You can’t say that!
Pc soundcards usually perform worse than Dacs.
Also their technology is very old and not innovative that it justifies the purchase of a soundcard.
If you take pber Pcie connected via an external usb card and send that to the dac and use the normal onboard chip.
Then this is the right way to get a better experience and outperforms the soundcard.
The Fiio is passable but no wonder as everyone thinks, some compare it to the Rme Adi 2 Fs which is total nonsense.
The Rme and other Dacs have more to offer.
That you don’t hear any difference is unfortunately on another sheet.
When I start Audirvana with my Dac compared to all the streamer platforms that offer their software it is definitely quieter than with Audirvana.
There are real differences to hear.
The whole setup should be right, from hardware, connectors to software.
I am sure you are having a whirlwind of a time and decision. I know there are many polarizing ideas and recommendations for you.
If you are unsure about what to do, think of a comparison with another hobby, such as building a PC or a car. I know those hobbies are less subjective than audio, but you will hit a bottleneck somewhere. It will be less obvious in audio, but you will.
If you are serious about the Clear (which is a superb headphone), you will end up investing more into the electronics than what you have in mind now. The purchase doesn’t have to be now, but just keep that in mind. I would say a popular and well-synergized chain is RNHP + Schiit Bifrost 2 for the Clear.
Otherwise, for now, Asgard 3 with the multibit addon will be great value for a while.
Well, that Tom’s hardware article says otherwise with some prominent audiophiles who did an actual A/B blind test between a Realtek codec and $2000 DAC/amp. If you can A/B blind test an uncolored external DAC and decent onboard, I doubt you will find any difference.
I will say a lot of computer audio is crappy, as I can hear very very obvious bad quality through my downstairs PCs, but gaming laptops and higher end products often do have competent soubdcards.
They obviously will measure worse than the best of external DACs - ASR measurements show this to be fact. It is also true a lot of these numbers are often below any concern for normal listening. It’s just for the headroom and peace of mind.
There is a lot of utility to having an external DAC, but at a certain point, sound improvement is not one of them. If you have amazing hearing at your age and can actually hear differences, congrats. I can’t, and there probably many others can’t either. I’m more of a budget-minded audiophile, so I’ll only pay for what I can clearly percieve as different and nothing more.
If anything, I’m sure you can agree a DAC has a lower performance-gain/price than the amplifier, which has a lower gain/price than the headphone. Supporting audio equipment should not be the bottleneck, but gains are less substantiative after passing the minimum imo.
No, you are not completely wrong.
Quite right you have mkt the normal listener side those that is enough.
Unfortunately, these are often exactly the type of standard people who do not know exactly what they are buying and often the wrong thing.
Surely there are limits also on the amplifier as well as the dac side also with headphones.
Do you also understand the intention of the topic Creator.
It goes right into the top track so your comment is not too helpful.
Which does not mean that it is bad.
Only if I already buy a Prestige headphone I don’t just plug it into the pc and hope for the best.
Like a car that has little power.
If you understand?
There should also be a setup behind it where it is possible to go further.
A car that also has performance.
I mean if you are satisfied with your setup I can only congratulate you.
You may hear even better than I do that it is probably not going to be in the money.
Of course I know that a pc is suboptimal for listening to music.
More than half of them go and do this.
Surely you can improve the pc a lot so that even an internal dac chip works correctly.
With the old pc this is not as possible as with the new ones.
If you look at the new gaming boards you at least learn something new.
Nevertheless the theme creator has an Apple computer and they like to be bitchy.
But even there is a lot of hidden potential where you could draw from.
There is rather the question what Apple has built in onboard?
If it runs with Audirvana and can listen to Dsd I doubt it would make more sense to have a Dac that supports it.
I think @WaveTheory and the others gave fantastic ideas, so I won’t add too much here. But as I was in the same position some months ago, let me give two things to consider:
Between a combo unit and a separate stack, there may have some difference but I believe not at this price point. Go with a combo if you want a more compact system, maybe a more “movable” setup but usually less flexible in future upgrades and in features. Go with a stack if you don mind the extra “clutter” but like the idea to experiment more, add different sources later on.
If you’re going the combo route, one suggestion I give is the JDS Labs Element II. It’s $400 new, usually have B-stock for $350 and you can try to find used for around $300. It’s very compact, I love the sound and it fits a clean desk like no other. I’m not sure how it would go with Argons but I think it should have enough juice for them. If you go the stack option, the B-stock of both the DAC and AMP is $450, but then maybe the other options make more sense.
Anyway, hope I was able to add something to your decision-making. Happy hunting and remember to try to enjoy the journey. =)
Not gonna bother reading through all this lol… doesnt appear anyone made the remark though… so one of the reasons to have a dac is also to clean up the signal(note I had this issue with my pc when I started) certain PC rigs will introduce a form of hum, feedback, slight static, distortion, etc. Something along those lines as they run inside the unit… a dac can help clean and remove that form of interference… not using a dac can introduce this problem but also dacs really help with performance and sound quality