Do DACs make a significant audible difference vs. laptop headphone jack?

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tedp

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I'm considering buying a dac and I wanted to pole people on how significant a difference people think a dac can make.


In a blind test, do you think an external USB dac would sound noticeably better then the headphone jack on my laptop? To be specific, if I were to close my eyes and listen to both the headphone line out from my MacBook Air and also a ~$200 good dac, with high quality source audio and connected to a high quality amp and speakers, would I be able to identify the dac as sounding significantly better?


Apparently the soundcards in newer apple laptops are actually pretty good. They support 24 bit audio and up to 192 kHz.


Do people think A. the differences are very subtle, and are more a matter of preference / tossup, and many people wouldn't identify the dac as the better sounding system, or B. there's a clear difference, and '9 out of 10 audiophiles' would pick up on those differences in a blind test?
 
Go up just a little (to $350-400) and you will likely find a pretty good USB DAC that offers substantial improvement over the Airbook. Even at under $200 you should listen to an Audioquest or Meridian USB DAC.
 
Thank rbbert —
Do you think, for example, 9 out of 10 people would choose the Meridian USB Dac over the macbook headphone jack as the one with the better sound? Or do you think it's more subtle than that?

Also, about the post earlier, I don't think price of the dac is a good indicator of how much R&D went into it. The iPod, for example, costs under $200 and had millions of dollars of R&D.
 
I bought a Meridian Explorer ($300) to take with me on trips - connected to a MacAir, using Audirvana + software. IMHO, it was much superior to the sound from iTunes playing the same 44/16 files. When I went up to higher rez files, the difference was even bigger - I think because iTunes downsamples high rez files to 44/16. I then put the Explorer into my main system as a test against my BADA2 with USB, the latter is definitely better, but also more than 20x as expensive. My Meridian dealer gave me a free trial (for a couple of weeks, more if I wanted it) to see whether it met my needs. So for me there was no risk. I have never heard the Audioquest Dragonfly (now model 2) which is $150, but only does up to 96/24. The reviews are very good and if you only have CD rips it probably would be fine.

Regarding Apple's investment in hardware and software, which is obviously substantial, I haven't heard that they have done much work on really high quality sound. Their main music profit center are MP3 quality downloads from their iTunes store. They also have emphasized the lossy formats to save space on their internal drives.

Larry
 
I, too, use a Meridian Explorer with my Win7 laptop for traveling. Via JRiver of course.

The upgrade versus the stock headphone output in the laptop is quite large, not just for SQ but especially for headphone amplification. The ability of the ANC of the Senn's have increased 10 fold, I can't hear any babies screaming anymore - and I don't notice the volume that much louder than before. :)
 
The Ifi Micro just came out in late July.

I snagged one and its very good.
 
wisnon said:
The Ifi Micro just came out in late July.

I snagged one and its very good.
Click to expand...

Wison, I have the Chord and still have a Mytek, had an ExaSound Mrk11 which handles DSD pretty nice as compared to my Chord. But since I have loads of PCM stuff I kept the Chord which I felt handled PCM a lot better than the Mytek or ExaSound.

How does this Mirco compare to the Chord as far as PCM or even DSD ?
 
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