I usually listen to music on my desktop PC, but today I decided to bring my Truthear Shio and M60x to the office as most of my colleagues were on a work trip. After hooking everything up to my laptop and pressing play, I very quickly noticed the treble was harsher than what I was used to.

Upon getting home, I did some (non-blind) testing and the difference in treble was certainly there.

  • Music source: Tidal (FLAC)
  • DAC: Truthear Shio
  • Headphones: M60x, DT990

This outcome doesn’t make sense to me; surely the data coming out of the USB-C ports of my desktop PC and my work laptop should be the same. Has anyone encountered something similar?

  • FromWitchSide@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think it is. I’ve first run into it with Apple dongle (CS46L06) which sounded like it had boosted harsh treble when I connected it to USB C in a PC. I’ve not heard that when I recently connected it to front case USB A of the same PC.

    Also my CS-Pro CS43131 dongle seems to sound differently from every device, and is just confusing me a lot.

    I mention that because I recall some discussions about CS43131 implementation in dongles being sensitive to USB power, and because Shio runs CS43198 which is kind of similar.