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[haggis999]

I bought a new Samsung Chronos 7 laptop last year which doesn't have the traditional phono audio outputs. Instead, it only has a mini jack socket for headphones and an HDMI socket. The Samsung manual refers to this HDMI output as intended for a TV connection but I assume it carries both audio and video and is not just restricted to TV usage.
 
The use of a mini jack to twin phono adapter has enabled me to connect the laptop to my hi-fi preamp via the headphone output and play music stored on the laptop (in FLAC format) via MC 18. No problems with sound quality were immediately obvious but I only tried this for the first time late last night and have thus only heard a small sample of music.

I have very little experience in the field of computer audio. Is a headphone output likely to be a flawed source? Could I exploit the HDMI output to obtain better sound quality? Can a laptop ever act as an audiophile music source?
 
David

EDIT: On reflection, I think I already know the answer to my last question. I know you can spend quite a lot of money on an audiophile quality async USB to SPDIF converter which then enables a connection to as fancy an external DAC as you care to buy. There are even a few DACs with USB inputs.

[harshtimez]

HDMI is the least preferable way to output music, for me. I only use it for movies on my Oppo. Analog outs sound smoother and warm, HDMI sound sterile and analytical.

[Micromecca]

There is no definitive answer to this question as it depends on the quality of the output stage at the analogue source (your laptop) and the quality of the DAC in the Processor that your HDMI is connected to.

[6233638]

HDMI will almost certainly provide higher quality sound than the headphone output.
HDMI is passing a digital signal to your receiver, whereas a headphone output is sending an amplified analog signal that probably has a lot of noise. (notebook audio outputs are generally not very high quality)

Something you may wish to see is if your notebook offers toslink/coax out via the headphone jack and a 3.5mm adapter. Toslink would give you galvanic isolation and prevent any possible grounding issues. (common with computer sources)

[mwillems]

HDMI will almost certainly provide higher quality sound than the headphone output.
HDMI is passing a digital signal to your receiver, whereas a headphone output is sending an amplified analog signal that probably has a lot of noise. (notebook audio outputs are generally not very high quality)

Something you may wish to see is if your notebook offers toslink/coax out via the headphone jack and a 3.5mm adapter. Toslink would give you galvanic isolation and prevent any possible grounding issues. (common with computer sources)

I'll second this; using the headphone out as an analog source is not preferable to the HDMI, not only because of the additional analog stage, but also because the signal is amplified and not a line level signal.  Feeding your pre-amp or receiver with an amplified signal = double amplification, which means you get double the distortion, can cause instability in the headphone out-amp (it expects to be driving a resistive load, i.e. a headphone speaker, not another amplifier), and potentially can overdrive the inputs on the receiver/pre-amp unless they're designed to accept an amplified signal.  The last one is not super likely with a laptop headphone out (they don't usually have that much juice), but the second one is pretty likely given how little money is spent by the manufacturer on the amplifiers in integrated headphone outs on most laptops (and would manifest as additional distortion).  Feeding an amp or pre-amp with a non-line level signal should generally be avoided when possible.

HDMI or SPDIF outputs if available (whether coax or toslink) would both be preferable.

[haggis999]

HDMI will almost certainly provide higher quality sound than the headphone output.
HDMI is passing a digital signal to your receiver, whereas a headphone output is sending an amplified analog signal that probably has a lot of noise. (notebook audio outputs are generally not very high quality)

Something you may wish to see is if your notebook offers toslink/coax out via the headphone jack and a 3.5mm adapter. Toslink would give you galvanic isolation and prevent any possible grounding issues. (common with computer sources)

I'm always grateful for answers, even when they arrive almost six months after I asked the question

As it happens, my laptop has not yet played a serious role in the storage or playback of my music files at home but such a opportunity might arise next year when I make my annual talk to a classical music society (I am hoping to avoid the need to keep loading and unloading CDs by having my selected tracks stored on the laptop). The specs for my laptop say nothing about a toslink option, so I think I just have a standard headphone mini-jack output. That leaves me the choice of HDMI or USB and comments elsewhere have led me to believe that USB is less likely to have any resolution or format limits for stereo or multi-channel audio.

However, this might prove to be an academic discussion. The music society has an Oppo BDP-95, which I strongly suspect has no way of offering gapless playback for FLAC files, something that is vital for a lot of classical music. Unless I choose to uproot my own BDP-105 and take it with me on the evening of my talk I may be forced to continue using CDs. The Oppo BDP-105 has an asynch USB DAC input that supports gapless as long as the source also supports gapless (I would use MC, so that is not an issue).

David