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Do You Need an External DAC/Headphone Amplifier?

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amirm

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2. Not many if any people are going to want to tear down their system to send just the motherboard and CPU along.
Well, the idea is that if someone was going to buy a new motherboad, they could send it to me for measurements first. I do a lot of reviews of gear that people are drop shipping from massdrop that way. I get it first, review it, and then send it along.

The other path would be to ask the manufacturers to send samples. Not sure we are high enough on their radar but it may be possible.
 

Sythrix

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Well, the idea is that if someone was going to buy a new motherboad, they could send it to me for measurements first.

If that's the case, you might want to start branching out on Reddit with your intentions. Bridging /r/headphones and /r/buildapc or /r/pcmasterrace explaining you'd like to do more motherboard audio reviews, rather than solely relying on people here to build a new system.

I don't know if the manufacturers would send any or not but it couldn't hurt to ask. :)
 
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maverickronin

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I agree, but for multi channel movie sound it may be an option. For example right now I go HDMI out to an AVR, but I suppose if I discovered a motherboard that had some great DAC I might consider analog out.

That is a good use case for the motherboard's onboard sound. Leave all the decoding in software and skip buying a new receiver every time Dolby forecasts a dip in profits and decides to stick in a new channel somewhere.

One would need to test all the outputs though as the primary left and right get better parts and specs on many boards.
 

έχω δίκιο

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True, but I could send my card to Amir if he was interested and we could measure it that way,

I don't want to discourage you from sending it to him. I think it would be interesting to see how it performs.

coupled with whatever his motherboard measured at. Then I could get an idea of its general performance.

You've lost me there. I don't see how the performance of his motherboard sound is related or can be helpful in interpreting measurements on your sound card when it is used in his system.
 

Sal1950

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I do but it has been randomly crashing. So I finally bit the bullet and examined the crash dump and instantly found the offending driver. Uninstalled that and she is up. But the software on it is pretty old and I am upgrading it all. Should be able to post at least some data later today.
My offer to send you a copy of my Linux build still stands. :) LOL
 
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amirm

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Sythrix

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You've lost me there. I don't see how the performance of his motherboard sound is related or can be helpful in interpreting measurements on your sound card when it is used in his system.

Okay, I think we're getting hung up on the whole "my system" thing. I only wish that I could get measurements relative to my system. However, we could get an idea of the performance Delta between the card and his built in sound if I send him the card.

Now I understand that wouldn't be directly comparable to my system but I've already established that I don't want to send my computer so that's off the table. We can still gain data on the card and how it does in Amir's system versus his on-board sound, if he wanted to do such a thing.

EDIT: just so we're clear I'm talking about measuring the output from the sound card, not using it to perform measurements itself.
 

bennetng

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I have a feeling that even if the Asus branded ALC1220 can achieve better DR and other results in the standard RMAA tests, the mid level IMD problem won't disappear. Judge from the slight linearity change at -40dB and the IMD vs level graph, probably the ALC1220 is doing something special around that level.

If people compare the Realtek with something like this I think they will be much happier.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...d-measurement-of-emotiva-umc200-pre-pro.3504/
 

Veri

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True, but I could send my card to Amir if he was interested and we could measure it that way, coupled with whatever his motherboard measured at. Then I could get an idea of its general performance. I don't fancy the idea of sending my whole system, but we would get some data.

I for one would love to see the STX II measured, it has one of the best dac chips TI has to offer, theoretical 132dB SNR I believe? I wonder how far off it truly performs!! If you can arrange it with @amirm that would be wonderful.
 

Sythrix

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I for one would love to see the STX II measured, it has one of the best dac chips TI has to offer, theoretical 132dB SNR I believe? I wonder how far off it truly performs!! If you can arrange it with @amirm that would be wonderful.

Well, regardless of the chip’s theoretical performance, ASUS claims 124 dB for the line out and 120 for the headphone out (both A-weighted). I have been curious as well. The card requires a free pci-e slot and 1 free 4-pin molex connection from the PSU to install. If Amir was comfortable with performing the install and setup, along with drivers etc, then I could make do without it for a couple weeks.

I don’t know what’s on his plate though and this would probably be slightly more time consuming than his standard fare. Might be something to consider for the future.
 

FrantzM

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Hi

Sal 1950 and others here :)() have transformed me into a cheapskate: I now tediously make sure of spending just enough for performance I can perceive. It is however clear to me that there is threshold of performance that requires some cash outlay. Laptops and even desktop sound cards were not meant and designed to be paragon of high performance. We may have to face this conclusion here: An external DAC/Amp is required to extract the best from headphones, even highly sensitive ones. At the price (low) and level of performance (high) they are now routinely found it is is no-brainer.
 

bennetng

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Well, regardless of the chip’s theoretical performance, ASUS claims 124 dB for the line out and 120 for the headphone out (both A-weighted). I have been curious as well. The card requires a free pci-e slot and 1 free 4-pin molex connection from the PSU to install. If Amir was comfortable with performing the install and setup, along with drivers etc, then I could make do without it for a couple weeks.

I don’t know what’s on his plate though and this would probably be slightly more time consuming than his standard fare. Might be something to consider for the future.
JA's measurement of an older asus soundcard. Actually he was quite happy with it.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/asus-xonar-essence-ststx-soundcards-measurements

He used a 16-bit J-Test signal so not all of the spikes are jitter. Here is how the reference signal looks like and his AP's performance.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/case-jitters

Apart from the limited bandwidth (7.5-14.5kHz) I also forgot that Amir's newer APX555 has higher FFT resolutions! The spikes showed up on the ALC1220 are pretty similar to some USB packet noise he was not able to measure with his old AP, so it would be interesting to see the jitter performance of the Realtek under load too.

I also considered to buy the Asus instead of Creative since it doesn't look as good as the Asus in RMAA tests. But at last I bought the X-Fi card because I need Creative's DSP.
 

Sythrix

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JA's measurement of an older asus soundcard. Actually he was quite happy with it.

I bought and used the original ST PCI version because of this review. I ended up swapping for the STX II several years ago when I built my new system because I no longer had a legacy PCI slot on my new MB.

I also considered to buy the Asus instead of Creative since it doesn't look as good as the Asus in RMAA tests. But at last I bought the X-Fi card because I need Creative's DSP.

I don't know specifically what how this forum feels about RMAA, but I was told by more than one person that the program wasn't accurate when I was doing some (very) amateur testing and measuring.

Creative has some interesting hardware. It would be nice if someone could eventually send one to Amir for testing, alongside maybe my STX II card and the onboard solutions, so we could get a rounded look at PC audio as it stands today.
 
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amirm

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I don’t know what’s on his plate though and this would probably be slightly more time consuming than his standard fare. Might be something to consider for the future.
I appreciate your concern :). Given the interest in the past about this card, it is worth testing it. Let's plan on testing it in September.
 

Sythrix

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Xyrium

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I've really enjoyed my Asus Xonar Essence ST PCI card. :)

I as well, but the output impedance is 10 Ohms, so low impedance cans with difficult phase angles, beware.
 

έχω δίκιο

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Okay, I think we're getting hung up on the whole "my system" thing.
...
Now I understand that wouldn't be directly comparable to my system...

You raised some good points about EMI inside of each computer and how it might affect the sound card's performance -- and you were right.

Thanks for generously offering to send your sound card to Amir for testing. I look forward to seeing how it performs.
 

Dana reed

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Well, even BETTER NEWS would be if you believed in audio science just the same and didn't waste your money on things that don't change the sound. Instead you could put that money to good causes like music, food, vacation, charity, etc.
The big question, which has been posited here several times but not answered clearly, is: What measurements and metrics will actually be discerned by a listening human (on a given set of transducers and source material). Meaning, if the transducer has >0.1% THD across the board, will anyone notice 0.005 vs 0.0005% coming from the electronics? And if the noise floor of a recording is up at -80 dB, who cares what linearity and sine waves down at -90 or -100 dB look like?
I guess correlating measurements with real double-blind listening tests for n=100 people would be pretty difficult, and possibly expensive
 
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