Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

What Does It Take To Turn The PC Into A Hi-Fi Audio Platform?

What Does It Take To Turn The PC Into A Hi-Fi Audio Platform?
By

Most hi-fi audio is stored in digital form. With advancements in lossless compression, bit-perfect ripping/streaming, HD audio formats, multi-terabyte storage, and PC-friendly DACs, has the PC earned a place among high-end audio gear? At what price point?

Hi-fi stands for high-fidelity. Specifically, the high fidelity of a reproduced audio signal compared to its original source. Recording and reproducing sound introduces artifacts, and your listening environment has an effect as well. So, playing back recorded audio never sounds exactly the same as the original. You can get pretty close, though.

McIntosh MC275 50th Anniversary: A $6500 amplifier with no DAC capabilitiesMcIntosh MC275 50th Anniversary: A $6500 amplifier with no DAC capabilities

Hi-fi often is often associated with exotic (and expensive) equipment. Tube amplifiers. Silver cables. Gold-plated interconnects.

Yet, unless you own a dozen shelves of 180-gram vinyl records, most of your hi-fi audio is probably stored in an affordable digital format, either on optical media (like CDs, DVDs, SACDs, and LaserDiscs) or magnetic storage, in the form of files on your hard drive.

In order to play back that content, you need a few different components. You need something to access the information (a CD reader, perhaps). You need to convert the digital signal back into an analog one using something called a Digital to Analog Converter, or DAC. You need an amplifier. And finally, you need something to create sound pressure waves in the air around you at the right frequencies set by the signal (speakers or headphones).

As long as the content arrives to the DAC in a bit-perfect state, the source really doesn't matter. A quality CD-player or a PC playing a bit-perfect stream over USB should sound the same.

The challenge for us as PC enthusiasts is that uncompressed audio takes up a lot of disk space. A CD-quality stereo stream uses two (channels) x 16 (bits per sample) x 44,100 (samples per second) = 1411.2 Kb/s A 60-minute CD, uncompressed, ties up 635 MB of storage. That was a ton back in the days of gigabyte drives, 1 Mb/s Internet connections, and slow Wi-Fi. The solution was lossy compression in the form of MP3 (first) and AAC (later), which addressed the capacity issue with a quality compromise deemed acceptable by most consumers. But audiophiles balked at the idea.

Creative Labs' Sound Blaster 2.0 from 1991, the first PC audio card capable of 44.1 kHz playbackCreative Labs' Sound Blaster 2.0 from 1991, the first PC audio card capable of 44.1 kHz playback

Of course, today we enjoy multi-terabyte drives, very fast broadband connections, and almost gigabit-class wireless data rates, and advanced lossless compression schemes like FLAC, ALAC, and AIFF, the latter of which can halve the size of an audio file with no quality loss whatsoever. And so, the story changes.

Suddenly, a $60 1 TB hard drive can store 3000 CDs at their native quality. That's a lot of shelf space saved. Buying and downloading a new disc takes minutes, at most. Finding an album or track in your collection happens quickly. Online stores are never out of stock. And if you back up your library, it will never get lost or degrade. What's not to like?

One part of the pipeline that remains constant, and where PCs traditionally lag, is the translation from digital source to actual sound. Thankfully, hi-fi devices natively supporting PCs are becoming increasingly common. And if the quality of more traditional hi-fi equipment can be matched, then a case can be made (given overwhelming convenience) for our PCs becoming the ultimate audio source.

But what are the options for hi-fi audio on a PC today, and at what price points? In today's story, we're looking at the differences in sound quality, features, and value of a few pieces of hardware able to turn your system in the ultimate hi-fi machine. In the process, we'll introduce you to blind listening tests done right (at least in our view), and why that's so important.

Four different devices are on the bench, ranging from $2000 all the way down to $2: the Benchmark Media Systems DAC2 HGC, JDS Labs' O2+ODAC, Asus' Xonar Essence STX, and Realtek's ALC889 multi-channel codec. That's a 1000x factor in cost.

Ask a Category Expert

Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject

Example: Notebook, Android, SSD hard drive

Display all 14 comments.
This thread is closed for comments
  • 1 Hide
    kyzarvs , 25 February 2014 10:09
    Did you check noise floor? For example I'm looking at an add-in card because when playing games on relatively un hi-fi Sony headphones, there's a very noticeable background noise that comes and goes with the complexity of the scene (Bioshock Infinite is a good example as it has quiet passages, as does CS:GO) - so I was considering an add-in card for the purposes of removing that, not because the Realtek doesn't sound great with music and films.
  • 0 Hide
    Ra_V_en , 25 February 2014 11:53
    @ Kyzarvs Noise levels on ALC889 are so good you won't notice the difference VS Asus Xonar, amplification and DSP is a totally a different story tho. I would agree with the conclusions if it was about digital output on 1:1 signal, but on ALC every single future including Environmental Extensions is software based and if you can't hear the difference listening CD audio you will hear the difference in gaming with EAX. So despite higher CPU usage (which anyways is minor) there is a hughe gap on all those so called futures quality, I wont even talk about OpenAL, ASIO or a sound card software. Btw you also said ALC 899 is available on premium mobos, not all are premium so you should reconsider that $2 nonsense in the page title as far as there are also mobos with an older ALC 6xx models or other ADI or CMI like crap where the difference can be noticed by even a half-deaf people.Now when you consider that "premium" MOBO also cost more then I'm not sure from economic point of view its still about $2Btw the 19th page header is hilarious "....we're good at is designing objective tests..." and there are no proper tests and objective conclusions at all, that $2 bs statement its a best proof.
  • 0 Hide
    Ra_V_en , 25 February 2014 12:13
    Also good you have touched the impedance topic, now as far as frequency response is correlated to the output impedance (which is a variable in this test for the same Headphones) you should also notice by those numbers that from all those sources the actual frequency response will be different. If you want objective look please put a proper microphone on those headsets and then we will talk how different is that.
  • 0 Hide
    ira48 , 25 February 2014 15:41
    Very interesting. I'm very confused as to how the listening test was actually conducted. I can understand in a traditional A/B/X test that one is just detecting a difference or not, but how in the world in your tests could a listener select for each of 8 runs for a single song a specific DAC model? Perhaps if you add a much more detailed description of exactly how a run was conducted, or posted a video of a run from start to finish, it could be more clear.
  • 0 Hide
    ira48 , 25 February 2014 15:49
    Put another way, the stated purpose "...wasn't telling pairs of devices apart, but rather trying to gauge whether any one component sounded significantly better or worse than the others." Because of my confusion on exactly how the test was conducted, it seems one could accomplish the stated purpose by detecting a difference during the 8 runs of a single song, but appear to fail because they guessed wrong on which DAC they listened to.
  • 0 Hide
    ira48 , 25 February 2014 18:07
    OK, I googled away, and I can find nothing that refers to this test method as a valid test method: the ABCD method doesn't have any kind of reference signal, and it doesn't align with any accepted discrimination testing method. I hope you can provide links that establish the validity of the method used. From what I read, it seems something like a MUSHRA test should have been used to try to simultaneously compare 4 DACs. FWIW, I find it laughable that any competently designed DAC can or will sound any different than another (other than impedance issues as noted), but I just can't see how the conclusions of this test as presented can be statistically or methodologically valid.
  • 0 Hide
    RichSB , 26 February 2014 16:58
    The article states:"Note that devices in WASAPI mode will default to 16-bit operation if 16-bit content is played, ignoring the 24-bit setting."However with the BDP-105D Spy Tool the 16-bit is shown as format 4. However, when set to 24-bit, playing 16-bit files the content is format 2 or 3 indicating 24-bit padded.Is there some configuration that also needs to be set to deliver 16-bit content unpadded? - Rich
  • 0 Hide
    eriko , 27 February 2014 04:14
    I've been an audiophile my whole life, and I find headphones a bit too anti-social for my needs, hence the only 'cans' I have are for computer / cellphone use.I have a high-end system, with full range speakers, Marantz SA-1 SACD player, which continues to surprise all whom hear it. I do believe the SACD source would have been easily distinguishable over full range speakers, especially when you turn up the volume. I find I can pump my amps higher, and for longer before protection circuitry kicks-in, when playing SACDs, over any other source.One thing I'd like to add is that of all the mediocre DACs I've played with, all are instantly distinguishable from the SACD, using like-for-like songs, over the different formats. Full-range speakers will BOOM with shoddy, loosely controlled bass, shaking the house no less. The SACDs bass is so well controlled, that on some tracks, some will ask 'where is the bass', despite sitting in front of 4' high speakers. High-end kit tends to focus somewhat on not emphasizing bass to higher levels it was not recorded at. But when bass is there, it is faithfully reproduced, not exaggerated. Therefore if you 'want' to feel the bass you have to turn up the volume somewhat. And you'll be glad you did...One last thing, I had DVD-A once, and it was lovely.
  • 0 Hide
    eriko , 27 February 2014 04:17
    And how about switching your comments format to 'disquss'?No ability to edit a post, noticeable amount of duplicate postings on this site, loss of paragraphing - all words jumbled together too.I think it is free too.
  • 0 Hide
    SysExJohn , 28 February 2014 10:48
    Your tests and conclusions come as no surprise to me now, having read the various articles written about the subject by Ethan Winer of AES fame. He has run many double blind tests from way back and concluded that 44.1kHz 16 bit is as good as we can hear, providing all electronics have a flat frequency response and are adjusted for equal level. Experiments have proven that we hear things that aren't there by merely reading appropriate text at the same time as listening. I use an E-MU 1616m cardbus audio card in my laptop and I've yet to hear anything that improves upon it. Speaker listening tests are affected in a home environment by massive comb filter effects. Moving the head by an inch or two can result in huge perceived frequency response variations. Google Ethan Winer. Audiophiles read him and weep!
  • 0 Hide
    SysExJohn , 28 February 2014 11:05
    Look on youtube at the "audio myths workshop" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ and "the McGurk effect" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0. You may be surprised.
  • 0 Hide
    SysExJohn , 28 February 2014 11:15
    Look on youtube at the "audio myths workshop" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ and "the McGurk effect" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0. You may be surprised.
  • 0 Hide
    Nick_C , 4 March 2014 11:52
    One article and two videos:ArticleVideos
  • 0 Hide
    EddieLomax , 5 March 2014 11:39
    As someone who works with audio I think you have gone about your testing in completely the wrong way, it is not very interesting to say "this sounds better", because all you have done is produced an article that gives four different peoples opinions on something. Do these people prefer the warm sound of a Cambridge audio amp? Or the colder pure sound of a Yamaha digital amp? Both can be right or wrong...The real test of audio equipment is to faithfully produce the content it is fed, that is the quality, if the user doesn't like it then that is irrelevant, they can choose a more "warm" sounding amp or different dps mode etc, but in reality they are distorting the audio. But at least quality equipment gives them the original audio how the creator intended it.In this case what you should be doing is sending audio through the circuits you have picked, and seeing how faithfully it produces them. E.g. a 1Khz test tone should come out at 1Khz with very little noise, a poor quality audio system will distort it or add noise. You can test this then with equipment such as a DScopeIII from Prism (I dont work for them, but their gear is good).To be honest though PC audio is fantastic at the digital level, an ASIC fully devoted to sample rate converting just one stereo pair can do a very good job, however the DAC is likely to be weak as this can be an expensive circuit to really get right (and a PC is a very electically noisy enviroment), so the end result might not be very good.One last point, while I agree you do not need more than 44.1Khz or higher than 16 bit to listen to it, you DO get a benefit from higher frequencies when processing audio. So the page 15 is wrong, for people who just play something out to a speak then sure, you really won't get a benefit from more bits, but if you transfer it between clock domains in a digital format or process it in some way then you will always get a better result (which is way professional studios use a digital reference clock between equipment to reduce the number of times it needs to be sample rate converted).This is something I work with and can definitely confirm based on the maths and not just whether "I like or dislike" the result, it just takes less computing power to get the same quality result with a higher frequency (also in a professional enviroment a friend claims he can hear the different when mixing - I'll leave that to him as I'm really only experienced with the mathematical side of things and do not have much of an ear for audio - he does though and could tell me what was wrong with something while I required measuring equipment like a DSCOPE III to properly analyse it).