I need it for my thinkpad

the internal dac suuuuuuuucks

I can hear hissing and whining and everything sounds like it has a vocal fry

@ultimate-drawmaster buy a cheap pcm2704 dac then

theyre decent

@systemxd doesnt even mean its better tbh, external dac is 9/10 times just placebo

only asctual improvement you get is if you have a _really old_ pc with super-shit onboard sound, or if you have some like ultra-retarded motherboard with a super shitty amp section after the onboard dac

any vaguely competently designed computer or phone is gonna have a perfectly fine dac, may need amp but the dac itself you gotta _try_ to fuck up

DAC/amps aren't useful for portable listening, but they're great for when you know you'll be in a relatively quiet room where noise floor is actually noticeable.

noise floor will never be noticeable

16 bit has a wider dynamic range than any music recording i have ever seen

i have seen a lot of music

an awful lot of audiophile hi fi 24 bit and higher music

literally no advantage for listening, the information just isn't there to notice

i'd prolly want one if i were using the dac as a function generator but i mean, i'd just use a function generator

note: i do use an external dac myself, because i dont wanna reach around the back of my chassis or fuck around with extension cords to plug in a different headphone

also because is not a dac it's a whole 2 in 2 out codec with phantom power and all that

does a dac even matter if you use bluetooth headphones

plz no crucify

@Tonmonkeyla bluetooth only transmit digital music, there's always a dac on your headphones

Tonmonkeyla: You're right, it doesn't matter. And I'm not so sure all bluetooth headphones has DAC, since bluetooth is digital anyway when it's transmitting. But every bluetooth headphone has a built-in sound card

@Kaytee i mean, i've been able to identify dacs in a blind AB a fair few times. mobo line outs included

I wonder if there are any cheap Bluetooth headphones out there with a quality DAC

@HEKTIK if anythng you've been hearing bad amp stage or ground loop etc, not the dac itself

dacs themselves are essentially off the shelf perfect beyons humans' ability to hear

didnt sound like a ground loop

but yeah amp stage maybe

you can measure em to be so

i should get into measuring sources

amps are a lot more vartied and easier to screw up

i already do a lot of transducer level stuff

a dac is generally just an off the shelf IC from TI and measurably perfect on its own

yeah ive been able to reliably ab amps a lot more now

shits weird

amps people do all sorts of dumb shit like having teeny tiny rail voltages or picking up noise on the inputs

i still love the cmoy/ra1

so stupid simple

and sounds legit good

my main gripe with the cmoy is the low output current keeping you from really driving some of the crazier cans

it could use a buffer amp

yeah