For audiophile headphones, a phone or laptop’s built-in sound chip often doesn’t have the oomph needed. Especially if you want to get into the world of more exotic (read: pricey) headphones, as they often even require a DAC to provide enough clean signal to drive them.
Good usb interface for newer mac upgrade#
External DACs and audio interfaces are a great way to upgrade your listening experience generally. This, of course, isn’t only about Apple’s new streaming formats. Increasingly, though, the term is being used for anything 96kHz and above. In audio circles, a general consensus is that hi-res is anything with a sample rate above 44.1kHz. CDs were generally mastered to at least 16-bit / 44.1kHz which is the benchmark that Apple is using for its definition of lossless. Apple uses ALAC encoding which is compressed, but without “loss” to the quality (unlike the ubiquitous. It’s worth pointing out that “lossless” and “hi-res” are related terms, but not the same thing and will vary from service to service. If you want to enjoy music at a higher sample rate and bit-depth (aka resolution), you’ll need an interface that supports it and wired headphones.
If your device’s audio interface tops out at 44.1 or 48kHz (which is fairly common and covers the vast majority of music online) then that’s the experience you’ll get. You can play “hi-res” audio files on most phones and PCs, you just might not be getting the full experience.
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