Is There a Big Difference Using Your Motherboard vs a Great DAC as Audio Source?

So you got your first serious pair of headphones, a quality pair of in ear monitors (IEMs), or maybe you want to take your new Virtuoso Pros to the next level. You begin looking at audiophile communities, watching YouTube videos, and asking your friends how to get the best sound. One of the first pieces of equipment you’ll hear about is the DAC. But what is it and why is it so important to your audio experience?

To get things started we’ll need to go over the basics of how sounds and speakers work. All headphones, ear buds, and speakers operate on the same principles. They produce sound by moving a thin diaphragm back and forth, creating sound waves in the air along with it. In an ideal world, the diaphragm would move to perfectly recreate the soundwaves as intended by the artist but there are imperfections in every part of the process. Getting a higher quality headset can help solve some of these issues, but the problem actually starts even earlier.

DAC is short for Digital-to-Analog Converter. It’s a deceptively simple device that changes the digital ones and zeros used by computers into an analog output that will control the diaphragm of your listening device. You actually use them all the time. Any phone’s headphone jack, wireless speaker, or USB-powered gaming headset has to do this digital to analog conversion to create the sound you hear. So the change from using your motherboard’s built in DAC to a dedicated DAC is like going from the speakers built into your monitor to a purpose built pair of headphones. The core mechanics are the same but by increasing the quality they can create a drastically different sound.

A dedicated DAC improves on built-in DACs in a couple ways. First of all, by being a purpose build, a dedicated DAC is able to use higher quality components that do a better job recreating the analog signal. Second, modern DACs are physically separated from the rest of the system, unlike the old sound cards we used to put in our PCs in the 90s. This helps isolate the audio signal, which is more susceptible to interference after being converted to analog. Third, most DACs also have a basic amplifier. Amps can also be bought as their own special purpose unit but for now the amp built into DACs is a nice upgrade.

With something so technical and invisible as audio it can be hard to simply explain why a DAC can help improve your experience. To further complicate things, audio is highly subjective so some people might prefer certain DACs, headphones, or a specific combination of the two. There are mobile DACs, small simple DACs and stylish DACs with tubes on them. Take a look at our partners over at Drop to find a wide variety of DACs for your enhanced audio experience.