[c64]

Let us say I am happy with my xonar dx dac quality and like dolby headphone, do I buy just a headphone amp ?
 
How do amps with dacs work can you bypass the amps dac and just use your soundcards dac and just let the amp use the heaphone amp section ? or will it be dac on dac action which is not good ?
 
example:
 
xonar dx > optical > headphone amp/dac
 
now How does it decide which dac I am using ?  

 

[PurpleAngel]

Disable the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS.
 
Maybe try using the Unified Xonar Drivers.
http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/
 
The Xonar DX comes with a CS4398 DAC chip
 
Buy any external headphone amplifier you like, plug it into the Xonar DX's Front Speaker/Headphone jack, plug headphones into amplifier.
With external headphone amplifier turned off or most of the way down, max out audio volume settings on computer, then turn up volume level on amplifier to whatever volume you like.
Enjoy.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by c64 /img/forum/go_quote.gif

 

How do amps with dacs work can you bypass the amps dac and just use your soundcards dac and just let the amp use the heaphone amp section ? or will it be dac on dac action which is not good ?

 

example:

 

xonar dx > optical > headphone amp/dac

 

now How does it decide which dac I am using ?  

 

Optical connection is SPDIF. SPDIF is Sony-Philips Digital Interface Format. 

 

DAC is Digital to Analogue Converter.

 

Digital audio goes out of the soundcard via optical, using the DSP chip and not the DAC chip in the soundcard. It goes into the DAC section of the headphone amp.

 

Now, if what you use is USB, that will completely bypass the soundcard, including the audio section on the motherboard if you were using that, since it basically goes from the CPU then to the USB chip.

 

[c64]

so all a dac chip does on a soundcard or an external dac does is literally convert ? or when people talk about dacs are they including the dsp onboard a dac too ? if so why are some people talking about dacs being better than others ? surely they all pretty much convert digital to analogue the exact same ?
 
I'll try to explain more, why for example do people care about burr brown dacs vs cirrus logic vs sabre etc etc surely the dsp matters more ?

 

[c64]

 

 

Optical connection is SPDIF. SPDIF is Sony-Philips Digital Interface Format. 

 

DAC is Digital to Analogue Converter.

 

Digital audio goes out of the soundcard via optical, using the DSP chip and not the DAC chip in the soundcard. It goes into the DAC section of the headphone amp.

 

Now, if what you use is USB, that will completely bypass the soundcard, including the audio section on the motherboard if you were using that, since it basically goes from the CPU then to the USB chip.

so what if the dsp sq is better on the soundcard than the amp

  Disable the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS.
 
Maybe try using the Unified Xonar Drivers.
http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/
 
The Xonar DX comes with a CS4398 DAC chip
 
Buy any external headphone amplifier you like, plug it into the Xonar DX's Front Speaker/Headphone jack, plug headphones into amplifier.
With external headphone amplifier turn off or most of the way down, max out audio volume settings on computer, then turn up volume level on amplifier to whatever volume you like.
Enjoy.

I have a headphone amp I prefer the sound with windows volume low and amp on lowish volume too never understood the max out windows audio thing makes no difference.
 
What I am talking about is do external all in one headphone amps/dacs also have an inbuilt dsp ? so lets say for example I'm plugging my soundcard via optical to an smsl m3 and I'm playing music on foobar what is processing my music the amp dac or the soundcard dac ? 
 
what is playing the sound the external dac chip or the soundcard dac/dsp ? like a standalone dac is not just a dac right it also has a dsp chip ?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  so what if the dsp sq is better on the soundcard than the amp
 
What I am talking about is do external all in one headphone amps/dacs also have an inbuilt dsp ? 
 
what is playing the sound the external dac chip or the soundcard dac/dsp ? like a standalone dac is not just a dac right it also has a dsp chip ?

 
Anything that gets called an amplifier or DAC or a DAC-HPamp does not have a DSP in the same way that a soundcard does - what it has is an SPDIF receiver chip, or a "DSP" if it's one of those DACs with an auxiliary headphone amplifier as well as a USB digital audio to SPDIF output DDC. 
 
If it does have a full feature DSP, it gets called an external soundcard, and it probably has artwork on the box similar to what you find on the box for the graphics card because marketing.
 
 

  I have a headphone amp I prefer the sound with windows volume low and amp on lowish volume too never understood the max out windows audio thing makes no difference.

 
Or the gain on the recordings you have and the gain on the amplifier are both too high.

 

[c64]

It's still confusing lol 
 
why do people care about which dac chip an amp has if it doesn't affect the sound ?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by c64 /img/forum/go_quote.gif

 

why do people care about which dac chip an amp has if it doesn't affect the sound ?

 

1. The people who care about which DAC chip are NOT the same people who know it doesn't really affect the sound. Others will choose a DAC or CDP based on what DAC chip is in it rather than how the circuit was designed and what the overall sound is.

 

2. It's not just the chip, it's the entire circuit around it. The analogue output stage after the DAC chip is the more important part. For the most part, a Wolfson DAC is "warm" and a Sabre DAC is "neutral" and Cirrus Logic DACs have bright treble (with varying levels of bass - weak in iPod Classic, strong pounding bass on dedicated DACs, etc) thanks to the analogue circuit and Marketing working together (or, in the case of the iPod DAC for example, you're dealing with limitations with the amplifier chip). Look at DACs with tweaks to the output stage, if not swappable op-amps. Basically, you either fully buy into hte baloney about how different DAC chips inherently are, or you just deal with it and get the one that's known to be neutral and is thus designed to sound neutral, which is the reason why even objectivists who understand this developed a bias for Sabre DACs.

 

A soundcard has the same analogue output stage that influences what it sounds like regardless of what DAC chip it uses, but not a lot of info. Also, in some cases, people just go with the cheapest soundcard to get the DSP, the only feature really relevant for gaming, and then use the SPDIF output.

 

3. Shortens the analogue signal path - Soundcard might pick up noise from the computer more through its analogue components than if it just shipped out the digital signal, ditto analogue interconnects vs digital. In addition to this, and point made in #2, some speaker amplifiers are now Direct Digital designs - digital goes in, passes through a resampling chip and digital level volume control, then the DAC chip, and then straight out to the amplifier output stage - cutting out many analogue sections like the analogue potentiometer, the DAC output stage, and the amplifier's input stage, and there aren't impedance issues between the DAC chip and the amplifier output stage either (not that this was a huge problem using two separate units).

 

[derbigpr]

  It's still confusing lol 
 
why do people care about which dac chip an amp has if it doesn't affect the sound ?

 
Who says it  doesn't affect the sound? It does, not all DAC's decode the same and sound the same, even though some ignorant people might tell you they do to justify the fact that they're not willing to pay more than 50 dollars for it.  The chip is not all that matters on a DAC either, there's hundreds of other components in a device that affect the final sound too.
 
On the other hand, a common rookie mistake is to expect that a better DAC will sound totally different than what you have now, or will be a massive improvement. Even cheap DAC's nowadays sound pretty good, since they're so cheap and easy to make. Most top of the line smartphones nowadays will output sound that is comparable to the best dedicated CD players or external DAC's money could buy just 5-6 years ago. Most soundcards will do the same. However, better DAC's bring a small improvement across the board, small stuff that is hard to explain unless you're hearing it, and that adds up and can change the experience of listening to music a lot, especially if you have high end headphones and amplifier. Don't expect massive in-your-face differences when upgrading from the Asus, differences will be subtle, but if you care about them and listen to music deeply, and know what to listen for, you will appreciate better DAC's. I do today. When I started my journey in this hobby I'd probably listen to a high end DAC and a 50 dollar one side by side for 10 seconds each and say they sound the same to me.  Quite simply, you have to learn how to listen to music in order to fully appreciate better components.

 

[PurpleAngel]

So all a DAC chip does on a sound card or an external DAC does is literally convert ? or when people talk about DACs are they including the DSP on-board a DAC too ? if so why are some people talking about DACs being better than others ? surely they all pretty much convert digital to analogue the exact same ?
I'll try to explain more, why for example do people care about burr brown DACs vs cirrus logic vs sabre etc etc surely the DAC matters more ?

 
DAC - Digital to Analog Converter.
When people on Head-Fi talk about a DAC, they are usually referring to an external device with a one or more of the following inputs, USB, optical, coaxial.
The external DAC will either come with a line-output or a amplified headphone output or both.
 
Sound cards (internal or external) come with a DSP chip, "DACs" do not.
 
All DAC chips are not the same.
Also the components (support chips?) used around the DAC chip can effect audio.

 

[PurpleAngel]

  So what if the DSP sq is better on the sound card than the amp
I have a headphone amp I prefer the sound with windows volume low and amp on lowish volume too never understood the max out windows audio thing makes no difference.
What I am talking about is do external all in one headphone amps/DACs also have an inbuilt DSP ? so lets say for example I'm plugging my sound card via optical to an SMSL m3 and I'm playing music on foobar what is processing my music the amp DAC or the sound card DAC ? 
What is playing the sound the external DAC chip or the sound card DAC/DSP ? like a standalone DAC is not just a DAC right it also has a DSP chip ?

 
The thought is you want to feed as strong a signal as possible, to the external device, that why you want to max out (or near max) the computer's volume settings.
When you use a digital output from a sound card (internal add-on or on-board or external), your bypassing the sound card's DAC function.
So the SMSL M3 is using it's DAC function, not the sound card.
 
DSP chips on on sound card, not DACs,
Technically a sound card provides the same functions as a DAC, but a sound card provides more features, like a DSP chip for DSP processing.
DSP processing takes place before the (digital) audio gets to the DAC chip.

 

[tomb]

Originally Posted by c64 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
I have a headphone amp I prefer the sound with windows volume low and amp on lowish volume too never understood the max out windows audio thing makes no difference.
 
What I am talking about is do external all in one headphone amps/dacs also have an inbuilt dsp ? so lets say for example I'm plugging my soundcard via optical to an smsl m3 and I'm playing music on foobar what is processing my music the amp dac or the soundcard dac ? 
 
what is playing the sound the external dac chip or the soundcard dac/dsp ? like a standalone dac is not just a dac right it also has a dsp chip ?

 
Think about it for a minute.  There is no physical volume control in the sound card.  If you turn the sound down below maximum in the OS or a music player app, the only way the volume can be reduced is if the software is re-interpreting the data to a lower level.  In other words, it's re-processing the fundamental bits and bytes of the music stream.  You no longer have a virgin source of the music as it was intended to be distributed and sold from the studio.
 
Every pure conversion of a digital music stream converts to analog, first.  Otherwise, the digitally-encoded music has been altered.
 
That's why the OS and/or music player app should be maxed out - to ensure no degradation of the digitally-encoded music.  The physical volume control on the amp is a much better tool.  All it does is reduce the voltage of the analog signal - it doesn't affect the bits/bytes at all.

 

[c64]

   
Think about it for a minute.  There is no physical volume control in the sound card.  If you turn the sound down below maximum in the OS or a music player app, the only way the volume can be reduced is if the software is re-interpreting the data to a lower level.  In other words, it's re-processing the fundamental bits and bytes of the music stream.  You no longer have a virgin source of the music as it was intended to be distributed and sold from the studio.
 
Every pure conversion of a digital music stream converts to analog, first.  Otherwise, the digitally-encoded music has been altered.
 
That's why the OS and/or music player app should be maxed out - to ensure no degradation of the digitally-encoded music.  The physical volume control on the amp is a much better tool.  All it does is reduce the voltage of the analog signal - it doesn't affect the bits/bytes at all.

I disagree i get nothing but distortion if I do it that way either from a xonar or sansa clip maybe maxing volume works with onboard audio

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by c64 /img/forum/go_quote.gif

I disagree i get nothing but distortion if I do it that way either from a xonar or sansa clip maybe maxing volume works with onboard audio

 

He's talking about using a separate amplifier, and preferably a DAC along with it. DAC gets unaltered digital signal, amplifier gets a clean line output and controls the output level. He didn't say set the soundcard and player app/game to max running only a soundcard - that's going to blow your ear drums. It doesn't matter if it's on-board, a soundcard in an expansion slot on the mobo, or an external soundcard - unless it's one of those with a huge desktop volume knob with the headphone ports (or that 5.25 drive form factor front chassis control panel on Asus soundcards) there's no analog output level control.

 

In other words if you're not using a separate amplifier there's really no other way to control the volume, you'll really mess around with the digital signal. The thing is though newer Windows versions don't drop below 14bits (at least not until you get way below 50%; I use my Xonar U3 at Windows 30% - not really a problem since it's only for gaming), on top of which, a soundcard is really more for its DSP than anything else, which allows virtual surround for games and movies.

 

[tomb]

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by c64 /img/forum/go_quote.gif

I disagree i get nothing but distortion if I do it that way either from a xonar or sansa clip maybe maxing volume works with onboard audio

 

He's talking about using a separate amplifier, and preferably a DAC along with it. DAC gets unaltered digital signal, amplifier gets a clean line output and controls the output level. He didn't say set the soundcard and player app/game to max running only a soundcard - that's going to blow your ear drums. It doesn't matter if it's on-board, a soundcard in an expansion slot on the mobo, or an external soundcard - unless it's one of those with a huge desktop volume knob with the headphone ports (or that 5.25 drive form factor front chassis control panel on Asus soundcards) there's no analog output level control.

 

In other words if you're not using a separate amplifier there's really no other way to control the volume, you'll really mess around with the digital signal. The thing is though newer Windows versions don't drop below 14bits (at least not until you get way below 50%; I use my Xonar U3 at Windows 30% - not really a problem since it's only for gaming), on top of which, a soundcard is really more for its DSP than anything else, which allows virtual surround for games and movies.

 
Yes, thanks - absolutely correct!