Macbook Pro Audio Quality

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Hopefully somebody with one of the 2011 MBP's can help out on this one!

I'm considering switching from a Windows PC to a MBP, however one question I haven't really been able to find an answer on is audio quality. At the moment I have an X-Fi Music (the old PCI one) powering a set of Aego-M's; when switching to onboard sound on any of my PCs/laptops the loss in quality if very apparent to the point where I wouldn't use it - is this the case on the MBP's?

If the news is bad, what external options are people using?
 
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I have a 2010 Mbp 17

The onboard is alright but for critical listening etc it's a no.

It gets around it by turning the amp on and off when it's playing and not playing a sound so you can hear hiss for a second after say a notification has played then it shuts up. Using headphones btw.

Connecting via digital out to my amp works nicely.

I would be interested in any portable eg FireWire or USB high quality sound devicesfor input but more importantly output
 
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The on board sounds on the MBP is pretty bad, not bad as in ye old on board sound, but definitely not great. As above, connecting by optical to an amp is the way forward if you need good quality audio. The headphone port on the MBP does have an optical out so no need for extra hardware. :)
 
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If you run Audio MIDI Setup you can change the default sound settings in far more detail than through the standard system preferences > sound.

For example, I have my internal sound at 24bit 44100Hz. I also have an m-Audio Firewire Audiophile interface which does both sound and MIDI I/O. The sound is usually better though it.
 
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For Aego M's I don't think you need to spend extra £ on external DAC< the Aegos are fairly low spec speakers, they are great though I have a set and love them :) But honestly, save yourself the cash :) I use the onboard from a mac mini to my Aegos Ms and it sounds the same as when I had my Asus Xonar d2.
 
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Hopefully somebody with one of the 2011 MBP's can help out on this one!

I'm considering switching from a Windows PC to a MBP, however one question I haven't really been able to find an answer on is audio quality. At the moment I have an X-Fi Music (the old PCI one) powering a set of Aego-M's; when switching to onboard sound on any of my PCs/laptops the loss in quality if very apparent to the point where I wouldn't use it - is this the case on the MBP's?

If the news is bad, what external options are people using?

On my 2010 13" hooking it up to my audioengines it is noticely poorer than my x-fi elite pro in my pc. Very 'muddy'.
 
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Possibly a daft question but are you sure your not just noticing the Crysalizer built into the x-fi when you switch between systems? Because you can add that back in through software
 
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Also using a 2011 i7 Macbook. I use it for Logic myself and the built in doesn't cut it for me. It's fine if I'm on the train and just want to get something down but otherwise I will use my Native Instruments Audio 8 DJ. Not the most suitable soundcard but it's better.
 
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Onboard is meh, but the beauty of Macs is that as long as you don't play about with EQ in iTunes the OS will export audio bit-for-bit via the digital out (the headphone out doubles as this using a mini-jack to optical toslink cable). It doesn't sample audio like Windows does natively, so it's a nice clean source. In my case, the Mac Mini I have is connected to a Yulong D100 DAC, which has a good heaphone amp, although I will be hooking up the balanced RCA outs to a dedicated amp (probably a DIY AMB M^3 jobbie) for my current IEMs and hopefully custom IEMs next year, and the balanced XLR outs will be connected to Focal CMS 50 studio monitors.
 
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