Does the Laptop really make a difference on sound quality?

MC6, post: 5738 wrote: So basically me and a friend are DJ’ing an event tomorrow night and today we were trying out our speakers for any faults or things we should be aware of (they aren’t great speakers, which is why we’re selling them!)

When the music is played from his laptop, the sound coming from the speakers sounds very fairy-like and airy.. There’s no dodgy sounds, just a really whispery sound. It hasn’t done this before and when played from my own desktop computer it sounds fine. I’m not sure if this is a new thing, because we didn’t have the time to test them before our last gig with them, so they could just sound bad in my small study-room where they are based at the minute but sound fine in the open. I must admit though, they don’t sound good at all when played from his laptop and it’s worrying me about tomorrow night’s event!!

What I’m wondering is.. Does the laptop used REALLY make that much of a difference for us Digital DJ’s? It isn’t a bad laptop in any stretch of the imagination. Any thoughts on this would be great!

Check the soundcard settings. Some soundcards have software installed (which can be accessed from the bottom right near the system date) which provides a variety of “effect” selections eg. reverb, spatial, room, arena, etc. You’d need to switch off all those effects and play it in “virgin” mode. This should do the trick 🙂

MC6, post: 6131 wrote: D-Jam, I’m not really up to date with the functions of a soundcard. Haven’t even had the chance to read over all the articles on it as I’ve been really busy recently, which is the reason i’m only getting back to this thread now. I’m guessing that it has one connection which is USB to plug into the laptop and the little box has a headphone jack to plug in the RCA cable like we would normally do? Sorry if that isn’t explained very well lol! Would it take over the sound and make it sound a lot better, yes?

OK, here’s the easy lesson.

Back when most people used desktop computers, they would buy a video game like Doom or Unreal Tournament. They would see things run sluggish on their computers and at times the textures and shadows not showing up well.

Suddenly the person goes out and buys a nice Nvidia Video Card and puts it in…now the game plays phenomenally and the graphics look beyond belief.

WHY? Imagine your computer is a car with one driver, and this driver has to navigate, put music on the stereo, and take photos of the streets. How good and efficient could he do? Probably bad. Now put in a second person doing a chunk of his work. Suddenly things run better.

Sound cards and video cards do the same thing. They have memory and processors that do the work for the computer, so your main computer processor doesn’t have to do it. So in the case of your sound card, the main processor doesn’t have to handle sound because your Audio 4 or Connectiv or whatever you use is handling it.

NOW…if you want better quality you still need performance out of the computer. That means a processor that isn’t the “minimum requirements” and your ram maxed out. You also want to tweak your OS so you don’t have issues like USB ports shutting off and all those unnecessary processes running in the background as Smittten pointed out in that one article.

I also would tell you that a DJ-level soundcard would give you the added channels you need. So you could have multi-channel output if you can set it, and the output to headphones. I personally think the M-Audio Connectiv I use is low-end compared to the NI soundcards, but it does a lot for the money, so I imagine better ones would rock even more.

DON’T – use your headphone port on the laptop as an external out. Basic rule.

MC6, post: 6557 wrote: Think I’ve got a better idea of how things work now 🙂 thanks guys! Me + my friend have decided to pack it in for a while because we can’t commit, but hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll shell out on some proper gear and get moving again! 😀

I Hope You Are Not Packing It In my Friend 🙁 🙁