Different sound from two different laptops using same DAC

[Toffen]

Hi!

 

Merry Christmas an A Happy New Year!

 

I have just installed my Weiss INT202 between my laptop and Burmester 061 digital input. I have tested this setup on two different laptops, one 2 year old business HP laptop with XP, and one 4 years old HP latop with Vista.

 

I have disconnected the sound drivers on both laptops. On my business laptop, I ended up deleting all mediaplayer files So for both laptops I use Weiss INT202 as soundcard / driver. I have installed J River for playing imported files, and use AISO drivers.

 

What suprised me is that its much better sound in my newer HP business laptop. The sound is darker but much more detailed. To me it seems to the old laptop has a higher grade of jitter. The latency test show only 50-70 uS with the newer laptop. On the older laptop, its impossible to test the latency. I do not know why. I also need a bigger buffer with the older laptop than the newer to obtain no drop out playback.

 

I will do the bit transparancy test tomorrow when I have time.

 

I presume the new laptop has more internal memory, better firewire card and faster processor. Should this affect the sould in any way?

 

I look forward to hearing back from you.

 

Cheeers and thanks, Toffen

 

 

 

 

[bixby]

Not surprising really. Different quality computer clocks are probably contributing to the sound difference, along with a whole host of other things that can affect jitter and electrical noise.

 

Try turning off the Bluetooth and Wifi radios for an interesting effect on SQ.

 

A friend has found that some of the Toshiba laptops can sound really good as source.

 

[audioengr]

Interesting. The Firewire interface on this is async, so jitter should not matter in theory. Maybe it's something else like ground-loop noise.

 

Do both AC adapters for the two laptops have grounded power cords?

 

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

 

[James1776]

Now this is almost digital heresy...the 'bits is bits' argument states definitively that the bit stream should be in no way different in properly working digital sources...The jitter should not matter if the DAC is any good...