[spacemanspliff]

Man is it not close.

I am really thinking everyone should go laptop on battery + external usb dac + amp.

My gaming pc has an X-FI titanium. I have Vista 64 so it really is kind of silly to have it but I do.

My receiver has a USB input. I figured, try it out. Of course, I have used my lappy plenty in the past as a source for dacs. Now that I have a decent 2.1, I wanted to hear the difference.

Big difference. The optical out on the pc is somehow bright, blurry and harsh in comparison to the laptop. This is in terms of music. The sound for games seems to be an improvement over music with the x-fi. I don't know why. I use game mode for games and audio creation for music.

With the laptop, it is like I went from x-fi to high end dac. Music is much more detailed, background nice and black, dynamics all there.

If it is just numbers, digital is digital, then why does it sound so different? How does power/emi whatever is going on with a soundcard influence the sound so much?

 

[1UP]

Well, optical should galvanically isolate the PC noise from the receiver's DAC; leaving only jitter suceptibility on your receiver's optical input (ergo jitter from the soundcard) and a more robust USB implementation therein as the most likely explanations. Bits is bits, but jitter is reflections and cruddy sound. Further, optical has never been a satisfactory digital transport in my experience. I'd always take a good coax over optical.

Try this, though, run the line outs from the soundcard straight into the receiver and compare again.

 

[spacemanspliff]

I will. I have a decent mini to rca I forgot about. Mind you, for music, I still think I will use the laptop though.

I wonder if using the onboard sound usb is better than the X-fi considering it is 64 bit vista?

 

[Orcin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1UP /img/forum/go_quote.gif Further, optical has never been a satisfactory digital transport in my experience. I'd always take a good coax over optical.

My experience has been that optical and coax between the same components with the same source is identical. I can't tell any difference.



Quote:

Originally Posted by spacemanspliff /img/forum/go_quote.gif I wonder if using the onboard sound usb is better than the X-fi considering it is 64 bit vista?

There are a few more unknown variables. What type of files are they, what is the player, how do you have it configured?

 

[Bmac]

Maybe I'm not understanding you correctly but I think it just comes down to the different DAC. If you are going optical from the PC to the receiver then you re using the receiver's DAC, and your USB DAC is probably superior.

If you hook up the USB DAC to the PC you should get the same sound as you did from the laptop.

 

[FallenAngel]

It's likely same DAC but you're mixing up a lot of things. First, do take a look at the primer in my signature, it covers what I hope to be almost all hardware-related aspects of a system.

As for your specific scenario, you consider comparing computer USB to laptop USB, not laptop USB to X-Fi S/PDIF, "apples to oranges" thing. Also, make sure to use the same drivers, setup and audio players to make it consistent.

If you still believe that the receiver sounds better from the laptop vs PC, then post impressions/comparisons, it would be nice to see what can be different.

Oh, and "bits are not just bits".

 

[matanoosh]

the good people here all have good ideas as to why the sound differs so much. imo, ultimately, the transport system (i.e. your computer) is so complex that there's a myriad of reasons as to why these discrepancies occur.
ultimately, the only conclusion that can be derived here, I think, is that something here works better than the other. go with the flow, and try to improve what you already have to take full advantage of your computer transport.

 

[FallenAngel]

but some of us are computer engineers and know enough to say that there should not be any "myriad of reasons as to why these discrepancies occur".

 

[AudioPhewl]

USB on the laptop, and USB from the desktop, both give exactly the same sound in my system. Do the Creative cards still resample and much around with the sound?

Any chance you have ASIO configured on one, but not the other?

~Phewl.