Quality of laptop for use with Dac.


Good evening all.

I was just reading a review of a Belconte DAC ( im not actually after a new dac but was reading it simply out of interest) and the reviewer made comments about a possibilty of higher sound quality with a better driver, than the native windows driver, and higher quality laptop as the one he used to review the equipment was old.

Im quite a novice to Pc audio, having recently acquired an AMR processor which is a cd player with USB input. Ive been using the USB with an old, but extremely reliable HP laptop. The DAC inside the CD77 sounds really pleasing, using J River. Owing to the age of my laptop I cannot use some of the recommended output options, one being ASIO.

Is there any sense of what he is saying? I thought is was digital signals that are going to the DAC? I always take what reviewers write with a pinch of salt ( though interesting to read) as almost every component that they review performs well beyond its price.

Anyone have any knowlege that might give novices like me some pointers.

Thanks. Regards. James.
james123
i believe a transport is a transport (1's and 0's)
the quality of the music is in the analog signal
James, I too am a novice but I would suggest you research jitter. From what I've learned, some transports output more jitter than others. Less is better.

I echo your comments about reviewers. I find it ironic how everything performs at the same level as items 3x the price.
Thanks for the replies. Ill look into jitter, thanks for the pointer.

Perhaps I could mention something I found to be a positive. I installed Windows 8 into my ageing laptop and certainly found some improvement. Also doing away with the externally powered IDE hard drive and replacing with a Sata one that is powered by the USB port did something positive too. Minor improvements but most certainly wothwhile.

Thanks again.
Have you poked around Computer Audio? There's an enormous amount of info to wade though but well worth it.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/