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Can you really hear a difference?

Posted by soldermizer (A) on September 10, 2011 at 15:42:45

In Reply to: Farewell, onboard audio! Err... now what? posted by 9emini on September 3, 2011 at 20:30:59:

None of my DAC stuff is "high end." In one case I was able to hear a difference: the line out from a cheap net book has unacceptable noise. I got acceptable quality with a very cheap USB DAC.

On a cheap desktop system, the difference was harder to hear (in fact, I can hear no difference). Depending on your set-up, this is very easy to A/B and test for yourself: I already had some external DAC so I had a friend plug the Motherboard audio to Input1 and the external (presumably, better quality) outboard DAC to Input2. WHile not perfect, this was a true blind test. I did extended (Hours) listening via headphones on either Input1 or Input2 of my pre-amp. In my case, I my XP's audio set up so that the output of winamp was going to both the onboard and the external DAC (not sure how). I could not reliably tell the difference between the DAC being listened to. Ever the cynic, I suspect a lot of the supposed differences people claim to hear disappear when you put them to even a simple test. However, some things are audible (as I found with the crappy netbook.)

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