Is a usb sound card worth it?

[Xalkias99]

I recently happen to plug my ATH-150x in a relatevly good and new Dell laptop of a friend and noticed a noticable quility and intenisity defference in music between it and my 7-year-old laptop. So i realised i definatly need a sound card cuz all this time i didnt know how much of a deferce it can make. From a quick search i found some usb sticks sound cards with a jack output but from the looks of it and how small they are i dont really know if they can improve the sound. Is it worth it to buy a 30-40€ usb sound card or it wont make so much difference?

 

[steelo]

9 minutes ago, Xalkias99 said:

I recently happen to plug my ATH-150x in a relatevly good and new Dell laptop of a friend and noticed a noticable quility and intenisity defference in music between it and my 7-year-old laptop. So i realised i definatly need a sound card cuz all this time i didnt know how much of a deferce it can make. From a quick search i found some usb sticks sound cards with a jack output but from the looks of it and how small they are i dont really know if they can improve the sound. Is it worth it to buy a 30-40€ usb sound card or it wont make so much difference?

 

Based on my experiences, usb sound sticks aren't that great. I used one in an old dell desktop and it 'worked' but the sound quality was pretty terrible. On another occasion, I used one for sound output on a raspberry pi zero and the audio quality was also very poor. I guess it would be okay for an occasional youtube video or sound but I think you'll otherwise be pretty disappointed.

[vanished]

You probably want an external USB DAC and amp combo unit for $100+.  A "sound card" wouldn't work in a laptop for obvious reasons, and any of the little dongle-style USB ones I suspect are really not good enough to be worth it.

[steelo]

14 minutes ago, Xalkias99 said:

I recently happen to plug my ATH-150x in a relatevly good and new Dell laptop of a friend and noticed a noticable quility and intenisity defference in music between it and my 7-year-old laptop. So i realised i definatly need a sound card cuz all this time i didnt know how much of a deferce it can make. From a quick search i found some usb sticks sound cards with a jack output but from the looks of it and how small they are i dont really know if they can improve the sound. Is it worth it to buy a 30-40€ usb sound card or it wont make so much difference?

 

 

14 minutes ago, Xalkias99 said:

I recently happen to plug my ATH-150x in a relatevly good and new Dell laptop of a friend and noticed a noticable quility and intenisity defference in music between it and my 7-year-old laptop. So i realised i definatly need a sound card cuz all this time i didnt know how much of a deferce it can make. From a quick search i found some usb sticks sound cards with a jack output but from the looks of it and how small they are i dont really know if they can improve the sound. Is it worth it to buy a 30-40€ usb sound card or it wont make so much difference?

 

Do you have amplified speakers you can connect to the headphone jack?

[Xalkias99]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You probably want an external USB DAC and amp combo unit for $100+.  A "sound card" wouldn't work in a laptop for obvious reasons, and any of the little dongle-style USB ones I suspect are really not good enough to be worth it.

Isnt there some portable (and cheaper) solution? I found these three 1 2 3. I mean wont they do the job? 

[Xalkias99]

2 minutes ago, steelo said:

 

Do you have amplified speakers you can connect to the headphone jack?

No i dont. I carry the laptop to the univercity all the day so i want it to be as portable as possible

[vanished]

9 minutes ago, Xalkias99 said:

Isnt there some portable (and cheaper) solution? I found these three 1 2 3. I mean wont they do the job? 

I really don't know how good they'll be.  I would hope that they'd be a lot better than what's built into the laptop but honestly I just don't know.  I do know these kind of things can be very poor, but to be clear those are generally ones that come bundled with inexpensive headphones, so I'd hope and expect these would be better.