![]() Now, if the OP plans on seriously upgrading his speakersto someting even better than what I have now (and my system was not cheap compared to his, even though I caught most of it on sale) sometime in the next year of so, it may be worthwhile to go with a far better external DAC now. It's biggest advantage (besides sounding good) is its compact size (it's barely bigger than a USB thumb drive, for crying out loud). My only complaint (and it's not much of one) is I have to use my music player for any tweaking I want to do instead directly in the DAC (which I could do with my old Xonar Essence), such as volume normalization, equalization, etc. It would be completely wasted on computer speakers like the Creatives. I'm using a Dragonfly Red USB DAC for my music system and it works quite well for that even though it's "only" 2.1 (two JBL 305P MkIIs 5" satellites and a JBL LSR310 10" sub in a small room). ![]() Anything more than 2.1 is overkill for music. I wouldn't even recommend any more than 2.1 for music listening and creation but the OP indicated he also does some gaming. The main gain I got from my Essence was improved onscreen controls over Realtech's and the OP may or may not find that a determining factor for whether he would prefer the Essence over onboard sound. I suggested the Essence II because I had good luck with its predecessor but, even though I had better speakers than his, the audio improvement over onboard sound was only slight (that was on an older MOBO which is why I suggested comparing to his onboard sound since newer MOBOs tend to have better onboard sound). I'm saying that he would need far better (not to mention far more expensive!) speakers to reap any benefit from an external DAC or even a high end internal card. That's why I said the Essence II will be plenty good for his speakers and that even onboard sound may be good enough.Īlso, I'm not saying his speakers aren't any good. Normally, you will not get better performance and be wasting money. Having really great audio in his speakers is like putting high octane gasoline in a vehicle designed for use with aa lower octane gas. In the OP's case, a high end external DAC or even a good internal soundcard is going to be overkill for his speaker system. Or measurements for the JD's labs atom super clean super transparent for a $100 and measurements like those would most likely be 6-10 x the price 6-10 years ago Just look at the super clean $100 khadas time board or topping DACs. But there is way more competitions, products and research going on with external gear like thx technology, tubes, a ton of DACs, and end users measuring the gear themselves. ![]() So theoretically you can have a better PCIe card than and external one. And if well implemented you get a better analog signal at the end of the day. The chip and location of such chip is not the end all be all of sound cards but it's how you implement it. It's not just reduced interference they typically just have better amp implementation in them and DAC implementation leading to better sound quality. I suspect that if you compare the onboard sound to the sound card's sound on your current speakers, you will not hear much of a difference, if any. Whatever you decide on, be sure to buy one that you can easily return for a refund if you don't like it. Anything better than that will be overkill for the speakers you have now (heck, almost any sound card other than onboard sound will be overkill) unless you plan on upgrading your speakers someday. While, in theory, external sound cards will sound better due to supposedly reduced interference (I never had that problem with the original Xonar Essence I had), the Essence II will sound just fine on your speakers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |