Comment by KaiserPro
3 hours ago
Oh there is a difference. but I strongly suspect its not as pronounced as you think it is.
THe biggest difference that most people hear is EQ. (oh these are very bassy, or too clean, etc, etc)
The people that have external DACs are almost certainly hearing a difference in EQ rather than _quality_. Is that a problem? for me I couldn't care less. However when that starts bleeding into advice or gatekeeping, then it becomes an issue.
(I am a former sound technician for both recording studio (analogue and digital) theatre and TV)
Personally, I run all my signal chain flat (incl. speaker crossovers). No equalizer, tone & loudness is off in every step of the chain.
Given the same set of speakers, I'm pretty sure that almost anything I throw in to the chain will sound pretty similar (unless it's designed to color the sound some way). This is one of the reasons why I don't plan to change any parts of it .
For me the DAC has some serious benefits in the sound quality department, though. First, it doesn't have the 3dB loss like the Logitech, second I can stream AAC or aptX to it, which really sounds better than SBC, given the song is mastered correctly and has the detail which can be carried by the codec itself.
I listen to some of the albums I have as CDs in streaming services and even though it's labeled as "lossless" I can hear that the files are butchered pretty badly.