ASUS Eeepc 1005PX sound quality?
Jan 4, 2011 at 6:30 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 14

LizardKing1

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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
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Jan 5, 2011 at 9:21 PM Post #3 of 14
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:
 
 

 
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.

 
Jan 6, 2011 at 2:00 AM Post #6 of 14
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.
 
Jan 6, 2011 at 8:26 AM Post #8 of 14
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.
 
Jan 6, 2011 at 8:29 AM Post #9 of 14
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.
 
Jan 6, 2011 at 10:08 AM Post #11 of 14
Jan 6, 2011 at 1:20 PM Post #12 of 14


Quote:
Was my question so nooby that it didn't deserve an answer?
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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.
 
Jan 6, 2011 at 2:47 PM Post #13 of 14


Quote:
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".
 
Jan 6, 2011 at 6:29 PM Post #14 of 14
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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