Hey all,
I noticed this thing switching from Windows 11 with my same hardware being Hackintoshed now. I consider myself audio enthusiast, not an audiophile but enthusiast - so when I was building my PC I picked the board with a solid on board audio so I wouldn't need to plug separate / additional DAC or amplifier. The choice was down to Asus Rog Strix B550-F gaming and its onboard SupremeFX (Realtek S1220A) - which is a custom made / refined variation of the chip, enhanced by a good on board shielding, high quality capacitors, and dual op amps which are really important to me because I use 250 Ohm Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro headphones, so there is enough juice for them. This sounds good under Windows 10 / 11 with official drivers, but I always needed to apply some enhancements from official bloatware software coming with the drivers themselves.
This wasn't the case with macOS Sequoia, right out of the box the audio was cleaner, louder, definitely less noise and more pleasant listening experience in general, I am sure I am not imagining things. To get the same result under Windows, I'd need to fiddle and tweak the drivers and enhancements a lot - I'm not saying it's impossible but it's a lot of work and the results would still be of a questionable quality. Now I am not sure what is different, underlying hardware is the same for sure - is it possible that Apple and their Core Audio really utilize the hardware much better right out of the box? Just to be sure, I installed "eqMac" and to my surprise with that small application you can further enhance and tune the audio on the loudness levels I just couldn't push in Windows and drivers there. All in all - interesting experience
I noticed this thing switching from Windows 11 with my same hardware being Hackintoshed now. I consider myself audio enthusiast, not an audiophile but enthusiast - so when I was building my PC I picked the board with a solid on board audio so I wouldn't need to plug separate / additional DAC or amplifier. The choice was down to Asus Rog Strix B550-F gaming and its onboard SupremeFX (Realtek S1220A) - which is a custom made / refined variation of the chip, enhanced by a good on board shielding, high quality capacitors, and dual op amps which are really important to me because I use 250 Ohm Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro headphones, so there is enough juice for them. This sounds good under Windows 10 / 11 with official drivers, but I always needed to apply some enhancements from official bloatware software coming with the drivers themselves.
This wasn't the case with macOS Sequoia, right out of the box the audio was cleaner, louder, definitely less noise and more pleasant listening experience in general, I am sure I am not imagining things. To get the same result under Windows, I'd need to fiddle and tweak the drivers and enhancements a lot - I'm not saying it's impossible but it's a lot of work and the results would still be of a questionable quality. Now I am not sure what is different, underlying hardware is the same for sure - is it possible that Apple and their Core Audio really utilize the hardware much better right out of the box? Just to be sure, I installed "eqMac" and to my surprise with that small application you can further enhance and tune the audio on the loudness levels I just couldn't push in Windows and drivers there. All in all - interesting experience