W3J+SchureE500+AKG...Definitive audio test???

OK there has been much talk about the sound quality from the W3J, with out a doubt the onboard speakers are at best, under par, however I have now proven that the AUDIO OUTPUT quality of the W3J is absolutely stunning, read on to find out more……

The test rig, comprised of some quality components, I am talking high quality kit, thanks to my buddy at work (who has a MBP) who let me use his AKG K701 reference headphones and HeadRoom Desktop Amp, I was able to give the W3J a good run for its money, with a range of very high quality audio gear, (google them if you want details) but the Schure E500’s and AKG’s are very good, PS: if you want http://www.headphone.com/ are having a sale you can get the AKG’s and Desktop Amp for $995. (well worth it, as these things together are amazing!)

Amplifier - Headroom Desktop Amp, this takes USB (Digital), RCA input (Analogue) & Optical inputs
In ear headphones - Schure E500’s
Over ear headphones - Sennhieser HD200
Reference Headphones - AKG K701 Reference Headphones

W3J + Sennhieser HD200
These sound great un-amped and full volume there is no hiss or humming, sound is strong and clear, I kind of get the feeling I could notch the volume a up a wee bit more theough.

W3J + Schure E500
Natively I will be honest, these things sound good, although slightly flat, I am being picky, I mean they sound great, good bass good mids and highs, they have triple drivers! But for what they cost I felt they could have been better, that’s when I borrowed my friend’s Desktop amp……

W3J + Desktop Amp + Schure E500
WOW and WOW this amp really brings these E500’s into another realm, it is hard to describe the difference it’s like someone removed the speaker grill, the music is just more defined… more separated…. lively… ambient… just superb. Once again, no his no noise the sound is very clean and clear.

W3J + AKG K701 Headphones
Get real… these things are reference headphones and have to be run on an Amp, straight into the W3J they sound a bit ropey, although they sound flat they still sound better than most cheap Kmart earphones.

W3J + Desktop Amp + K701 Headphones
OK this was the ultimate test, these headphones are reference headphones, they are high quality here is a quote from the Headphone website “An absolutely world-class A-1 audiophile headphone and heartily recommended! … GREAT job, AKG!” These headphones plus the Desktop Amp produced some astounding results, these guys can really soar, these make the E500’s sound like a $60 pair of Sony buds, if you are into quality audio, this is a great setup, the earphones are nice and light, go completely over your ears and give a great full sound stage.

Now here’s the interesting bit, I am sure you are all thinking….yeah, sure it sounds good running from the USB digital output as an external sound card, as any laptop would, but how does the audio output from the 3.5mm earphone/SPDIF output sound? First off, I have a good quality 3.5mm audio to RCA cable, so I could take the output from the W3J’s analogue earphone/SPDIF output to the RCA audio input in the back of the Amplifier.

Well I had to dig deep, and it just happened I had a heap of WAV files (ripped from CD waiting for me to encode them) so I had a good range of pure uncompressed WAV files to use for testing, I cant tell you how many times I flipped from USB to analogue to see I could hear a noticeable difference, I was listening different tracks for over an hour flipping between digital and analogue (USB and audio out), and I came to the conclusion that there is very little audible difference between USB digital and the earphone/SPDIF analogue output there may have been a very slight vibrancy that the USB had over the analogue, but other than that it was extremely close!

Result……. The audio quality from the earphone/SPDIF output from the W3J is superb, the intel HD audio chip does a fantastic job, it exceeds my expectations, I thought I would hear at least some hiss or noise, but I can not fault it, the signal quality is high and very clean, with all the volume settings on FULL and the Amplifier on FULL volume, there is no hiss or hum (obviously on the start of a very quiet part of a WAV track) signal to noise ratio is extremely good, personally I was quite surprised I was expecting at least some sort of noise or hiss, I did hear some when I was playing some of my 256bit mp3’s but that must have been the compression, because the WAV files were very clean, at full volume NO NOISE AT ALL.

So I can tell you if you invest in some good quality cabling (3.5mm to RCA) and hook the W3J into an amplifier, you will not be disappointed, the key is having good cables and a good amplifier and good speakers/headphones, any really quality set of headphones will benefit massively from an amplifier, its like my Schure E500’s I was listening to them all day unmped on Friday and they do sound great, but hooked up to the amplifier and the sound is just more defined the vocals, mids and highs are just clearer more vibrant , you can hear more detail at lower volume and it doesn’t hurt your ears, it is just sweet. I am thinking of buying a portable amp, the improvement is amazing and it really does prove that the audio output from the W3J is extremely good, and unless you are doing professional audio work there is little need to get an external sound card.

 

The e-Friggin-Fives, wow those are awesome!

My 3 year old(or was it 2?) E3c's died on me, and I felt like an upgrade, the E5c's were wayyyy too expensive, so I ended up with a pair of E4g, awesome things

 

yeah they are prety cool and the E500s are the newer model just out superceeding the E5c's, I cant believe they fit 3 drivers in those things I have always wanted a great pair of earphones, and now im un the US they are much cheaper, than in the UK, the only problem now is that now I have heard how good they sound through an amp, I have to get one of those now as well ha ha ha

Im thinking of one of these, my mate at work recommended it to me, he is a complete audiophile, he has some awesome stuff, like a cable going from earphone to RCA with pure silver wiring, it was $100 for about 12 inches he is a nut.

 

Wow, I have the E3G's (i'm a poor student )... but E5's ... O.O!!!!

 

I have a V6V and a pair of E2c's. The maximum headphone volume is a bit low. Is anyone experiencing this with their ASUS notebook??

 

the shures should be blasting even at one or two ticks on the master volume at least my e3s do..nzwaverider..i want those e500s ...my friend had the e5s with amp and those were crazy i can't even begin to imagine the e500s

 

Wow i am not an audiophile and i have no idea what just happen here but you have me convinced. However the fact still remains the onboard speakers are weak as expected. Also i do belive you will find the same result on most of these dual cores with the same chipset. The chipset is usually made by one company. Or am i way of base?

 

G2P I think that is a fair asumption, although when I was looking at various Asus models, not all of them use the Intel HD Azalia chip, you have to look at the detailed spec, some like the V6 use the older AC97 chip, the sound will still be good, but you might find a bit more noise in the output.

I was actually surprised myself how clean the output was from the Intel Azalia chip. It was hard to find any difference in swapping from that and the USB connection to the Amp, which tells me the onboard Audio chip is very good.

 

jterp, yeah the E500's run quite efficiently, with master volume a couple of notches from lowest, they are actually more efficient than my Sennhiesers that require full volume.
The E500s sound great, but when you hook them up to an amp, they are truely amazing, when you hear the quality it is hard to go back to normal.

 

try recording a track with just silence and check the wave form. increase it by 102db and play it back

 

Yeah, recording is a different story, I am sure that would be crap, I did A small test record and there was some noise (minimal see the prt sc) and any small amount of noise amplified by a massive 102db would clip everything for sure. I have never used an external soundcard for recording, what sort of noise if any do they produce?

I should have put a small disclaimer if you are doing any sort of pro or quality recording I would get an external soundcard, however if you are like me and record from vinyl where the source is not pure anyway, I am happy with what the quality of the onboard audio chip, although most of my gear is in NZ I wont be doing any recording any time soon.

from my previous experience with sound I was expecting more noise on playback but I was surprised when I had the Headroom Amp and AKG headphones hooked up via the audio out to RCA in, at the start of a track I had all of the volume settings on full and could not hear any noise, thats good enough for me.

I am not saying there is absoloutely no noise, it is just unaudible in the playback.

 

I've done some tests using semi-pro sound card Emu 0404 and W3J.

Remarks:
-RMAA 5.2 was used
-most of the tests were done on battery power (except first )
-some self made wires (1m) and adapters were used for the analog part (so this could degrade results)
-for SPDIF connection was used some 1m single fiber plastic optical cable (not a glass one)
-all tests were 48kHz and 24bits

Summary:
-AC can significantly degrade analog output quality (I've seen some low level noise, could be related to grounding problem - not exactly the same power outlets were used )
-digital output is apparently 48kHz only, about analog I'm not sure
-digital output in normal mode (retrieve clock from signal) is very bad, but this could be due to the low quality toslink cable, etc.
-Using good clock for digital receiver will improve digital connection
-Analog outputs are very good on battery power, and better than digital when AC powered

Report is attached.

 

I'm not quite clear on how the setup works.
Are you hooking the W3J up through SP/DIF passthrough and letting the box do the decoding? Because that's one thing, but plugging speakers directly into my A8Jm (presumably has the same chip) was not impressive at all.

I have little experience with amps but from what I've seen it's still a matter of garbage in, garbage out you need to get a good, clear signal first-I'd buy the Sound Blaster LIve! 5.1 external that I got for $50 over an amp for the same (or greater) price any day, the difference is night and day.

I was pretty impressed too with the SNR of the Intel HD chip, but it just didn't sound right. The highs were just simply absent.

 

From my tests it can be seen that with AC power (at least in that specific configuration) a high gets about -10-20 db, compared to almost flat characteristic of audio on battery power.
And also that SPDIF is not such good idea at least with cheap plastic cable.

P.S> Of course I will gladly accept a gift of a glass cable and do the tests :>

 

I've got a pair of Grado SR-60s and Shure E2Cs. In my current laptop (Dell Inspiron 5150) I hear a noticeable hissing out of the headphone port through both. At one point, the audio circuity on the motherboard died completely and it took an expensive repair to get that fixed (it was slightly cheaper than a new motherboard). It's great to hear the W3J doesn't suffer from the same issues as many of the lower end laptop do.

~ Brett

 

Interesting... could you clarify a few things. you said that the test was using a Emu 0404 sound card, now doesnt that mean that the test was for the Soundcard? or were you taking a signal from the W3J output and into another computer with a Emu 0404 sound card?

But what you mention about noise being increased when running on AC that doesn't surprise me, my last laptop also generated much more noise when connected to AC (mind you it was also running through a DC converter in a car)

I did some recording and there is a noise floor, if I was doing any descent recording I would get an external card, but from the gear I ran the sound output during playback sounded really clean, I am sure it will not be absoloutely clean, but the niose that is there is quite inaudible while playing music through a good system.

Have you played music through the output, if so what did you think? could you hear any noise?

 

Hi Aaron I think it's Shure not Schure?

 

Yeah you are right I spotted that mistake after I posted I was looking at my headphones thinking "you idiot" and I don't think I could edit the title, so I didnt bother going back and editing all of the mistakes through the post. ooops

 

RMAA is freely downloadable, so you can run test for yourself, one soundcard is enough

My test exactly:
I have professional soundcard EMU 0404 in my desktop, I was using it optical inputs and analog inputs.
Although analog needed amplify by +7dB in order for good levels of the test signals.

In order to do a good test you need a good linear soundcard - reference card (such as EMU 0404 or better), then you play the test signal from your other card and record this output in the reference one.

By using for example one card there is a probability that outputs maybe great but inputs are bad....

I didn't play music I got the laptop few days ago, and I have a good soundcard etc.

But when I was hooking up the laptop to the inputs on the AC I have seen noise on the meter bars. But didn't see any on the battery.

And the results of 90db for noise, DR, Stereo crosstalk is very good (something around capabilities of 16bits). And as I was saying I had self made cables, i.e., not shielded about 1m longs a cooper from the network cable....