One of my rare disagreements with you Matt. Years ago Mac went around and around with people saying the same thing, the headphone outs of a laptop are not that good. That was true maybe 10-15 years ago but not in the modern world. As you know you basically count the age of a computer in dog years so 12 years ago is ancient history.

Newer laptops all have versions of HD sound built in so people can play movies, stream music and play HD games on them. The sound is fine. I used to run the headphone outs to my mixer in my home studio with no problem. You can also just use a splitter and go direct to powered monitors, people do that all the time too. The only issue is if you run the laptop with the power plugged in. That can put a weird static noise into the output and maybe even that has been filtered out on new ones. Run on the battery it's clear as a bell.

Berntd's problem is he's used to BeatzBass. That is a very high bass boost for hip hop and rap. Beats was created by Dr Dre who became the first hip hop billionaire when he partnered with Apple. If he wants more bass he can use these:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MHA22AM/B/beats-pro-over-ear-headphones-black

Or, get a good interface and run the audio out to a good monitor system. Any good mixer can boost the bass all you want.

Bob

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