When such great performance is available for sub $100; the motherboard performance is trash. 14-15 bits of distortion free performance? That will be OK for some music, not OK for others.
, The thing about distortion is that it multiplies into each product. So the best thing to do is to have the...
The FiiO KA13 has volume control on the side of the dongle. It has up and down buttons. There is no indicator sadly. But it does remember the volume it was left at.
Also the second link PROVES that a high end motherboard is TRASH. The performance is TRASH, it has ultrasonic problems... linearity...
Motherboard audio is trash. I have yet to see a motherboard with actually great performance.
My ancient FiiO K1 still beats every motherboard output I have tried; even on high end laptops that have "dedicated headphone amplifiers".
Test the FiiO KA13. According to FiiO's own measurements (which they supply); it would do better than this device. KA13 is $79. Claims 108 SINAD
KA17 is more expensive but they don't have the same measurements available. The specs show more power with the ability to have secondary power added...
It's good when you almost don't do something but then you do it.
I bought my dad a pair of earpads for his older Panasonic headphone, but then it was stolen at a tradeshow.
Honestly, just use a good USB adapter, like a first party Samsung charger or LG or HTC, as all of those are quality. Otherwise, just buy one quality charger.
Sound quality of an iPod? Depends on which iPod. Some of the iPods have high end audio chipsets that still perform quite well today, especially with IEMs.
Most of them do care.
This literally makes no sense. Typically mismatched output impedance also affects driver phase and causes higher distortion in some headphones.
So basically everything about it is just worse than having lower output impedance... To me my laptops always sound like garbage...
I'm honestly not sure if there would be any real difference in how these products actually sounded. Like, I would have to have both of them and really do some deep dive to try to find any difference. But I would be incredibly surprised if there was one.
Yes because the laptop output likely has higher output impedance and IEMs are usually more vulnerable to changed output impedance. This is because so many of them use BA and BA drivers really don't like mismatched impedance.
Apple Dongle has really low impedance even if it doesn't have much...