Better PC Sound

Posted at: Friday 29th February 2008 by Chris Lee

Just how good can PC audio be? Chris Lee investigates how to get the best audio quality from your computer, then pits the humble PC against one of the best CD players on the market.

Overall, comments on the PC were very favourable. 'A powerful sound with plenty of depth,' said one test subject, although another listener suggested that the sound could be cleaner. The same person commented that the music was sweeter when listening to the 840C, although he admitted that the difference was slight. We suspect that a sound card with a better signal-to-noise ratio would help in this instance. However, most of our listeners said the 840C and the PC sounded identical. Most satisfying was that throughout testing, the PC never gave the game away with a tell-tale blip or click, attesting to the use of decent ripping software.

None of our panel of listeners claimed to be an obsessive audiophile, and our lab is by no means a music studio, but to our ears, the PC was on a par with the 840C, with both sources sounding awesome. Despite the fact that our PC has a poorer signal-to-noise ratio than that of the CD player, we feel that our mission was a success. With a little care and the odd tweak, it's possible to coax hi-fi quality sound from a PC, and what's more, it needn't be too expensive.

Cost: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer, £51.57 inc VAT (www.scan.co.uk)

What Next?

Hooking your PC up to a separate amplifier and speakers can be very expensive, but there are much cheaper - as well as more expensive - routes you can take to achieving an awesome PC-based hi-fi setup.

The first option is better speakers. We were very sad when it came to the end of testing, as it meant saying goodbye to the Bowers and Wilkins 683 speakers. If you want the best audio quality then we recommend setting your sights higher than the usual selection of PC speakers; there's no better place to start than our Labs test of speakers on p78. If you don't have the room, more compact speakers, such as Eclipse's TD307PAII speakers, are a great alternative. You could also consider powered studio monitor speakers, but you'll have to set the volume on each monitor to identical levels each time you listen to your music.

Another option is to try using an external DAC. The 840C has optical S/PDIF inputs, so if you run an optical lead from the PC to the input, you can bypass the DACs in your motherboard's codec or sound card. Instead, a digital bit-stream from the hard disk is sent directly to the DAC in the 840C. Cambridge Audio says that this will reduce jitter, and result in a higher-quality signal than you'd get using an analogue output. Of course, external DACs are inevitably more expensive. As well as a DAC/CD player such as the 840C, you can buy dedicated DACs such as Russ Andrews's DAC-1 USB, or more exotic models from the likes of Chord and Meridian.

You can also try upgrading your case. You wouldn't want to put a PC that looks like the Labs Rocker in your living room, so if you really want to use your PC as a dedicated music server, it may need a good home. We've reviewed plenty of media PC cases over the years, and some of our favourites are those in Zalman's HD160 line-up, of which the HD160XT Plus is the most recent. A range of HD160 models are available from www.quietpc.com. They're larger than your average hi-fi separate, but offer similar design looks. Several models also have a fancy 1,024 x 768 TFT touch-screen built in, along with a Windows Media Center-compatible remote control. At £399, it's quite pricey, but there's enough space to store five hard disks and full-sized PC components, offering plenty of upgradability for some years to come.