[Anathema123]

I can hear a very clear difference between my laptop's onboard sound and my Creative X-Fi Music, using a Sennheiser HD595.
The laptop's onboard is so bad compared to my soundcard that I've ordered a Fiio E7/E9 to use at uni.

 

[JRG1990]

The reason there very little difference is because it's all solid state, the disortition, crosstalk , dynamic range , signal to noise for all the cards are most likely the same or close enough that theres no audiable difference, the amp sections should sound a bit different as the cards likely use different op amps and circuits, you are using easy to drive headphones which don't stress the amps of the cards if you were using harder to drive headphones that require more from the cards amps you will notice more of a difference.

 

[kalston]

This sounds like a pretty solid explanation to me, and I think that the difference between amps(when it has sufficient power for your gear)/dacs/soundcards (when they don't have absolutely glaring flaws like background noise) is pretty tiny compared to the difference between headphones/speakers. 

 

[jackmccabe]

Can't hear a difference.. Hmmm... you must be broken... You really need to try imagining more differences, because higher price equals better in audio wonderland, right?
Seriously though, it is no surprise you can't hear a difference as there basically are no differences.
If you look at even the measurements of cheap dacs you should see that all the distortion and non-linearities in the frequency response are inaudible.
"Audiophiles" would have you believe that dac's sound completely different and that you need a $10,000 dac, but in reality it will be the same as a $50 dac but in a nice shiny box with an audiophile status.
The difference in audio reproduction is made by the headphones, unless of course you like a coloured sound in which case you can get tube amplifiers and nos dac's which distort the sound in a pleasant way.
I personally think the best thing everybody can do is get the best pair of headphones they can afford with an amplifier that will power them.
Forget about a dac until you have got the "best headphones" possible and an amp that powers them.

 

[Willakan]

Quote:

Can't hear a difference.. Hmmm... you must be broken... You really need to try imagining more differences, because higher price equals better in audio wonderland, right?
Seriously though, it is no surprise you can't hear a difference as there basically are no differences.
If you look at even the measurements of cheap dacs you should see that all the distortion and non-linearities in the frequency response are inaudible.
"Audiophiles" would have you believe that dac's sound completely different and that you need a $10,000 dac, but in reality it will be the same as a $50 dac but in a nice shiny box with an audiophile status.
The difference in audio reproduction is made by the headphones, unless of course you like a coloured sound in which case you can get tube amplifiers and nos dac's which distort the sound in a pleasant way.
I personally think the best thing everybody can do is get the best pair of headphones they can afford with an amplifier that will power them.
Forget about a dac until you have got the "best headphones" possible and an amp that powers them.

I wouldn't go quite as far to suggest a $50 DAC is perfectly adequate, but the differences between competent (neutral) DACs past a certain price point are almost certainly lacking in audibility - the only differences with the higher end products being jitter rejection - which is pretty insignificant - tests have shown that jitter (to put into perspective, my ancient, budget Cambridge Audio CD player has 0.2 ms of jitter from the digital outs) can be inaudible at up to 300ns, with other studies suggesting the audibility threshold lies at 30ns - and these results are generally with test groups containing trained listeners.
 
But seriously, the DACMagic at $400 or so exhibits vanishingly low distortion and superb jitter rejection - if you're feeling extravagant grab a Benchmark DAC1. Despite some of the misinformation you hear around hear (the Benchmark is sooo bright and unmusical, must be the totally flat frequency response and superb specs, buy this expensive DAC that measures terribly instead!) the fact is that the point of "past audibility" is much lower than people think (yay for cognitive bias!).
 
Regarding internal soundcards, there is a potential case for snobbiness here, as their real-world SNR can sometimes be much lower than advertised, probably due to the overwhelming majority of audiophiles not having the high end gamer-grade PSU units installed in their computers that the soundcard companies take the measurements with.
 
That being said, even at the low end the differences are monstrously exaggerated (I wait for the day when a source will render anything genuinely "unlistenable" - perhaps a NOS DAC with half the capacitors missing?)
 
 

 

[jackmccabe]

The behringer uca202, is pretty awesome and so are the emu 0202, 0204 and 0404.
The dac1 or anedio d1 is about as high as I would ever consider going, and that would just be because of the headphone amplifiers, their build quality , and looks.

 

[domino584]

Some people don't hear the difference, that is for sure.  I, for one, notice massive differences in audio quality, especially for gaming.  So far, nothing has come remotely close to audio positioning like my X-Fi chip has.
 
I didn't like the sound coming from my HD555s, but regardless, they sounded better on the Forte then they did on my Cowon.  The Cowon player is definately of higher quality then an onboard chip.

 
Quote:

Can I ask where you got the number 64? I've been trying to find that number for the ALC889 and my Titanium HD but they don't seem to be officially published anywhere. All I can find are random forums posts with guys claiming random numbers.

By my understanding, it has to do with EAX.  EAX 5.0 supports up to 128 individual sound files at once.  Without EAX support you are limited to openAL processing; which will give the same audio processing performance on any card.

 

[cuad]

Quote:

Some people don't hear the difference, that is for sure.

But how do you explain it? I can hear the difference between good and bad headphones, or good and better, hooked up to any card. And I can hear the difference between my laptops noisy onboard and my Realtek ALC889, but I can't hear the difference between my ALC889 and my Titanium HD. Not with highs. Not with lows. Not with positional audio. Nothing.
 
I'm paranoid about this. I feel like somehow even though I'm plugging my headphones into the Titanium HD that I'm still getting playback from the Realtek, since both cards sound equally bad to me. I wanted fit my HD into another computer to test, but the Titanium HD doesn't support XP.
 
 
Quote:

By my understanding, it has to do with EAX.  EAX 5.0 supports up to 128 individual sound files at once.  Without EAX support you are limited to openAL processing; which will give the same audio processing performance on any card.

 
By the way, thank you for this tip.

 

[jackmccabe]

Scientifically there should be zero audible differences between them.
If you want to hear differences you will need to start imagining them as there are none.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

...If you want to hear differences you will need to start imagining them as there are none.

 
Oh, I'm sorry that not everyone follows your mantra.
 
Just because you listen to things a certain way, doesn't mean others will as well.
 
Stop trying to tell people what and how they should listen. You can guide and advise them, not dictate what is and isn't.

 

[jackmccabe]

I do not dictate this, science does.
Also what do you mean listen in "a certain way"

 

[Roller]

Quote:

I do not dictate this, science does.
 

Go back to the Sound Science forum. Or did you forget this is a DBT free forum? Yes, there are rules about that.

 

[jackmccabe]

This is not a dbt free forum.
I also was not talking about blind tests I was talking about the measurements of each dac.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

This is not a dbt free forum.

 
It is. Scratch that. You're right, you're the ruler of the universe, and everything you say is an absolute truth.

 

[jackmccabe]

Wow you are now just getting plain silly.
All I have asked is that you provide one shred of evidence that there is a difference and you take it as a personal insult and evade my request.