Audio output on my Powerbook better than my Macbook

Ok, here's the thing.

I have an Etymotic HF3 that I have been using for I guess more than a year already.

When I left the states last December, I also left my Powerbook. The Powerbook back was not used so much because I have a macbook that I use for my work. I am an equipment engineer that my work involves traveling for the most part of the week. I am basically living in hotels and airports, flying every week to different locations in the States.

Anyway, I am now working here in the factory in China, now assigned to the subsidiary here. I have asked my friend to bring me my Powerbook here in China, and just last week I got my Powerbook back.

I am not an audiophile per se, but I want that whenever I listen into something, I want the sound to be clear crisp and accurate. I don't want my bass to be powerful I want it to be tight and accurate and at least I can hear all the instrument in the background, in other words I want to be as real as possible. Its as if the singer and musician is in front of me.

I have my equalizer setting already preset on my macbook, so that I can balance the sounds to my liking. Since, I opted to use my Powerbook at work, I plugged in my IEM's (Ety HF3) on it. Tinkered with the equalizer in iTunes to balance the sound to my liking.

Wow! The Powerbook audio out sounds better than the macbook eventhough the powerbook had an older audio chip. The sound is warm, clean and the frequency response is almost flat on the equalizer. With the macbook I have to boost the lower frequency to get a decent bass and of course the more you go higher you'll get distortion but you don't get the kick. The macbook sounds dry.

I am very thankful that my friend brought it for me. The PB uses a Crystal Semi chip while the MB uses an Intel HDA. Does it mean the older Crystal semi is much better in encoding than the newer Intel HDA?

 

I did not really paid much attention to it until yesterday when I muck around with Powerbook and then referenced back to the macbook. My home setup is a M-Audio AV40 directly connected to the PMG5 Quad and has always been. And it has been an awesome experience to my ears. And it has been always known that as a supposed to be reference monitor, the AV40's will sound warmer to the ears. The reason I did not paid too much attention to the sound chips on the PM Quad. I thought they should always sound the same, until yesterday did I realize that of course different models come with different chips, they would sound differently.

The PMG5 afaik, comes with a TI chip, and it has two not one because of the digital out (TOSLINK).

Most of the time audiophiles have amplifiers, equalizers and sound processors in between their macs and their speakers or drivers, so the effect of the chip is not more apparent that directly plugging on the analog line out.

I am now thinking that the Intel models have Intel High Definition Audio (HDA) on all of them and will sound "tinny".

I am sticking with my Powerbook, and I will never let go of it. The macbook eventhough how unique and rare it looks, will go back to bag. I have no need for parallels to run windows software on my macs, I realize now I can be all powerpc mac again on my workflow.

 

I'm back at my powerbook again, and I just can't believe my ears. Oh! I just hit the sweet spot.

I wonder how it would sound on real speakers?

 

yes OSX on all my OSX capable Macs. I use Etymotic's HF3 IEM's though. So that also is a contributing factor, but again I am comparing it against a more modern Macbook. Same music, same IEM for both. And the difference is can be distinguished between the two.

 

Don't get me wrong but this HF3's are good with sound reproduction. It's pretty outstanding. Clarity and accuracy. I don't hit the volume really high with IEM's and they are of noise isolation type, they work like ear plugs, so you can listen more to the music than trying to raise the volume to appreciate it because of ambient noise.

I am just using iTunes and sometimes turning SRS to give it a little of a sound stage if I fancy.

 

The more I love to use my powerbook now more than ever. I think the PowerPC macs do have better hardware compared to the intel ones. I wonder what is on the PowerMac G4 Digital Audio. That must be something.