What would you* need to spend on an external USB sound card to hear an appreciable improvement over using the headphone jack and a 3.5mm to RCA lead?

Got OK kit: TEAC ref 300 + sony speakers from a more expensive system, and Denon DM38 with q acoustic 1010 in the bedroom. No surround sound speakers for the telly, so that’s not a factor.

Tunes on laptop would be own music, mostly at 320kbps, spotify, i’net music and iplayer

Cheers!

*I know this is a subjective question, but that’s part of the fun!

Howdy!

No equipment buffs in today?

As you say it’s subjective so I’d get a 3.5mm to phono lead for a few quid and try it. See if you think its acceptable if not then up the ante and start looking at external boxes.

Do a bit of a test:
Listen to an original recording played back from CD. Then compare it to an uncompressed copy of the same recording played back from PC. If you can’t differentiate between them (or the difference is negligible to your ears) then your 3.5mm to phono solution is probably OK.

Finally try the same recording as a mp3 copy to see if this still holds up.

My suspicion is that the cable with an uncompressed source will be fine but you’ll spot the difference when you move to the mp3 version.

Great idea, mW. I shall use Science and figure it out for myself.

Cheers!

As above. Also get a dac rather than a full blown soundcard if you just want it for music. I got a valab dac a few years ago for about £120 off ebay (from the far east somewhere) and I’m very pleased with it.