I'll be honest in saying that you should hear no difference between onboard audio and a cheap amp/DAC, if you have modern (2018+) motherboard.

The change in sound is your motherboard output probably has audio enhancement turned on which does alter sound usually for the worst

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See that's what I was thinking. It's a brand new pc (built it mid December 2022), with an Asrock z790 Motherboard. I'm not for sure on exactly how this whole dac/amp deal works but from I read I didn't think id notice much of a difference. But I was proven wrong. Why? I dont know. But i also dont care because its beautiful and im excited as hell for the Beyer's to show up haha

Such a realistic, yet toxic comment and I love it hahahaha

Are you listening louder? Louder sounds better. Not great for your hearing though, you have to be careful with it.

If all your impression by switching dac/amp is "utterly blown away" and "No words for the sound coming into my ears", I guess there more placebo rather than actual difference in sound.

Can you describe how sound actually changed?

Its like the music has actual depth now. Like I can hear nuances that I couldn't before. I switched back and forth a few times for a few different songs and it's an audible difference for sure. I had the same thought as you at first, so had my roommate give it a try and he had the same general consensus. Idk, like I said I'm new to this whole deal. I have absolutely not a clue what I'm talking about haha

I'd say a slight bit louder than just out of the pc. Which I'd listen to music on full volume before, both windows and whichever midea I was listening too. On the DAC I'm at 50-55%. I did however test how loud they would get, and I'm glad I took the headset off for that test.

Welcome! As someone who is also new to the hobby, you can see my post history and I hope you do not fall into the same rabbit hole that I have fallen into haha. Upgradeitis is very real, and I pray you do not fall for it.

Integrated audio quality can be a crapshoot, but being blown away by a gaming headset just because you switched to a transparent DAC does make me think placebo might be involved.

Phantom improvements in audio quality resulting from expectation/confirmation bias are embarrassingly rampant in audiophile land, and no one is fully immune. Unless you put in the time to do your critical listening reps, you will struggle to distinguish between real and imagined differences in sound quality, and you will still have to actively concentrate to discover them if you do. When I started out, it took me 15 minutes of A/B testing just to realize that S and T vocal consonants were completely inaudible on a pair of $5 chi-fi shitbuds.

My advice for people new to this stuff would be not to buy anything more expensive than the basics (e.g. the Apple dongle) if you don't understand the underlying principles behind how they work. (Reading Head-Fi reviews and manufacturer marketing copy doesn't count)

The old blog of NwAvGuy, the designer of the classic O2 amp, has a lot of info about the DAC/amp side:

https://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html
https://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-impedance-explained.html
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/gain-and-headphone-ampsdacs.html
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/noise-dynamic-range.html

Crinacle, the final boss of IEM reviewers, has written his own set of articles on the transducer side on the "Important Articles" section of his website:

https://crinacle.com/

Precogvision, the midgame boss, also made an intro video with accompanying article:

https://youtu.be/jQrKDDBDJII
https://headphones.com/blogs/buying-guides/everything-i-wish-i-knew-before-getting-into-audio

Oratory1990 is this sub's resident person who gets paid to do this stuff, and you can find info and ask questions on his own sub, /r/oratory1990.

If you want to go full nerd, you can pick up Floyd Toole's Audio Reproduction, but the content there mostly relates to loudspeaker acoustics.

Biggest differences are typically found in hanging headphones themselves. Once you get past the bass addiction most people start with, you'll find a whole world of interesting sounds. Thats where problems can start hahaha

What you described is similar to what I hear with amp vs no amp. Can’t go back

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.

In theory there shouldnt be that great of a difference, the thing that sucks most with onboard audio is the high output impedance, which could cause some bass bloat with low impedance headphones.

However, I would be carefull with that Fosi DAC tho, it might actually change the sound. I had the fosi k5 pro, which is related to the Q4. The K5 pro noticeably changed the frequency response, reason for that are the bass/treble knob. even when the bass and treble knob are in neutral position, the frequency response isnt flat, it still had less bass and treble than it should have.

That may make a bass/treble heavy headphone like the cloud2 more neutral, which could be interpreted as better sound, but can make properly tuned headphones like the dt900 pro x sound worse.

Honestly, i would just avoid all dacs with treble/bass knobs and would probably not get anything that hasnt been properly tested by a 3rd party.

I know what you mean! Sounds like your headset was not properly driven without amp.

I just did similar experiments with my non-audiophile friend (because he was curious why I need an amp, haha). We compared the same song on the same headphone (AKG K712) with nfb11.38 dac/amp vs without amp. My non-audiophile friend described that without amp, it was like looking at a 2D photograph of a 3D object.

The separation becomes clear on a song with very low and very high frequencies --- try Billie Eilish - bad guy.

Cloud Alphas are fairly well known for punching above their weight for audio quality in a gaming headset. The Beyers you have coming will probably be even better though, look forward to it!

The one good thing about Windows PCs, you will be blown away by any external DAC 😁

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?

This is some incredible information here. Thank you for this. Definitely going to be doing some reading later today.

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.

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?

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.

Not only do you have a new mobo and a cheap dac/amp so there shouldn’t be a difference, but you’re also using a gaming headset which in my personal experience doesn’t scale with anything. I’m more blown away by your experience than you are lol, but if it makes sense to you then that’s all that matters.

Integrated chips are garbage. Even the shittiest MDR-ZX310 get improved by a cheap amp.

i feel attacked

Get out while you still can. I know I am. Goodbye.

Just focus on enjoying the new hardware. Don't worry about anticipating another purchase for a while... You and I hope.