Is there any difference in sound quality between front and back audio ports?

[maDkiLzZ]

I have a Gigabyte H81M S1 v2.0 motherboard.There is a green and red audio port at the back,and the same at the front of my case(Cooler Master CMP 250).I use a Steelseries v2 Siberia.I wanted to know that is there any difference in sound quality when i connect the headphones in the front jack vs the back jack?Thanks.

 

[k1114]

They're both the same.

 

[Pikker]

Connecting to the back ports is almost always going to result in better audio quality, since the front ports have to run across your case on poorly isolated wires and may pick up interference along they way, while the rear jack is closer to the source. Your motherboard doesn't feature a headphone amplifier, but for anyone else wondering, I should mention that amps are wired only to the rear port.

 

[k1114]

Digital signals will not pick up interference so easily like analog. There will not be a difference.

 

[George Bush]

Digital signals will not pick up interference so easily like analog. There will not be a difference.

It is a very common myth: try connecting TV to computer by, for example, cheap 10m long HDMI cable - you will get bunch of artifacts, that is because of interference..

 

[delaro]

Connecting to the back ports is almost always going to result in better audio quality, since the front ports have to run across your case on poorly isolated wires and may pick up interference along they way, while the rear jack is closer to the source. Your motherboard doesn't feature a headphone amplifier, but for anyone else wondering, I should mention that amps are wired only to the rear port.

Your wrong those wires are EMI RFI shielded which is designed specifically for this application, the interference if any would be so low you will not notice. Some motherboards on the other hand will only output 2.1 to the front and 2.1,5.1 or 7.1 to the rear. These connections are Analog so they are the lowest quality of all the audio connections available but to the common person you will never notice. Most boards today don't amplify the signal this is why USB ran speakers are so common since you get the same Audio quality and 5V to run small speakers.

 

[k1114]

I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it's far less susceptible than analog. But at the same time I'm not going to say analog is necessarily worse quality. You're comparing a cheap 10m hdmi cable to an audio cable less than 1m. You're not going to have any quantifiable interference and you can even test it if you really think so.