My new laptop sounds different from the old one.

[Anonymous]

If you hear differences it is most likely because one of the two laptops (or both) was not setup for a bitperfect relay of the audio stream to the external dac. Kimixer-windows is often blamed, but does not do anything unless it is forced to, well, mix different signals (which should always be avoided in high quality audio playback), adjust volume etc. Or if it knows/thinks that the device it is sending the data to accepts only certain bitrates-depts. If so, trouble ahead. Sound cards and their settings and resampling abilities can be another issue. However, the statement that kmixer always resamples to 48k is not true, and bitperfect IS possible under the XP WDM model, just tricky. Having said that, the exclusive WASAPI mode introduced with Vista is less prone to unwanted changes in the audio stream.