Are DACs a meme? Can you really hear any difference compared to the onboard audio?

You might notice tiny a difference if you go from an older one to a newer one or a newer but mega Chinese dollar store dirt cheap one to something decent. Don't worry about it too much, because a lot of of it is audiofool stuff. Also, onboard audio on modern PCs is fine. Spend money on speakers before anything else.

This. Speakers are the best return on your dollar, then headphones. Then if you want to show off to your poorfag friends go for the amps, DACs, cables etc.

youtube.com/watch?v=H07NpWk_Xf8

It’s all a meme.

alc1220 is pretty damn solid

>not realizing the inevitability of death
Disgusting

dacs can matter if your output stream has a high resolution; if you're using typical headphones, it may not detect any difference; skin textures on a cell phone screen played in 320x240 vs skin textures on 60 inch 4K screen played in blu ray ultra

amps can matter if your output stream has low impedance and irregular impedance; pulling a trailer with a VW bug on a flat road vs pulling the same trailer with the same VW bug on an up and down road and never making it... vs using a Mac truck

cables probably dont matter unless theres electrical interference that is out of the ordinary

audiophiles are retards sometimes but low end users with gear that cant distinguish differences can be just as retarded; hey guys check out my 640x480 CRT with the .5 lbs Jensen speakers - who needs 4K and 5.1 audio amirite

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I've got an FX-AUDIO X6 and it sounds slightly better than my integrated dac on the motherboard and much better than the one on my laptop. Since it's USB I can use it on any computer. It's also very convenient to control my headphone volume from it.

Question for you audio dudes.

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dacs only makes a slight difference if the audio source is actually high quality, and that's if you're not buying chinkshit

>Can you really hear any difference compared to the onboard audio?
I think so, my azuz sabertooth comes already equipped with a fried on-board audio chip.

>hey guys check out my 640x480 CRT with the .5 lbs Jensen speakers - who needs 4K and 5.1 audio amirite
wow what a difference

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This. Probably reinstalling W10 or switching to GNU/Linux on my main computer would fix most of my issues. The one I most realize is when using the on-board DAC, I will get some freezes for half a second and bug the sound on that half a second too, sounding like an earthquake or whatever. As I need more inputs and outputs, an external DAC also helps there.

Only if your onboard DAC is shit or with noise.

As long as you can drive your headphones optimal mV peaks correctly, you're good.

A DAC that colors sound is bad, and any DAC built in or external (OP pic) that can run your headphones is again, good enough.

Koss Porta Pro runs the same on Realtek built in as it does on $10000 external DAC since they are so easy to drive.

The whole point of external DAC is to avoid internal chassis interference (i.e. EMI) that may affect the sound quality of an internal DAC whether it be a built-in one on a motherboard or an add-on card slotted to a motherboard. This is a real thing. The only people that are going to care are content creators and audiophiles. Normal people should not care as long as their internal DAC is of good quality (many are today).

If your motherboard contains a snibbety snab you won't need a DAC.

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Mostly extraneous, but I have pic related which sounds good and is pretty useful. Plug ur guitar in etc, comfy. :3

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It's a must have as real headphones don't have audio control. You need a DAC even just for the volume knob

>Having an ego at all

Yeah, you will suddenly hear noise, no matter at what position the volume knob is. Especially with head phones. You are better off using the normal output from your pc to get good sound.
Of course that only applies to cheaper ones. If you want to pay money then it doesn't happen but better headphones are a more wise investment at that prise point. See to know how something not shit looks like.

Yes the idea is for the DAC to take the optical from the motherboard and convert it to analog, I don't see your point.

Why would you pick those floor tiles at any point in time of any timeline though?

I wanted to like digital, but the constant on/off lag made it useless in general.

I would use an external DAC if I was recording audio, onboard is fine for playback.

Do we have to have this thread every day?

fully digital speakers are a thing
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_speaker

DACs are a meme, I have tried many of them and could not tell a single difference even with very high end headphones. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a salty audiofool.

The people who make these threads are the same people who make religion vs atheism threads on /sci/

aka cancer

Proper DACs for audio recording aren't memes because they give you more inputs and outputs.
Still, I need some recs for home recording. Does anybody know good and simple DACs for a relatively cheap? (relative similar DACs of course)

*hisses at you*
nothing personnel, kid
They aren't a meme, unless you go for the Supreme (TM) Audio (TM) Experience (TM) for only 99999.99$

In most cases, the DAC on your motherboard works nearly identically to any external DAC that Jow Forums would typically buy, the difference is mostly placebo unless your motherboard has a serious design defect.

Two things user. First is this is 100% subjective. You can ask what the point is but ultimately somebody can "hear" the difference and that boils your argument down to "It doesn't affect me so it must not matter to anyone." Which is just as stupid as the audiophile who goes out of their way to get those frequencies that can't be heard.
Secondly, you can forget about any differences in file size. It's the same concept as a 10x10 pixel PNG of one color compared to a 1000X1000 pixel PNG of one color. There isn't a huge difference in file size because declaring empty or repeating space in files with any kind of compression takes almost no data at all. No big deal there unless a few kilobytes means something to you.

a typical 100$ DAC sounds better than your typical motherboard with realtek codec but thats about it.

i would buy it just for the volume knob. fuck controlling volume by software

what am i looking at
and why is your camera so shit

You can buy a cheap mobo with bad enough onboard audio that an external one has some benefit, depends on the mobo.
I think the main reason to getting a dac is either removing electrical noise that pc components create and transfer over to the speakers or simply having a physical volume controller so you can keep windows sounds at 100%.

real

the black levels on the 2 different monitors. bottom is CRT and top is LCD

I haven't had a motherboard that hisses for over a decade, and for at least for the past few generations motherboard manufacturers have been racing to improve the audio quality to the point that it's hard to buy a desktop consumer mobo that doesn't have good audio

They are for boomer faggits who think they're hearing hasn't gone to shit.

buzzfeed.com/daves4/how-young-are-your-ears

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>make hotkey for adjusting volume
>???
>epic win

There's essentially no noticeable audio difference between a 30 $ DAC and a 100'000$ one. What can be a difference is the amount of features a more expensive DAC offers, eg. more i/o, dedicated volume controls etc..
Onboard DACs while mostly okay in quality can suffer from noise since they are right next to all other electronics on the main board. If you don't notice any noise in your onboard audio a external DAC won't give you better audio.

>having any perspective whatsoever

>dynaudio special 40
JUST

Amps can matter, so can cables but only if your cables are atrocious and completely unprotected and are actively rubbing up against a static collecting surface like a shirt.

DACs in this day and age won't matter unless you're a genetically superior specimen with super ears. The issue is that even if you can tell the difference your preference is subjective and there are tons of people who prefer lo-fi style mixing so it's like who gives a shit.

>know how something not shit looks like
That audio interface isn't not shit. At best it's unremarkable at worst you don't need it. I have it for my modmic though and it's actually an improvement over the onboard audio jack

arent most on board dacs 16 bit
getting a 24 bit dac is gonna give a noticeable improvement innit

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>linking justfeed

So much retardation in this thread. Never listen to Jow Forums when it comes to audio, honestly.

The point of DAC's is often more than just the audio quality difference itself. Modern day motherboards often have decent enough in built sound quality for most cases to not make a difference, and so if you're using headphones in the range lower and including of M50X's, plugging them right into your computer's out jack is fine, unless you have a board older than say 5 years. As you venture beyond basic headphones like the M50X's though in search of real quality and real listening experiences (sound stage, preferred frequency responses, open backed, more comfy etc), you begin to come across headphones that require more power than what you'll get out of a regular soundcard to really get the most out of them, and this is where impedance comes into it. Impedance is how resistant to electric signal your headphones are, and should be matched with appropriate out impedances on your hardware. Good, dedicated DAC's will always have super low impedances, which will reduce the distortion of the signal, while motherboards will not, and furthermore DAC's output a line level signal intended to be put through an amplifier that provides the extra power a good pair of headphones needs, the amp itself having low out impedance too.

There's more to this but I'm running out of characters, so tldr: yes if you have real headphones.

in the same way that having a 4k monitor/tv doesn't matter.
1080p looks fine but some people want more.

>comparing audiophile snakeoil to screen resolution

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they're better but you have to be at least mildly autistic about your music to really notice the difference over a decent phone or motherboard onboard DAC
for me, my motherboard's DAC is shit and I hate using the onboard analog 3.5mm for headphones because it's got noise from the case and I want a hardware volume knob that's within easy reach. I have an entry-level DAC+Amp (SMSL M-3) I can barely if at all tell the difference from my Sony phone's DAC though.

if you're using a desktop PC to listen to headphones a lot, a DAC is nice if only for the hardware volume knob and getting the analog parts out of the case itself.

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its a somewhat valid analogy - you hear the differences in DACs and amps when using better speakers which are "higher resolution" -- these produce a substantial soundstage and are thus more sensitive to changes in the time domain

i never considered getting a DAC until I could hear the jitter artifacts that a certain kind of speaker could render in high fidelity

its similar to watching a news broadcast in HD on a large screen tv, and plan flies overhead, causing the picture to pixelate

>behringer
this is an elaborate ruse right?

gotta be, behringer is the biggest fucking long running joke in audio technology across the board, every single product they make is garbage

I'm seeing a lot of retarded answers here. I've been working as a recording engineer both freelance and in some of the larger studios around Toronto and I'll try to simplify it for you.

DACs are useful because a computer's soundcard is not properly isolated. Once you convert to analog signal, you're at major risk of EMI, which is the reason balanced cables are shielded. Digital does not have this issue in regards to consumer audio equipment.

The computer's soundcard is more often than not, just a small chip on the motherboard and only capable of blu ray quality playback (96k 24bit). There is a lot of controversy between "who can actually hear the difference" at different quality levels, but I promise if you listen to a CD (41.5k 16bit) and any modern studio's fresh WAVs (192k 24bit) and pay special attention to reverb, cymbals, and the "air" part of the vocals, you will be able to hear a noticeable difference in quality.

Retards who claim they can hear above 20k are full of shit, anyone over 16 can get up to maybe 18.5k, and that drastically drops off with age and abuse. The reason people like those higher frequencies involved is they can actually resonate against different nodes while you're listening. This is another controversial topic and there are arguments to both sides

I run a DAC/headphone amp combo unit with virtual surround through a 300W Samsung soundbar with a sub. The difference in sound quality between just plugging the soundbar straight into the computer vs running it through the DAC is night and day.

cont.

That being said, I use an apogee groove while I'm working on my laptop and can easily notice the difference. Have you ever plugged in your headphones and heard a very low static noise? That's the EMI from your mobo that's fucking with the analog signal. This can barely screw with anything over ~5k and lowering your noise floor allows proper tails on reverbs and delays to come through. The high's will sound crisper, and the empties will be empty just like buddies comparison between blacks. The top is "silence" from a built in soundcard, the bottom is actual silence from a dedicated DAC

Hear? Probably not. Measure? Probably as a computer is a noisy piece of machinery.

>optical
Why do you need optical for? Why is this still a thing. Is USB not widespread enough?

What's that unit called?

I use sensitive headphones with the internal volume at maximum listening to the noise of the void. The only thing audible is the blood flowing through my ears.
Pretty good internal DAC/amp in this laptop.

What about jitter rejection playing a not-so-well-recorded WAV in an onboard DAC in a laptop from 2006, compared to that of a DAC in pic related?

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some DACs wont decode to 192 with USB input

>he thinks digital speakers literally play the PCM waveform

youtube.com/watch?v=vHNwEkWIFlc

192KHz is not a relevant frequency but anyway. Why? Does USB not have enough bandwidth for it?

>Want to up the volume for a particular part of a song and then lower it again
>Us hotkeys
>Experience ruined by the noise of your mechanical keyboard

ALC1220 is unreasonably good. It gets even better when you change the balance setting to ultimate, in the Windows driver.
I really wish I knew how to make the Linux driver act the same way.

>192Khz
Even a fucking entire orchestra basically produces no frequencies recordable by a microphone above 40Khz

Now do OLED

take a pic with the lights on.

this all applies - unless you are recording something like an instrument.

Dacs matter to a point. Wouldn't spend more than $500 on a DAC myself. Amp and headphone/speaker matter a LOT more.
If you can't hear the difference between integrated and a decent external dac with a proper setup then you either have shit genetics or hearing damage. The buzzing from integrated is enough to drive me mad by itself.

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>promise if you listen to a CD (41.5k 16bit) and any modern studio's fresh WAVs (192k 24bit) and pay special attention to reverb, cymbals, and the "air" part of the vocals, you will be able to hear a noticeable difference in quality.

>In September 2007, the Audio Engineering Society published the results of a year-long trial, in which a range of subjects including professional recording engineers were asked to discern the difference between SACD and a compact disc audio (44.1 kHz/16 bit) conversion of the same source material under double blind test conditions. Out of 554 trials, there were 276 correct answers, a 49.8% success rate corresponding almost exactly to the 50% that would have been expected by chance guessing alone.

i dont have one of those monitors. but ive heard that for that monitor type its actually just OLED instead of LED behind a LCD screen. idk if thats actually true though.
i dont feel like getting my LCD out

Holy shit a post that makes sense.

your confusing sample rate with physical frequency

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I agree.
All you need is these hi-fi speakers

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is comparing CD to SACD routed through a CD DAC and circuitry the same as comparing 41.5 vs 192 WAV routed through an onboard DAC?

jesus christ how horrifying

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>animeposter not understanding sarcasm
you are weak

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hey gurls
muh dick

post dick or gtfo

Some computers have really shitty sound cards, so a USB DAC/amp makes a world of a difference. for example my netbook produces absolutely atrocious sound from the native headphone jack, but it can transmit data over USB just fine so the DAC/amp definitely works in that case

please be patient i have autism

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Post autismal genderqueer genetalia or gtfo

My DAC has switch to boost bass. That’s the only reason I use it. I could just use an equalizer but I like it being a switch.

Wat dac u hav?

also forgot to mention that a usb DAC/amp can be used as a pre amp, so I use it on my desktop as well

>actually falling for marketing bullshit from Sony
That's not how it works
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem

44.1kHz is more than sufficient (22.05kHz sound frequency range) to cover the entire range of human hearing

It's easier for companies to throw useless technical specifications for consumers than actually proving with measurements why their product is any better than the rest