Do we know / will it be shared what kind of an internal sound card will the Framework 16 motherboards feature? It would be great if this already powerful laptop would feature an equally good sound card.
I’m one of (probably many) audiophiles that currently run a dedicated amplifier + digital-to-analog converter, however as it’s a known fact many of the hi-fi headphones can be easily driven from the computer itself. The only noticeable difference in practice is that of a mediocre sound card and a decent sound card, which serves as computer’s own DAC.
Good examples of solid DACs are the ones contained within the MacBooks produced after 2020 (those featuring Apple Silicon chips). These devices have no audible difference when running hi-fi headphones from their internal DAC vs dedicated DAC, as their sound card is decent enough to handle that.
I’ll miss the dedicated 3.5mm jack. I’m looking to replace an old tower machine and run a set of mid-range speakers that are well short of audiophile but a lot better than any laptop speakers I’ve ever heard, so I’ll routinely have speakers plugged in, so from my perspective that means that we’re only getting 5, not 6 available modules. I’d be happy to use a 3.5mm module for high quality sound but for most purposes a simple built-in port would just fine.
I asked FW support a long time ago.
For the FW16:
“Thank you for your patience, The datasheets are in fact under NDA and we are unable to provide these, but the chips used are ALC295 and ALC1318.
Regards,
Framework Support”
Those are the ones connected to the speakers.
It is not really the DAC that effects the audio quality, it is mainly the analogue electronics around it. Not just the components used, but also the arrangement of the traces on the pcb.
You could have a 24bit DAC, but with bad quality analogue electronics, it might only give you 12bits of effective bits.
For speakers, the sound quality also depends a lot on the shape of the device the speakers are connected to and laptops are not a particularly good shape.
The other option from sound from the FW16 is via USB output, and for this it’s all digital with no DAC involved. Any DAC is then contained in the usb device you attach.
I have a pair of usb headphones, the the dac is in the headphones.
If you have the audio slot card. I don’t know what DAC that uses as I don’t have it.
If you want the best quality, I would go for a usb device with balanced XLR outputs, and not 3.5mm unbalanced Jack’s.
I have a old EMU 0404 usb adapter for that, but they don’t make it any more.
