tk3
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
- Posts
- 2,048
- Likes
- 56
I recently built a new computer with a motherboard that boasts "stable 5V USB ports" as one of its features, and I can tell it's significantly better than my old PC for music listening.
It reminds me of "listening at night for cleaner power". I'm usually not one to post things like this, but I feel that I can actually notice a very audible non-audiofool difference between my current and my old PC.
Another problem my old PC had was that it would stutter or skip once in a while during playback, which I thought was a USB latency issue and I spent god knows how many hours trying to fix that. I pretty much tried every solution I found in Google to no avail.
It was one of the few PC issues that I was not able to fix no matter how much time I spent on it, in retrospect I wish I had done this sooner rather than waste all that time.
This new PC doesn't have that at all, and I noticed that the better USB ports out themselves in various other visible ways as well. I charge my phone and Walkman through USB, and my old PC would "overcharge" them or something, so after a while they would actually go down in charge levels again.
I thought it was just their old batteries crapping out and not holding a charge as well anymore, but maybe the PC was more the culprit.
It may sound that that PC had super faulty USB ports, but I was using it for a couple years intensively without real practical issues outside of that.
As a side notice, during my search for a fix for the USB stutter issue, I noticed that a great majority (who had their builds listed) that had an issue with USB audio devices were ones with a Gigabyte motherboard, just like my old one.
It was something that kept coming up over and over to my surprise. So as a tip I would be careful with them when building a PC that is used for music listening, unless you're using a high end model that specifically says it has good USB power or something.
But my point is, when listening to music through a computer, it could be a very worthwhile and relatively cheap investment to get a good machine, rather than spending money on cables or other fluff.
It reminds me of "listening at night for cleaner power". I'm usually not one to post things like this, but I feel that I can actually notice a very audible non-audiofool difference between my current and my old PC.
Another problem my old PC had was that it would stutter or skip once in a while during playback, which I thought was a USB latency issue and I spent god knows how many hours trying to fix that. I pretty much tried every solution I found in Google to no avail.
It was one of the few PC issues that I was not able to fix no matter how much time I spent on it, in retrospect I wish I had done this sooner rather than waste all that time.
This new PC doesn't have that at all, and I noticed that the better USB ports out themselves in various other visible ways as well. I charge my phone and Walkman through USB, and my old PC would "overcharge" them or something, so after a while they would actually go down in charge levels again.
I thought it was just their old batteries crapping out and not holding a charge as well anymore, but maybe the PC was more the culprit.
It may sound that that PC had super faulty USB ports, but I was using it for a couple years intensively without real practical issues outside of that.
As a side notice, during my search for a fix for the USB stutter issue, I noticed that a great majority (who had their builds listed) that had an issue with USB audio devices were ones with a Gigabyte motherboard, just like my old one.
It was something that kept coming up over and over to my surprise. So as a tip I would be careful with them when building a PC that is used for music listening, unless you're using a high end model that specifically says it has good USB power or something.
But my point is, when listening to music through a computer, it could be a very worthwhile and relatively cheap investment to get a good machine, rather than spending money on cables or other fluff.
