Bought a focusrite scarlet and 2 studio monitors yamaha hs7 and man what an upgrade!

Nick Brennan · March 24, 2023

I bought two yamaha HS7 studio monitors and a audio interface focusrite scarlet. I disabled my onboard motherboards sound via bios and use the audio interface via usb.

All I can say is man! What an upgrade in audio fidelity! Games and music and movies sound unreal now. If you have the chance, I highly rec you try it out. You can always return it if you do not like it.

But it's a definite upgrade vs onboard audio and logitech speakers!!!

johnt · March 24, 2023

Logitech is a starter brand. Their speakers are enough to get the job done, but far from good. Yamaha is arguably a mainstream audiophile brand. So yes you made a huge upgrade. Congrats on the purchase!

jaslion · March 24, 2023

Have you tried onboard with the new speakers? Good chance the difference is almost none. Its basically the amp that drives the experience and the audio chipset just delivers the signals and tbey've had that down for a long time now

Psittac · March 24, 2023

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Have you tried onboard with the new speakers? Good chance the difference is almost none. Its basically the amp that drives the experience and the audio chipset just delivers the signals and tbey've had that down for a long time now

I'm not certain with speakers, but more certainly can be had with a high end dac. I will admit that I don't give onboard audio, esp the dac enough credit, but I'm certain that the scarlet WILL offer some improvements.

What I have found in my audio journey is that the dac is the most expensive part, I learned this by trying to purchase a few "entry" solutions to see how well they can do compared to onboard and each time the dac has been the downfall. The Fosi Q4 might have had an amp that could push mid range difficulty headphones but the dac just threw nothing but garbage at me even when using it as a pre-amp, the crap it put out was apparent at that point. The apple dongle dac, while amazing for the few bucks it costs still falls short of onboard (throw in the double amping issue that I haven't pinned down) But the Sybasonic (hold on gotta dig it out of the drawer) SD-DAC63116 is by far the budget champ. It offers an equal or better dac and amp than a high end motherboard, and I have A/B tested this. Then there is the Douk Audio U3 amp for $40usd and for the money it was a champ.

My point being that when it comes to dac vs amp a dac is going to cost more vs onboard. And when you have powered monitors the best place to get improvements is the dac.... which the focusrite scarlet is going to give. I listened to my friends Focals on that interface and it was a tickling of the pickle that makes me want to spend more

Nick Brennan · April 5, 2023

Right. The audio interface I bought, the Focusrite, is just flat better than the onboard asus motherboard realtek chip.

Better quality hardware and sound. It's a no brainer. Just look at other people who disabled their onboard audio and went with a usb dac/audio interface. It's just better.

Not going back. I am not the only one who knows this. Look online at onboard audio vs external usb dacs.

The dac/chipset in the asus z690-p wifi d4 motherboard is last gen and my focusrite is just plain better than what it can do.

Would I notice a difference? The difference that I care about is knowing that the quality, independent of what I can hear, is better on the focusrite. I don't benchmark audio. I take what professionals say about the issue.

Thanks!

rice guru · April 8, 2023

On 3/23/2023 at 11:32 PM, Nick Brennan said:

I bought two yamaha HS7 studio monitors and a audio interface focusrite scarlet. I disabled my onboard motherboards sound via bios and use the audio interface via usb.

All I can say is man! What an upgrade in audio fidelity! Games and music and movies sound unreal now. If you have the chance, I highly rec you try it out. You can always return it if you do not like it.

But it's a definite upgrade vs onboard audio and logitech speakers!!!

Personally happy with my set up but yeah really is game changing once you go beyond typical consumer gear. Just even that first step can be game changing