Framed-Photo t1_j6m38my wrote on January 31, 2023 at 7:59 AM

Reply to comment by LandscapeChemical622 in I get it. I understand now. by LandscapeChemical622

I'm not the person you were replying to, but I wanna re-iterate the audio enhancement stuff built into windows.

Amps/dacs are not a new tech, and considering you have a recent motherboard there should NOT be this big of a difference between your new amp and the on-board audio, especially not with a gaming headset.

Go to the windows control panel, search sound, click the sound options, under the playback tab find your on-board audio, click it then hit properties, then check each tab to make sure your settings are correct. Specifically, go to the enhancements tab and disable ALL of them, and go to the spatial sound tab and make sure that's off too. Anything else that's not pure volume control that you might find, also turn it off. You can also go to the advanced tab and change the sample rate and bit depth to something higher but as long as it's not commicaly low it shouldn't be making a difference.

Do this for the on-board audio, AND the new dac/amp you have. My guess is that one of them has some enhancements on that's changing your sound. If it's not in this control panel setting, then there might be an audio suite of some sort for your motherboard.

LandscapeChemical622 OP t1_j6mn0er wrote on January 31, 2023 at 12:22 PM

I never ended up checking the onboard audio settings when I was doing the back and forth. I did look at them when I was using the Q4 and spacial sound and all enhancements were off. And the sample rate was I think 24bit 48000hz. I could be mistaken on those numbers though. I'll have to took into that today after work. Seeing a few of you saying I should notice any difference has me thinking I had something wrong in the first place with the factory windows settings. Granted I never changed them. Or even looked at them for that matter. But definitely curious on if it's something I can show my friends to help them get better audio with their current headsets too. But that brings up another question, would this kind of thing make a difference for a usb headset?

Framed-Photo t1_j6mtyt5 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 1:27 PM

If it's a USB headphone then that means the headphone has it's own DAC and amp built into it. That would also mean that you can't plug it into the amp you bought though so I'm assuming that's not what you have haha.

Regardless, for any of these devices you're gonna want to make sure any audio enhancements or spatial audio things are off. You can do that even on a USB headset.

LandscapeChemical622 OP t1_j6mu919 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 1:29 PM

Thats good to know. I'll have to have my roommate look into it with his USB headset to see if he can get any sort of changes. But I would also assume that a USB headset still won't have the "power" of an external DAC right?

Framed-Photo t1_j6n2hc8 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 2:33 PM

Any headphone that uses a headphone jack is analog in nature, and needs a separate digital to analog converter and an amp. That's what you bought as an external amp and DAC, and it's also what's built into your computer past the headphone jack. They're functionally both the same thing. If you were using just a vinyl player for example, you don't need a DAC at all as there's no digital signal to convert to analog. You'd just need the amplifier.

A headphone that uses USB as the interface has an internal amp and DAC. It's doing the work of your external amp and DAC, just inside the headphone, which allows you to plug it in with USB. It's still having to convert the digital signal to an analog one and amplify it, but it happens inside the headphone.