DAC

Are these external usb DACs snake oil memes or are they actually better than my on-board one?

Almost anything will be better than your onboard one. You want a external dac to get rid of interference. Try the FiiO E10 K.

Tubes will always give a warmer sound than digitally compressed audio.

How warm they can make compressed audio is really up to their input.

They are objectively more capable (and render sound cards pointless), but most people should be fine with onboard sound since it has progressed over the years.

no shit

Tube = analog = infinite resolution and warmth
Transistor = digital = stair step dithering and cold

It's not like you have an analog source here

What makes them better than sound cards? Don't you have bottlenecks through USB?

unless ur doing recording or using a very high end audio system, ur computer dac is just fine

also, this is a fio shill thread

More versatility
You can only use sound cards on units with PCI-e but external DACs can be used on many devices.

what am I reading?

ok, that's valid answer

Find out what model your onboard is and find out what the one you are going to be buying. And then open the datasheet of these devices. What you need to look at is probably labeled SINAD (signal to noise and distortion ratio), SNR (signal to noise ratio [includes quantization noise]), and THD (total harmonic distortion). If all of these are matching between devices it's either snake oil or it's a problem in the connection. It's arguably better to do the digital to analog conversion as close to the thing that turns electric to sound but the difference is usually not audible unless something weird is coupling to analog signals.

External sound cards serve different purposes though. The actual device that does the conversion may even be the same thing, or have similar specs. It's kinda funny to think that the thing that converts data to sound is probably the cheapest part in the system.

Good post.

From an experimental povray rather than technicals, I bought a micromega mydac quite a while ago, gave it a decent power lead and it makes an audible but subtle difference to my main hifi. I also have an Aune T1 and that drives my headphone a fair lot better than my Logitech speakers do.

The rabbit hole is massive though don't spend too much....

It is a snake oil for those who doesn't have a decent headphone.

tell that to my Axe Fx. tube argument is shit

I've never understood the warmth argument. Either your music is being played back faithfully and (ideally) will sound the same as intended or you're purposefully introducing distortion or whatever to make it sound different. And hey if you like a particular filter put over everything whatever, more power to you. But couldn't the same "warmth" be given just as easily with a filter over your digital source?

In all fairness the "warmth" is a result of the non-linear characteristics of tubes when pushed to clipping voltage. This behavior is extremely desirable for say a instrument amp where you over drive the tubes for distortion, like a guitar amp.

For people just playing music into speakers/headphones you operate the tubes in there linear region so you get faithful sound reproduction. For this you may as well just use transistors/op-amps because they will give a cleaner sound and cost a fraction of the price. People buying class A tube amps for this are buying snake oil.

I personally don't think there's any digital filters that can replace vacuum tubes for instrument amps. There is some good hard ware that can get close but it's not quiet the same. It's kind of like how people have electric pianos, but still prefer the sound of a real grand piano even if it's heavy, bulky and expensive.

While I don't disagree with you I have now got 4 tube amps (3 working, one class A) and I am yet to hear a solid state amp sound quite as exact (?) and open. This is very close though.

The best solid state amps tend to be the huge high watt ones. You don't have to worry about that with most any valve amps.

I don't have any explanation for this observation.

All external DACs are so expensive tho
Should I just get some good headphones instead?

You have to laugh at audiofags. They spend thousands on stupid shit, but they are probably hearing damage and have tinnitus from cranking the Amp all day long.

>Are these external usb DACs snake oil memes
Yes.
>or are they actually better than my on-board one?
Yes. They're better by virtue of being external to your computer. Everything else is placebo and aesthetics.

They really aren't.