[rt310]

Was wondering if it was possible to enhance the SQ of my laptop somehow. I am looking to build a desktop rig to replace my previous portable setup. 

 

[NA Blur]

A portable and USB powered DAC like the Total Bithead is an excellent way to improve upon your laptop listening experience.  Using a player such as Foobar2000 can also help improve things.

 

[rt310]

Quote:

A portable and USB powered DAC like the Total Bithead is an excellent way to improve upon your laptop listening experience.  Using a player such as Foobar2000 can also help improve things.

Thanks, i'll look into that. Will getting an external DAC give simiilar results to a USB powered one?

 

[labrat]

 

[kramer5150]

Definitely ditch the internal sound card, take the bit-stream out the USB and pick an external DAC of your choice.  Most laptop sound cards are rubbish.  I have been a laptop user for the past ~13 years Toshiba, IBM, Lenovo and now on a macbook pro.  The latter having the best circuit of the bunch by far.  Still though I bypass it using its toslink optical output and merge it into my nightstand DAC setup.
 

 
 
The other thing I am looking into is ditching the toslink cable and boradcast the bitstream over bluetooth, and feed it into my DAC.  This would alleviate the optical cable, and yet still allow me to pipeline the data feed into my setup.  So one less cable to tangle with, and it will allow me to merge any bluetooth audio device into my system.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Bluetooth-HD-Music-Receiver/dp/B00AG6NSNO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357970033&sr=8-1&keywords=belkin+bluetooth+HD

 

[ghost91]

Definitely ditch the internal sound card, take the bit-stream out the USB and pick an external DAC of your choice.  Most laptop sound cards are rubbish.  I have been a laptop user for the past ~13 years Toshiba, IBM, Lenovo and now on a macbook pro.  The latter having the best circuit of the bunch by far.  Still though I bypass it using its toslink optical output and merge it into my nightstand DAC setup.
 

 
 
The other thing I am looking into is ditching the toslink cable and boradcast the bitstream over bluetooth, and feed it into my DAC.  This would alleviate the optical cable, and yet still allow me to pipeline the data feed into my setup.  So one less cable to tangle with, and it will allow me to merge any bluetooth audio device into my system.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Bluetooth-HD-Music-Receiver/dp/B00AG6NSNO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357970033&sr=8-1&keywords=belkin+bluetooth+HD

 
You know, that Audio over Bluetooth is always lossy?

 

[labrat]

 

[kramer5150]

Ah.. OK scratch that idea then.  I was suspicious all along about this kind of thing, and hence hadn't pulled the trigger... whether or not a bluetooth setup like this overall maintains an uncompressed + purely digital bitstream.  DAM... I guess its too good to be true.  Sorry to have mis-lead anyone then.
 
So heres a follow up question... inside the macbook then does it read the audio CD and convert that data stream to analog and back again to digital... before piping it out the toslink port?
 
Question #2... in my macbook audio midi setup what setting should it be at?  Currently its set for 44100.0Hz and 2ch-16bit.  Is this the optimal setting?
 
thanks!!  I am still very new to the whole PC as source thing.

 

[labrat]