Are they different? Are they all the same? Is there a best one? How does contemporary audio hardware sound quality compare to home stereo/theater equipment anyway. My computer is my entire multimedia system except for the cable tv box and the stereo receiver it’s all connected to to power my speakers.
I’d just like get the best sound out of it I can.
Sound quality is of course highly subjective.
A few thoughts…
It’s all to easy to get caught up in the “Ultimate Specification” game, at the end of the day it’s your own “Audio Equipment”, i.e. ears and brain, that limit the absolute quality. Don’t forget that with age there is quite a rapid drop off in humans ability to hear high frequency sound.
You can spend a lot of money on getting that extra dynamic range, frequency response, and signal to noise ratio - only to find that you can’t actually hear any difference.
In terms of PC audio, it has been my experience that most modern, average in-built audio cards are roughly on par with “mid-range” integrated stereo systems. Take into account also that in some cases the limitation is going to be on the source material anyway.
If you really want to go down the “Upgrade my Audio” path, take a look at something like the Asus Essence STX II 7.1 for example, (it’s not a recommendation, just an example). However what I would strongly recommend, is, if possible, a “try before you buy”.
I’ve never found a satisfactory explanation for this. For me, sound quality is poor, not matter which player I use. However, if I boot into Windows, and then reboot into openSUSE, then sound quality is great. This is the only reason that I am keeping Windows on my system.
That’s funny.