How is my laptop affecting my sound quality more than my DAC?

[Matthew T2]

I have been using a laptop for some years now to stream music via a DAC through my hi-fi. The sound was ok but nothing really special, a bit thin and lacking bass. I recently also added a subwoofer to complement my bookshelf speakers but found that I had to crank it up to around 140hz to get a decent performance from it which I knew was way beyond what anyone reccomends.
However, just recently I have replaced my aging laptop and the sound has improved quite a bit. There is much more bass and overall the sound is more full bodied. I had to adjust my subwoofer to around 80hz which is about what most people recommend.
My question is; what else can affect the sound besides the DAC? I thought the computer just provided the information and the DAC handled everything else. I haven’t changed anything else in my setup. Same amp, same DAC, same speakers and subwoofer etc. Could it be the power supply for the laptop or just a wearing out of components within the laptop that affected the sound so much?

 

[abacus]

If the bits from the stream (Or whatever your music comes from) go straight out to the DAC (Unmodified in any way) then the sound is totally dependent on the external DAC, however most computers don't do that natively, therefore the DAC gets whatever the computer is setup to give (Which is usually worse than what the original is), hence it is best to bypass the computer sound system completely by using an ASIO driver so that the DAC gets the native signal.

Bill

 

[Matthew T2]

Cheers for the reply. Much appreciated.

 

[Revolutions]

You probably need an audiophile computer cable…

(That was a joke, btw. What Bill said 👍🏻)

 

[Vincent Kars]

A simple one is to check the audio settings on the PC: https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Windows/Win7/AudioPanel.htm
My personal preference is to bypass the Win audio completely by using a media player (MusicBee) allowing you to use WASAPI in Exclusive mode or as Bill suggested, use ASIO but your DAC must support this protocol.

The Well-Tempered Computer