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Improving sound quality from a laptop to Hifi amplifier

ex brickie

ex brickie

pfm Member
Someone educate me please......

I’ve been reading for a while some rave reviews about mini DACs like the Audioquest Dragonfly. Whenever I see a picture or read an article they are inevitable hooked up a phone so I get the impression they do something to improve the music quality on streamed (?) or MP3 music?

What I’d like to know is whether they make any difference to the sound quality of radio programmes from a laptop to an amplifier. Occasionally I listen to old radio programmes downloaded on a laptop and simply link the laptop to amp via a 6.3mm>2RCA cable. The sound quality is better than the rubbish laptop soundcard/speaker but still not great

So my question is whether something like the Dragonfly makes any significant SQ improvements or my uses and if so how is it best to connect it up? The laptop only seems to have a mini headphone socket(which I’m using) or some sort of HDMI type socket (which I’ve never tried for anything)

Or is there something else reasonably priced that will do what I’m after?

Apologies if it sounds like a daft question.....
 
I have a DF Black plugged into a USB socket in my MacBook, a 3.5 jack to RCA lead going from DF to amp. It's a very simple set up and quite a big improvement over the MacBook's own DAC.
 
Great little device that is an obvious improvement over the headphone socket. The red may be better still. You can use it with iPad or iPhone as well as long as you buy a camera connection kit.
 
I tried a Dragonfly awhile back, just for headphone listening while I was doing stuff on my laptop, and I thought it most definitely was nicer listening to music through it than through the headphone socket. I think it’s got better since I tried one, so definitely worth giving it a shot. Buy it from Amazon and you can always send it back if it doesn’t offer you anything.
 
if your amp has a usb type 'b' input, you could simply buy a type 'a' to type 'b' cable and simply connect laptop to amp for superb hifi sound quality.

if not, then you could get a small inexpensive dac with a usb type 'b' input to sit inbetween your amp and laptop ( so, laptop to dac(same cable as mentioned above), dac to amp (rca out from dac to rca in to amp). something like this...


Dayton Audio DAC01 USB Audio DAC 24-bit/96 kHz RCA Output
 
ex brickie said:
The laptop only seems to have a mini headphone socket(which I’m using) or some sort of HDMI type socket (which I’ve never tried for anything)

Or is there something else reasonably priced that will do what I’m after?

Apologies if it sounds like a daft question.....
Click to expand...
Does the laptop really not have a usb output? If not you will have a job using a dragonfly. I think there are some modestly priced dacs with HDMI in. Maybe Topping(?). Or an AV amp?
If you do have a usb out the options are wider
 
He’s asking about the Audioquest Dragonfly, which is a USB DAC that looks like a memory stick ...
 
ex brickie said:
I’ve been reading for a while some rave reviews about mini DACs like the Audioquest Dragonfly. Whenever I see a picture or read an article they are inevitable hooked up a phone so I get the impression they do something to improve the music quality on streamed (?) or MP3 music?
Click to expand...

No, they don't do any sort of magic on the actual audio signal. The main difference is that they are in some cases better at driving the headphones. With a laptop they might provide some additional noise immunity. Most better DAC chips are way beyond audible differences these days, the difference is in the analog buffer stage.
 
Your laptop should have a USB port. They have been standard for a very long time now. Perhaps post a couple of pictures of the available ports so people can help or post the make and model of laptop?

I use a Chord Mojo with my laptop connected via USB. It will definitely improve the sound from your laptop and drive most headphones very well.

There are a number of DAC/Amps available. The Dragonfly series is well liked. Others like the Cyrus Sounkey, Cambride DACMagic XS, Oppo HA-2 (I really liked this unit but preferred the Mojo) will serve a similar purpose.
 
The radio programme or streamed music will be digital so that it can be transferred over t'interweb and your laptop will have an internal DAC to convert that to analog audio to output via your headphone socket.

An external DAC will likely be better than your laptop's, but if the digital file it is decoding is lossy / of lowish quality (low bitrate mp3) then no DAC can make it sound as good as a lossless file, as the information that is discarded when converting the original sound to digital can't be replaced later down the line.

As others have said, I'd be surprised if your laptop doesn't have a USB output on it, so if it does you need a DAC that will take a USB input or some cable that is USB to whatever your DAC requires, but really so many DACs are USB capable that you needn't have to do this.

So, have a look at the bitrate of the digital files and let us know that as well as the laptop you're using, then you can look at a DAC. For the best indication of how the external DAC compares with your laptop's you want to be using a lossless digital file, which for a 3 minute song should be around the 20 to 40 MB size. An average bitrate mp3 for the same song should be around 10x smaller so 2 - 4 MB.

Apologies if this is teaching you to suck eggs :)
 
Whatever the hardware, think about the gain structure (basically keep digital gain at -0 and adjust volume on the analog side - there are threads from Paul Ransom explaining why this is technically the better approach).
 
joel said:
Whatever the hardware, think about the gain structure (basically keep digital gain at -0 and adjust volume on the analog side - there are threads from Paul Ransom explaining why this is technically the better approach).
Click to expand...

If you have a 24-bit DAC, it might be easier to use the analog volume control as gain setting, turning it to the loudest possible volume you might want with digital volume set to 100%, and then use digital volume control.
 
Any external sound card with digital input and output.
I happen to use a Creative X5, but only because that was about the only choice when I bought it (none of these soundkeys etc at that time).
 
Julf said:
If you have a 24-bit DAC, it might be easier to use the analog volume control as gain setting, turning it to the loudest possible volume you might want with digital volume set to 100%, and then use digital volume control.
Click to expand...
Yup (by -0, I mean 100% in the digital domain).
 
joel said:
Yup (by -0, I mean 100% in the digital domain).
Click to expand...

What I meant is that you go 100%/0 only at full blast, and use the digital volume control to adjust listening volume (after having adjusted analog volume to make gain structure ideal).
 
Julf said:
What I meant is that you go 100%/0 only at full blast, and use the digital volume control to adjust listening volume (after having adjusted analog volume to make gain structure ideal).
Click to expand...
Ah. That's not ideal.Check Paul's threads on what digital 'volume' is. Although TBH, for internet radio/podcasts none of this matters very much. APT-X and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones works great. In the car, just turn up the volume until it drowns out the volume. Job jobbed as they say.
 
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