAC than the FiiO D5.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stv014 

This is not true. Even the Xonar D1 has a better DAC than the FiiO D5.

 

So, maybe it would be better to use the Objective 2 with the Fiio E10 (for DAC only).
 

To the OP: what headphones do you plan to use ? The best choices will also depend on that.

test

If we're talking about *just* the DtoA stage there will be hardly any difference that you can pick apart with your ears (this is not mysticism, it's science) - they're all going to be transparent unless one of them is damaged or not performing to spec. If we're talking about the line-driver that you hook your headphones into, that can get a bit harrier; it depends on the load and what it demands. Any two amplifiers that can meet those demands (doesn't matter how much they exceed them) will be transparent with respect to one another. The integrated solutions for many computers and the line-stages for many DtoA devices (or source components, like CD players) are usually not very good at driving more complex loads (this is where the mantra of "hard to drive" comes from) - you'll usually hear FR abnormalities or (if the thing has no power behind it) clipping distortion. 

In terms of "how much do I have to spend to get it external" - probably hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. This is because boutique products have ridiculous mark-ups despite using more or less the same parts (in other words, the best DtoA converters in the world from Cirrus, TI/BB, AKM, etc are only a few dollars a piece; when they're found in computers, AV receivers, Blu-ray players, or mobile devices they usually don't command a huge-markup, but when they're found in standalone DtoA boxes or hoity toity CD players they suddenly become multi-thousand dollar "premium and rare" parts).

Most of the external devices ("USB DACs") being mentioned will "beat" the integrated audio solutions and soundcards not because they're somehow more "audiophile" (most of them are actually outclassed in this regard; not that it matters), but because they usually have output stages that can deal with more complex loads; they're designed to be amplifiers. That makes a lot of difference. It doesn't really matter what DtoA you use (or what cables you use, or how it gets power, or any of that) when it comes to what your final component is (speakers, headphones, whatever) - that's a line-stage device, and whatever sits before the final load is ideally going to be designed to take a line-level signal and produce an amplified output (in other words, an amplifier). This can be anything from a little headphone amp (which I like because it means less wasted power) to a huge power amp with a headphone jack (which will probably use more power (by a factor of hundreds or even thousands - perhaps even ten thousands if you're using a modern AV receiver)) than it really "needs" to use for what you're driving and the output power you're demanding, because most of those big amps will drive the headphones with their primary amp stages run through a resistive network (to protect the headphones, your ears, and potentially the amplifier) which will sink a lot of voltage and waste a ton of power - for example if you have a 200W/ch amplifier driving your headphones (which probably need 0.02 mW/ch (1000mW = 1W)), the amplifier itself is probably going to be seeing a few wpc of load, as if it were driving speakers - that wastes A TON of power).

So having said all of that - a headphone amplifier can make a whole lot of sense when hooking up headphones to your computer (or whatever), but it doesn't have to be incredibly expensive or incredibly complicated.

For some graphs and magic:

http://www.afrotechmods.com/reallycheap/soundcard/sennheiser.htm

http://www.meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de/tipstricks.htm

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1294455 (this deals with full-size amplifiers for full-size speakers; you can ignore everything about room acoustics, placement distance, and so on - I'd also suggest pulling sensitivity values from InnerFidelity when available, as many headphone manufacturers (like AKG) have this nasty habit of rating at 1V instead of 1 mW (it gives you higher numbers and can make moderately unsensitive headphones look very sensitive (like the K701, which is around 93 dB/mW, but the specsheet shows it at something like 100 dB (again, into 1V, but that part is a footnote); of course once you start looking at the output abilities of most headphone amplifiers relative to what most headphones need, you'll probably realize that things like clipping are probably never going to enter into the equation).