laptop sound cards(headphone jack), audio interface (USB), headphones

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CoolCat

CoolCat

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I was wondering if I listen to my headphone jack on this fairly new laptop "is it comparable to a audio interface in quality,"?
and that got me to wondering what's the specs, which I cant find.

Then I wondered....Laptop vs Smart Phone too, vs Audio Interface and my headphone amplifier...
And that got me wondering about my smart phone audio converters and how much better is the converters than my Antelope Audio converters (who are famous for their converters, at least)
My Laptop is louder than the smart phone, but the quality isn't really better, hard to tell a difference, imo. Both sound really really good, imo.

Laptop vs Audio Interface
Almost everything these days the quality is pretty high tech conversion ,.Low to HiEnd, as no one probably makes old school converters anymore, I will assume its 16bit , 44 least, maybe 24/44-48 is the norm? with 24/196 or higher...etc....again I cant find my Laptop specs. But the Antelope if known for anything is their converters and its a fine audiophile unit.
Again the Interface seems louder and can probably outperform my ears. I can easily find the specs and feel confident in its "audiophile" quality of Antelope Audio interface but the Laptop sounds really good too, it isn't night and day, imo.....The Antelope is more beefed up and the jacks are better and its an interface , enough said.
Laptop sounds good, but I worry the jack is a piece of crap.

I also have a DAC Headphone Amp, Grace Design because I wanted to know what the pro's use and hear it for myself- and compare to the Antelope Audio Interface etc.., and the headphone amplifier can handle anything, in conversion to 192 and also impedance to 600 ohm headphones. Very nice....ok....but back to the Laptop.

The Laptop audio sounds crisp and clean. Its easy to pull up Martha My Dear off the White ALbum, remixed or not...or Slipknot or Weezer or OffSpring..etc...or some Beethoven n Mozart...
it sounds really really good. I don't even know what sample rate or bit depth it is but its way better than the crackling 45 record player I used to have or the hassle of many other medias.
Its 2024, near 2025 "audiophile" is like comparing really well transferred tapes from the studio directly to your ears...lossless in digital form, is the new norm?

I still wonder, not having specs, about the volume vs Headphones on the Laptop which again was pretty surprisingly good.
Amazingly the Laptop handled the 250ohm Beyer 880 headphones the 120ohm Takstar671 the 64ohm Senn280.
This Samsung Chromebook handles the 120ohm very well, and takes the 250ohm well but less volume, and the Senn 280 64ohm..get loud enough to kind of hit my ears in the midrange to turn it down a bit.

Just curious how "bad is it" in comparison and its really really good to know the Laptop converter and amp sound really good. imo.

Now I can go listen to Rob's Shootouts with more confidence, using my laptop converters/headphone amp and listen for miniscule mic and preamp comparisons, and Martha My Dear all from a Laptop while eating Spaghetti and having a Guiness. lol

Anyone else go down this rabbit hole ? Any tech info to add is appreciated or similar tests done?
 
CC, it's obvious that you've got cotton balls stuck in your ears! There's nothing better than listening to a 32bit/768kHz PCM master through an ESS Sabre 32 DAC, especially with a good set of bluetooth headphones! ?

As much as I hate to admit it, my ears are long past the days of being able to hear such subtleties. I hear the differences in speakers, microphones, headphones, guitar strings, even changing guitar picks, but a CD played through my old 25+yr old Panasonic CD player, or via my computer through my Tascam interface, or from a Sony BluRay player sounds pretty much all the same, as long as it's going through the same speakers.

Digital audio technology is over 40 years old, and the processing power increases and design of chips has improved immensely. There are DACs today that can handle gigasamples/sec, far in excess of the types of data rates of any audio. If there are differences, it's probably more in the analog section distortion products but even those seem to be vanishingly small these day, until you push things into obvious distortion.

I'm sure there are folks who have far better ears that me, but for we mere mortals, it's probably a non issue.
 
Its amazing. My younger nephew was confirming he cant hear any degradation either from his interface headphone listening to his laptop, or smart phone, at least not enough to
discard listening to a mix or track on a laptop.

you have a good point , some things are noticeable.! So that confirms the ears still work! lol

I can hear good sounds in the headphone jack on the laptop, but the speakers er....not so...when I cant tell the difference of laptop speakers and my dyn Audio-, that'll be beyond physics. Anyway, it all started when I was going to listen to someones COMPARE A to B and I was listening on the Laptop.
I should probably send this data in for a Nobel Prize? hmmm
 
Julian Krause’s interface reviews have detailed test information about the headphone outputs of those devices. Most are very good though some may not work well at high impedance levels and a few have less than stellar specs on things like crosstalk (IIRC). I asked on his Patreon page if he’d do testing on headphone amps but he never took the bait, though I think he did make a review of one….

My general take is that you should check those specs if you are doing a good amount of mixing decisions with your headphones. And, of course, you need to have good headphones and ears, but I know my ears will not benefit. And if you have one of the interfaces with excellent headphone outputs, I doubt you could get better results spending more money, regardless of your ears.

My AirPods are merely another translation checkpoint.
 
Interesting. I have this HP laptop and the sound is pretty ok as far as laptops go...crisp but not harsh etc. Decent. But in the last couple of weeks I've had 3 other laptops in my house fixing or setting them up for family. And all 3 have terrible, muffled, muddy, ill defined sound. It's very noticeable that they just suck. With my music I do check on MY laptop and you know, whatever...it's not that horrific. But through all 3 of these other laptops it's just a gong show of horror. I wonder how or why manufacturers in this day and age (all the laptops are recent laptops about the same price...diff models though) can R&D this terrible sound and check it off as ok.
 
There are no rules on this one. Most now are pretty good, and its just a few that are iffy, and these seem to be older PCs. The older macs, like my G5, still going, are pretty good. The panasonic toughbooks were always weedy sounding, and the Dells always had more hums and buzzes. Very often, ive connected visiting shows to our theatre system just using the headphone output. Audio quality is rarely an issue. Nobody notices they left their proper interface behind, apart from a few Dells who have to have a DI or a transformer ground remover in circuit or it is hum city.
 
Recently have heard a Samsung from around 2018...dull, muddy, like from behind a wall...and 2 Lenovos around 2 or 3 years old. Same sound...dull, muddy, ill defined. My HP, like I said, is really quite decent. It's present and seems balanced ok. Was just a surprise to me as having been on my HP for a couple of years I just thought all laptops in this day and age would sport fairly decent sound. There could be an element involved of me A/B'ing them without giving my ears time enough to settle and adjust. It could be that I'm switching between laptops too quick and this is causing me to hear them dull. Not sure.

Naturally, if I'm right and these laptops have poor sound, it kind of pains me in terms of trying to mix my own music so it hangs on as many playback mediums as possible. And it's the old story...pro music, while it still sounds inferior to me on the poorer sound laptops, still hangs. Still sounds 'ok'. However, my mixes clearly sound worse on the poorer sounding laptops. So you know, using my HP laptop with the decent sound...me using that as a laptop benchmark or litmus test of how my mix sounds doesn't really work if 3 more laptops I've had the chance to listen to carefully over the last 2 weeks show my mixes up to be problematic. Not a catastrophe...but sounding clearly weaker.

What we don't know can't hurt us I suppose. I wish I had never heard those other 3 laptops!
 
interesting, good info on wider group of laptop amps.

Makes me interested in headphones and amps design.
Sure its a CHIP but there's something else obviously, that makes a good "amp" , curious about that.

does it really cost too much for a good sounding laptop amp vs a crap blurry muffled one?
what are the components required to make a decent headphone amp?

and if Line6 could make an excellent headphone amp in their 2009 interface UX8, why did the majority choose not to?
I have one UX8 to throw away as some inputs dont work but the headphone amp is worth keeping. Its 2009ish and better than most interface H-amps.
 
In my own experience, the only difference I've noticed when going between a laptop's headphone jack and an interface's is that the laptop jacks have a higher noise floor. Newer laptops I've used seem to be less noisy than older ones, but there still seems to be more inherent noise than when going straight out of an interface. I have not noticed differences in actual sound except in cases where the laptop's sound solution includes addons that intentionally affect the EQ or loudness.
 
I rarely used headphones on a laptop these days but in the past I used the HP output of an HP g6 i3 W7 lappy, both into cans (AKG K92) and, when the need arose, into a small mixer and onto a pair of Tannoy 5As
As I recall there was nothing wrong with the sound quality in either situation compared to the HP out of the then NI KA6* or indeed when auditioning via that AIs line outputs. I have just listened to a couple of tracks of the remix of Pepper's on this Lenovo T510 and really cannot fault the sound.

All this, and the stories here do not surprise me.

For many decades, decently designed and built audio power amplifiers have been "subjectively perfect". That is to say their technical performance can relatively easily be made SO good the they cannot be told apart on a proper double blind A/B test. This notion goes way back to the days of the Quadll valve amplifier whose designer said about the then new transistor 303. "The valve amplifier was in fact better than it needed to be but loudspeakers have become smaller and of lower sensitivity and more power was needed".
The plain fact was, to get 50W per channel from a practical amplifier at anything like sensible cost you had to go solid state.
The criterion for "just noticeable" distortion back then was about 1% thd so amp makers aimed for 0.1%, at least through the mid frequency band, say 200-5,000 Hz. Today digital systems are SO good we can surely improve that by an order and 0.01% is easily met, 20-20kHz these days.

But back to lappy HP amps! Older laps were probably a class AB chip. Today it will will be class D, a switching amplifier but these are now really good even in phones.

I have no doubt that if you could run any laptop amp through an AP test rig the results would be horrendous compared to the high end AIs mentioned above but they are still good enough to fool us most of the time. When comparing laptop HP amps be sure that "enharncements" are totally disabled.

*The KA6 Mk1 has a pretty wimpy HP amp but what it does put out is very clean. My MOTU M4 is much better.

Dave.
 
Greetings, my next project is to add headphones to my drums. Currently I'm using a pair of noise cancelling JBL connected via Bluetooth from my Windows 11 Bluetooth connection.

But now want to use 1 of the 2 headphone outs on the front of my Scarlett 18i20. I would like this to be a permeant install. Are quality studios using wired headphones for the drummers/musicians?
 
Eclipse4449 said:
Greetings, my next project is to add headphones to my drums. Currently I'm using a pair of noise cancelling JBL connected via Bluetooth from my Windows 11 Bluetooth connection.

But now want to use 1 of the 2 headphone outs on the front of my Scarlett 18i20. I would like this to be a permeant install. Are quality studios using wired headphones for the drummers/musicians?
Click to expand...
I have no idea how pro studios would do this but I doubt they would rely on "flakey" (IMHO) BlueTh!"
Apart from anything else you might struggle to get enough level for a drummer from battery powered cans?

There is of course the problem of "entanglement". I would solve that by having the headphone feed dropped in from above* For a very decent 4 way stereo diss' amp the Behringer HA400 takes some beating. No offense but I doubt you need Benchmark quality for drum foldback?

*There is a photo of a Nashville studio with a dozen or more mics hung from the ceiling. Makes abundant sense, especially in a small projjy studio with limited floor space. I shall try to find the shot.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
I have no idea how pro studios would do this but I doubt they would rely on "flakey" (IMHO) BlueTh!"
Apart from anything else you might struggle to get enough level for a drummer from battery powered cans?

There is of course the problem of "entanglement". I would solve that by having the headphone feed dropped in from above* For a very decent 4 way stereo diss' amp the Behringer HA400 takes some beating. No offense but I doubt you need Benchmark quality for drum foldback?

*There is a photo of a Nashville studio with a dozen or more mics hung from the ceiling. Makes abundant sense, especially in a small projjy studio with limited floor space. I shall try to find the shot.

Dave.
Click to expand...
That is awesome, actually my mic cabling is ran around my ceiling perimeter (added probably 25 foot but worth it to me)

so are you saying adding Ha400 at the drums or at my interface?
 
Eclipse4449 said:
That is awesome, actually my mic cabling is ran around my ceiling perimeter (added probably 25 foot but worth it to me)

so are you saying adding Ha400 at the drums or at my interface?
Click to expand...
The HAs are cheap enough that you could run the "clean feed" from the Scarlet close to the drummer then let him have the cans amp locally and set his own level. I understand the F'rite's software can do a sub mix for foldback?

I have a few ideas of how I would wire up a small studio, many involve the uber cheap CATX cabling.

Oh and 25ft is hiss all extra on a mic cable...100mtrs 'might' get you a teensy bit of extreme HF loss!

Dave.
 
I use extreme isolation phones for drums. You can see them on my head.
Just let the cable dangle down your back.
I use an extension stereo cable with them.
 
Eclipse,

I haven't tried using BlueTooth headphones for any recording. I have earbuds that I used for listening to sound from my cell phone, but have 4 pairs of wired headphones for recording. I've also got an ART HeadAmp5 for the times when I needed 2 or 3 headphones. I also have 4 10ft extensions. There's no issue with reaching across the room.

The issue with using BT for recording would be latency. I looked at some tests and they are all geared towards watching movies and not seeing poor sync between the video and audio. However, it would be VERY bad for recording. A recent review of Sennheiser' 450BT headphones which use aptX low latency mode but showed 40ms which is huge. It was an Editors Choice!

Most people start to hear things around 10-15ms. Some people claim that they can't tolerate 3-4ms, but I think that's often of case of expectation over an actual problem. I've heard of guys stating they wire their pedalboards with short cables to minimize latency!
 
The HAs are cheap enough that you could run the "clean feed" from the Scarlet close to the drummer then let him have the cans amp locally and set his own level. I understand the F'rite's software can do a sub mix for foldback?

I have a few ideas of how I would wire up a small studio, many involve the uber cheap CATX cabling.

Oh and 25ft is hiss all extra on a mic cable...100mtrs 'might' get you a teensy bit of extreme HF loss!

Dave.
I did not know the term "Foldback" but is exactly what I am doing.

Oh and 25ft is hiss all extra on a mic cable...100mtrs 'might' get you a teensy bit of extreme HF loss!
Click to expand...
This is a confusing bit here
 
Eclipse4449 said:
The HAs are cheap enough that you could run the "clean feed" from the Scarlet close to the drummer then let him have the cans amp locally and set his own level. I understand the F'rite's software can do a sub mix for foldback?

I have a few ideas of how I would wire up a small studio, many involve the uber cheap CATX cabling.

Oh and 25ft is hiss all extra on a mic cable...100mtrs 'might' get you a teensy bit of extreme HF loss!

Dave.
I did not know the term "Foldback" but is exactly what I am doing.


This is a confusing bit here
Click to expand...
The confusing bit! All cables have capacitance which has a falling impedance with frequency, thus it "shunts" higher frequencies* away from the input.
But, the degree of "shunting" depends on the value of the capacitance (in pico Farads as a rule) and the source resistance of the device feeding the cable, in this case a microphone which we can take to be about 150 to 200 Ohms. Such a low resistance would require an enormous amount of cable length to have much effect. In practice, other than in very large outdoor rigs HF mic cable loss is simply not an issue.

Where cable capacitance can be a problem is with electric guitars but I tend to think such "problems" are not nearly as important as sometimes imagined!

*The complete 'circuit' is a "Low Pass Filter". If you Google that you will find ever increasingly technical explanations. Also several useful calculators.

Dave.
 
I get together with one friend who has a setup in his room with an ART Headamp6 Pro. The nice thing about this is that is has separate tone, volume and balance controls for each channel. Since a few of us use different headphones, it helps out a lot. If I was having people over on a regular basis, that's would how I would go as well.



HA6P.webp
 
I bought the Behringer HA400, I should get it this weekend. I think I'll Velcro it the back of the drum Throne.

My desk/DAW is essentially in a corner, my back to my Furnace/AC/Chimney. Either Left or right is equal distance from my drums or keyboards, Basses and Guitars about 20 feet but took 50 foot xlr cables for everything routed up to the ceiling and over to the walls and around the perimeter, in some cases it was just enough. That is 3 stations Drums, Keys, Strings. Someday I hope to enclose (rooms within a Room) all 3 stations because I simply don't or won't have any other option or location but that is for another thread here.

Thanks again for the advice!
 
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