Sound quality loss - sound card vs laptop

iako

New member
Hi all,
I'm wondering if there is a loss in sound quality or definition when plugging your set of headphones directly into your computer phones output (1/8 inch jack) compared to plugging them into the 1/4 jack output of a sound card - not interested in volume differences, just in sound clarity!
If I'm just in playback mode, is it gonna sound more or less the same with or without the sound card?
thanks in advance
 
Hi all,
I'm wondering if there is a loss in sound quality or definition when plugging your set of headphones directly into your computer phones output (1/8 inch jack) compared to plugging them into the 1/4 jack output of a sound card - not interested in volume differences, just in sound clarity!
If I'm just in playback mode, is it gonna sound more or less the same with or without the sound card?
thanks in advance

I would say it very much depends on the laptop. I have a 7-8 yr old HP i3 which sounds very good to me on the very sensitive AKG K92 phones but so does my Lenovo 510 which is a bit younger. Much more modern laptops, with an eye on power economy probably use 'Class D' amplifiers and pretty dire and cheap they might be.
I also feed the audio out of an ASUS motherboard to a hi fi amp and a pair of Mission 775' and that sounds superb to me. Of course that headphone amplifier is not seeing any load to speak of.

Audio interfaces can and should have better headphone amplifiers than laptops, plenty of juice to spare. Not sure if that is always true mind!

New day, new thought. You can take the soundcard out of the equation with a wee device from TEKNET (their capitals). This is a sturdy aluminium USB dongle that has a 3.5mm input and, usefully for you, a 3.5mm stereo output. I use one with a headset for Skyping. The quality seems excellent.

A bit more money but maybe better is the Behringer UCA 202. You get a VC for the cans and RCA ins and outs.

Dave.
 
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