What is the best way to improve the sound on your PC without buying any $500 USB DACs, Marble power adapters laced in gold and bamboo, or Liquid-cooled AUX cables?
Can you install some kind audio processing software or enhanced sound card drivers that will do the same thing?
You could use an paramic equalizer to target your headphone's flaws. Don't even really know what your complaint is about your on board sound.
A transparent dac costs like $20
>>61069721
>>61069751
Well what's wrong with an integrated DAC in a modern laptop compared to an expensive external one?
>>61069817
Maybe more noise from the system. Shouldn't be a huge problem because when music is playing the noise will be masked by the music. Does your computer's audio produce a lot of noise? It should sound like a hiss like a cassette. It's the same kind of noise
>>61069817
you can hear the difference, a $30 fiio will sound better than most onboard DACs. One thing you notice is how instruments sound is better. Everything is more defined, soundstage, separation, all get better. Worth getting a DAC in the $30 to $100 range, depending on your setup.
>tfw testing out some vintage french military tubes I got recently on my $800+ headphone/amp/dac setup
>>61069613
>What is the best way to improve the sound on your PC without buying any $500 USB DAC
Easiest way is to just get decent low impedance headphones that don't need an amp. Look on /g/ for headphone recs. If there is audible noise from your computer's headphone jack, get an external DAC. Otherwise, you probably don't need one. I'd recommend the ODAC by JDS Labs for $150.
>Can you install some kind audio processing software or enhanced sound card drivers that will do the same thing?
No. In all seriousness you need to shell out some cash. However, the law of diminishing returns hits hard for hifi gear so you can definitely get good sound on a budget. As I said, ask on /g/, not here.
sound quality is a literal meme, you can't quantify it because its not there in the digital world
speakers can be more or less accurate with different frequency responses, but a flat curve doesn't necessarily translate into a better listening experience
bit depth matters a little bit so as to have less noise overall
do you think kanye west, nigel godrich, or steve albini use an expensive dac?
in fact you can find a million quotes from johnny greenwood about how sound quality is a placebo
>>61070672
Who the fuck is Johnny Greenwood
>>61069613
Proper use of equalization.
>>61070309
"no"
>>61070711
Muse's frontman
>>61069938
not him but I have a question. I have 300 Ohm phones and a sound card without amp. When I play at say 30-50% volume I start to hear noise in the phones. Its not noticeable when music plays but in quieter parts its definitely there. What could I do to eliminate this?
>>61069613
DAC and sound drivers are useless, if your PC isn't too old or it doesn't have any mechanical problem. Most of the PC built-in sound cards are good enough these days. If you want to improve the sound out of your PC, you should care for these things in order of importance:
1) music/movie source (CD, SACD, SHM CD, DVD, Blue rays, lossless digital files, accurately encoded lossy digital files)
2) speaker/headphone quality
3) amp (it may be necessary for some devices)
4) dac
>>61070309
Literally wrong.
You're right OP, it is a pretty vexed question. On one hand, connecting your transmodospectrum cortext or its gamma-equivalent may indeed route the vectorpathways through the neural-hyperchasm, you risk making your tetrasinus-capacitor overly volatile. On the other hand, this method would capacitate your ultafractal-potentiometers to discompacify your gyromegadisks, leading to a far higher xenopass response.
>>61072155
>1) music/movie source (CD, SACD, SHM CD, DVD, Blue rays, lossless digital files, accurately encoded lossy digital files)
>2) speaker/headphone quality
You can't put those into order like that. Lossy audio hardly ever becomes an audible thing and even if it does, it presents itself in a very different way than accuracy in frequency response and lack of nonlinear distortion. You can't think of those two as a "bottleneck" for each other. You can hear compression artifacts on really poor gear just fine and using good gear to listen to audibly compressed music will sound better than listening the same thing through Apple Earbuds. If I had to put those into order, the speakers/headphones are by far the most important thing in your gear as far as sound quality goes. The quality of the gear you use to drive the headphones/speakers depends on multiple factors but it's often something you don't need to worry about, especially not before getting a decent headphones/loudspeakers. DAC is literally a non-issue in most cases.
>>61072110
Does your sound card really only have a "line level output"? Which card is it? Because most on-board codecs and sound cards have a small headphone amplifier built in and its integrated into the 3,5mm stereo jack. How do you adjust volume? Digital volume from within your operating system?
It's pretty hard to say what is causing the problem but if you hear noise during music on high impedance headphones, it must be pretty severe. If your sound card only has one stereo output, there's nothing you can do to fix that. It means the output itself is pretty much crap. Try using your on-board. Do you hear noise? Do you get the volume you need? If you hear noise, you just need new gear. I would get a discrete DAC and an amplifier like O2+ODAC. If you hear no noise but don't get the volume you need, you want an amplifier. If you hear no noise and get the volume you want, you are good.
>>61072469
>You can hear compression artifacts on really poor gear just fine and using good gear to listen to audibly compressed music will sound better than listening the same thing through Apple Earbuds
I absolutely agree with you on this, but...
> If I had to put those into order, the speakers/headphones are by far the most important thing in your gear as far as sound quality goes
Casting aside the whole lossless-lossy file discussion, the mastering quality of your material source (the ones I listed above) is more important than the gear you're using. For instance take a normal Genesis recording and the latest japanese SHM CD version: the latter is so much better, even on cheap headphones, that it's not even funny. Of course if you have a better gear, everything sounds even better, but I would say that the quality of the material support the music is recorded is more important.
