Laptop vs Desktop PC

[XTF1]

I once measured the difference between AC and battery power on a laptop. Running a J-test, jitter increased substantially running on battery. https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Intro/SQ/PowerSaving.htm

I wonder if things have changed now that most laptops are powered through a USB-C plug, rather than an external brick PSU delivering the main “correct voltage”.
On current laptops, USB-C input and/or internal battery go through the same Power Management / DC-DC converter(s). There may not be much difference anymore…

 

[Roseval]

If the powerplam is "full power" when using external power and "saving mode" when using battery, the rese ult will be the same.
The gist of what I'm saying is that there is a lot of armchair engineering going on. Battery beats PSU! In reality the outcome can be different.

 

[Ghoostknight]

So, was listening back and worth for a while (plus doing some tweaks on the PC, comparing pcie usb card vs mobo usb ports...)

On the Laptop:
i had a few dropouts, disabling the power savings options inside the bios fixed it! (it also sounds better now), i actually only notice (reported by carla/pipewire) dropouts while adding/removing the AC adapter now
Also CPU usage got much more steady, i had spiked up to 70-80% before disabling the power options and unnessecary devices, now i get spikes into the 30% range and it hovers around 10-15%

for me the switch from AC adapter to battery powered was definitely audible (beside the dropouts the first 1-3 seconds)
battery powered removes some of the "high frequency hashy sound" one would expect from switching power supplies
i think a linear power supply could improve things here for constant powered mode, tho there is always the option to just pull the plug for a few hours

while the laptop seems a good starter option specially battery powered......
ultimatively i felt like my DIY shielded pcie usb card in the PC won the contest of sounding the "darkest" (for me this is always a sign less EMI/RFI is on the signal, the sound signature gets darker but you actually hear single high frequency notes more precisely, more true to life) "Ella Voss - White Noise" is a pretty decent test track, it actually moves you more with this "darker sound signature"
the funny thing was, the mobo usb ports sounded noticably worse than the laptop! (much brigther, no dark background...)

specially it seems instead of the device itself mattering the most its actually more like "which usb port sounds the best" and i feel like being able to use pcie cards is a huge advantage here... i might not come around a jcat card...

i even dig inside the PC Bios once again, and actually found 2 settings for setting the "switching frequency" between 500Khz and 1000Khz .... setting them to 1000 improved things quite dramatically, one of the best bios tweaks i have overlooked before (tho, keep in mind you need better mosfet cooling with higher frequencys)

add to this that i really like building PC's and the fact that upgrading is way better than buying a whole new device (where you basicly play EMI/RFI lottery without real measurements)

Soo... i might now start looking into upgrading my PC buying this PSU: https://hdplex.com/hdplex-500w-gan-aio-atx-power-supply.html seems to be the best peforming option and cheaper than an corsair AX850 which is slightly worse

 

[Ghoostknight]

https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005005043013318.html

its not the exact same pcie usb card im using, but you find quite alot of them on aliexpress with "renesas D720201" chip from "trishac"
its pretty close to mine tho, mine is basicly the same with 2 USB A ports

1. make sure to get one with external power connector, so you can use ferrites on the cable
2. make sure it has a small rectangular clock, usually these are better than the oval ones
3. if you wanna go for a minimal design, watch out for pcie cards that only include one usb hub chip, tho if you plan to use multiple audio devices it might be worth going for a 2 hub chip design

Quote from Audiophilestyle:

JCAT USB Card and JCAT USB Card FEMTO use Renesas
JCAT USB XE use Asmedia

Renesas also counts as one of the more reliable chips: https://support.saleae.com/faq/technical-faq/recommended-usb-3.0-host-controller-cards
which i can confirm.... no problems at all under Linux from day1
good drivers might actually contribute to better SQ specially on my linux setup...

i also dont wanna point fingers, but it seems to me the Jcat XE card uses Asmedia chip on purpose on the "lower price model", specially if renesas is the partly the reason for good sound

----

Just sharing since i think these chinese renesas usb cards are a very affordable way for better sound, as my laptop vs PC test kind of confirmed
if one actually tests them, let us know here, always curious of other opinions

i also shielded mine (which might contribute to the good SQ)
- you can quite easly wrap the card in 2 plastic sheets cut to size
- cover the whole card (specialy the edges) with isolation tape beside connectors
- cover the whole thing with a layer of either copper tape excluding connectors of course and leaving a bit of room to not cause any shorts
- solder a wire to the pcie bracket which you connect to the copper layer

 

[XTF1]

battery powered removes some of the "high frequency hashy sound" one would expect from switching power supplies

“Battery powered” still goes through a high-frequency DC-DC converter, very similar to a switching power supply…

This is because Li-Ion batteries don’t have the ‘correct’ voltage for the laptop internal needs, and the battery voltage varies quite a bit between fully charged and empty.

 

[Ghoostknight]

“Battery powered” still goes through a high-frequency DC-DC converter, very similar to a switching power supply…

This is because Li-Ion batteries don’t have the ‘correct’ voltage for the laptop internal needs, and the battery voltage varies quite a bit between fully charged and empty.

yup true, this might be also the reason why the laptop not won the competition, tho it was an interesting comparison, specially the battery powered vs not was an interesting test and i still believe battery powered comes with its benefits even if laptops dont "just win" this specific comparison where you have a lot of variables going on (it might be in the end just a usb chip thing, which i cant confirm unless i do way more comparisons which im not "really" interested in doing)

 

[theveterans]

Currently testing Roon Arc on an iPad USB out to DAC (iPad in Low power mode and do not disturb in order to turn off background stuff and notifications). Preliminary listening is pretty good. It's actually quite better sounding than Roon app itself lol

 

[Fastnbulbous]

add to this that i really like building PC's and the fact that upgrading is way better than buying a whole new device (where you basicly play EMI/RFI lottery without real measurements)

Soo... i might now start looking into upgrading my PC buying this PSU: https://hdplex.com/hdplex-500w-gan-aio-atx-power-supply.html seems to be the best peforming option and cheaper than an corsair AX850 which is slightly worse

Do you have any builds on PCPartspicker?

My DOOMbox Music station from 2018 is ready for replacement. At first I thought I'd just upgrade a few things, but I really need to upgrade from motherboard on up so that I can use 3x4TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME SSDs to accommodate my collection which is about to grow beyond the current 8TB capacity (going to 12TB total). Someone on PCParts talked about using Unraid to group the drives, and the Roon Docker app. I have to learn more about them.

My first build from 2018 worked perfectly until this past year. I run both MediaMonkey (for playing music at the station and tagging/curating new FLAC albums) and ROON for the rest of the house. Every time I add music it chokes as it reindexes the 23,000 album collection, temporarily freezing for a bit, and just being slow. ROON performances is also affected, stopping for a second or entirely, losing connection to ROON server.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PXL8Qd

 

[Ghoostknight]

My DOOMbox Music station from 2018 is ready for replacement. At first I thought I'd just upgrade a few things, but I really need to upgrade from motherboard on up so that I can use 3x4TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME SSDs to accommodate my collection which is about to grow beyond the current 8TB capacity (going to 12TB total). Someone on PCParts talked about using Unraid to group the drives, and the Roon Docker app. I have to learn more about them.

yea he gave good advice, look into homeservers/nas (truenas, openmediavault, unraid, synology etc...) tho if you go the diy route with servers you have todo a bit of reading

definitely take a look at plex while you are at it or an ARR stack if you feel adventurous
can alson recommend navidrome as sort of roon alternative

My first build from 2018 worked perfectly until this past year. I run both MediaMonkey (for playing music at the station and tagging/curating new FLAC albums) and ROON for the rest of the house. Every time I add music it chokes as it reindexes the 23,000 album collection, temporarily freezing for a bit, and just being slow. ROON performances is also affected, stopping for a second or entirely, losing connection to ROON server.

hard to say where the freezing comes from, either HDD's or CPU i would guess
tho im not sure if SSD's are really nessecary to fix this

Do you have any builds on PCPartspicker?

nope sorry no account there

 

[Fastnbulbous]

Thanks. I'm sure there are multiple factors in the degrading performance of my 7 year-old build, just moving forward with plans for the new one.

I'm not looking for a ROON alternative. I like ROON and have a lifetime license. I did the (QNAP) NAS server route years ago and deeply regretted it -- it was super expensive, as I had six drives fail during the short time I used it, and it would take three days to rebuild when swapping in new HDDs. I've been very happy with running auto backups to two other drives with BackUp4All. It's worked great for me.

 

[Ghoostknight]

I'm not looking for a ROON alternative. I like ROON and have a lifetime license. I did the (QNAP) NAS server route years ago and deeply regretted it -- it was super expensive, as I had six drives fail during the short time I used it, and it would take three days to rebuild when swapping in new HDDs. I've been very happy with running auto backups to two other drives with BackUp4All. It's worked great for me.

oh i didnt know you already went that route, nas/servers can definitely cause some trouble, was personally always lucky with drives, even with bought used ones (just make sure to actually use stuff like ironwolf/WD red for nas use

 

[SilverEars]

Dedicated streamer such as Holo Audio Red or Pi2AES Mercury V3 (both are Linux based) or my A&K SP2000 DAP (USB out) over low noise laptop/macbook/iPad any day. I tried all the tweaking tricks on Windows and Mac/iOS/iPad OS yet nothing can come close to the sonics of a dedicated streamer IME

I had meh experience with Pi2AES. Didn't notice a difference what so ever. I just run it off my PC no problem if it's gaming desktop or what not. I haven't experienced battery device improving the sound in any way, let alone a dedicated streamer over a PC.

 

[theveterans]

I had meh experience with Pi2AES. Didn't notice a difference what so ever. I just run it off my PC no problem if it's gaming desktop or what not. I haven't experienced battery device improving the sound in any way, let alone a dedicated streamer over a PC.

YMMV. Glad you didn’t hear a difference since you won’t have the nervsoa at all!

 

[SilverEars]

YMMV. Glad you didn’t hear a difference since you won’t have the nervsoa at all!

The weird thing is, I notice difference in streaming services. Figure that one out because I can't.

 

[theveterans]

The weird thing is, I notice difference in streaming services. Figure that one out because I can't.

Mine is both streaming apps, and streaming devices unfortunately. Spotify on PC/Mac is a bit bright while YT Music is warm but less incisive. Apple Music is more balanced but flatter sounding compared to Qobuz, but Qobuz is more detailed version of Spotify. However, to get both resolution and musicality in one sound, that's where streaming devices matter to my ears: Roon Endpoint on A&K SP2000 USB out to my DAC is the best of everything so far that I've tried