Laptops Laptop for music listening puspose (having good sound card)

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HelloMan

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Hi

I need to buy a 15" / 17" laptop. Main use will be music listening (on high end speakers) followed by official work / browsing. Although I will be using dedicated AMP (NAD/etc) + good bookshelves (PSB bookshelves), but the source should be good too. Since we cannot attach a sonar dx in laptop, so is there any laptop in market with equivalent sound card/dac?

No gaming, so not considering alienware.
 
Hi there,
I recently purchased HP DM1 Beats audio edition.
I went for this laptop for the AMD fusion & didnt even care about the beats audio branding. One day just like that i plugged in my Yamaha HP50 300ohm orthodynamic headphones into the HP out of the laptop. I was so very much surprised by the audio output. Very very good quality. I prefer it over the Xonar STX hp out.
Now i dont think that the laptop has any fancy dedicated sound card but when the beats audio setting is enabled the laptop sounds just amazing. Highly recommended.
 
^^agree with the above.

FWIW, Macbook Pros come with a CS4206B chip which is among the best onboard audio solutions available. However it is a Mac, with all its attendant advantages and hairy spots. The chip also is finicky with Windows.

I vote for a USB DAC too. The Musical Fidelity V-DAC is a good starting point (V2).
 
@cranky I guess the DAC will help in boosting HPs too ? Can you please throw some light on difference b/w DAC & amp in this regard, and which will be more helpful (to both HPs and speakers)? I own an ATH M20 now (it has got low volume :( ), and plan to get some good audio gear like Porta pros, Denon 1100, z623/any sub 10k good bookshelves, and want one to work for all. Budget, not really want to expend more than 2k, but can extend upto 3k if really required. TIY
 
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Cans will usually need their own amplifier. DAC may or may not be have a can amp built in. Output stages on most DACs should be able to play back music on a pair of headphones, however they may not be designed to do so in the best possible way. Headphone amp drivers are able to supply more current and swing higher voltages than a regular line-out stage can as the latter is only meant to drive another amplifier. There are specialised chips that do this.

There are options like the Fiio E10 which provide both a lineout and headphone out, the sound quality is reasonable for what it costs (still above your budget) though the hardware has some bugs (posted on the Pristine Note thread) which are basicaly unsolvable, one big bug is because of Fiio and the other because of Tenor (which manufactures the chip used in the E10).

I know that a lot of peeps here use headphones and you'll get some decent inputs on brand choice and options at your budget.
 
DAC stands for Digital to Analog Converter. The inbuilt DAC of our motherboard is not capable of converting purely. So people get external DAC to bypass the inbuilt DAC. Hence the sound quality will be improved. Most DAC's comes with internal amplifier, hence solving the need to get a seperate amplifier like Fiio E6. Yes with a DAC like audinist, udac you can drive 2.1 speakers as well. If you just need to boost the volume for the headphone, amp like Fiio E6 is good enough.
 
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