Advice on audio from the ground up

X

xCWolf

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 12, 2011
Messages
1,521
Hey guys,

I'm looking to put some decent money into my new PC for audio.

I'm looking to spend around 300 total for audio.

I know I'll need a decent to good sound card as my onboard audio is pretty junky right now as far as an Amp I have the Astro a40 2013 mixamp and am more than willing to ditch it and get something better if I need to. the big question here is Speakers/Headphones or both? I can get a set of vmoda crossfade 100's for about $100 from a friend and am wondering if its worth it to get those over my a40 headphones or my sennheiser HD439 or my bose IE2. as far as speakers I have none right now. I'm having trouble figuring out where to put the money.

So tell me what you guys think!
 
If you plan on building a system from scratch (like a home theater, but for your computer and other things), you probably should avoid spending your money on most things including pre-fab computer speaker kits. I had a Logitech Z-5500 set while and it was good for a computer set, it was discovered to still sound quite terrible compared to more expensive, but far more robust (and upgradable) home theater kits. This made me wish I kept that money aside, really.

But yeah, you really have an expensive interest in your hands right now. Headphones are not so cheap either, but they might be easier to start with. You'll find that you might choose between a DAC (soundcard, often USB) that also serves as an amp for your headphones, but these lack in shiny features like EAX and other Creative/Soundblaster enhancements. It's not really that important, though.

That said, you might really appreciate a discrete sound card such as Creative's Soundblaster X-Fi/Recon3D/Z-series for their excellent surround sound simulation while wearing headphones (CMSS 3D), but in my opinion it starts to become quite irrelevant when you move towards a receiver/home theater build in the future, as the connectivity to the receiver might be questionable. SPDIF is not something I'm a fan of, and there's a huge writeup I did on this here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1802808.

Personally I use a Fiio headphone amplifier for late night use, connected to my Creative X-Fi card for 3D simulation. It's a compromise; the soundcard does nice post-processing stuff including convincing 3D surround, simulated over stereo headphones.

For the daytime, I have a Denon AVR-1913 receiver and a bunch of Polk TSi speakers (TSi 200s, TSi 100s, CS20, PSW-125) as mentioned in my link/thread, I actually use HDMI audio out to this thing and do not use the soundcard. My louder setup is definitely not within your budget (try $700 or so), but even then it's all considered low-mid range stuff! Crazy.

I'd say, perhaps stick with the headphones, IMO. Good headphones will be about $200 and up, most of the ones I started with were $300 and up. These Denons are $600. Headphone amps are stupid expensive a lot of the time, but FiiO is a nice brand from China that have really built themselves a good customer base so far. Quite affordable stuff and I've been very happy with it.

And yes, you should probably get a soundcard; onboard options really are muddled and could just be plain unstable in the worst of cases, but that's really not so common now, to be fair. Headphones do work fine out of the soundcard directly; current generations of SoundBlaster cards have decent opamps built in for headphone amplification, so the DAC could be completely redundant for you. Personally my DAC is portable and gets use outside of the home, too.
 
Kachunkachunk - The home theater setup is what I'm trying to avoid as I already have about 6 grand tied up in my living room with a pioneer elite Def Tech And Martin Logan. So it seems like my best option is sound card amp headphones and skip the speakers than? as even with a good sound card it seems like the audio from the same value of headphone related stuff (sound card amp and headphones) is going to be far superior to an equivalent value of speakers and sound card.
 
Creative Zx + Schitt Magni amp and those Vmodas or something by Sennheiser like the 558s if you want headphones.

Speakers? Depends on how much space you have. Looking for local used gear is a good idea. A used receiver and some decent floor standing speakers would sound great.

I would not bother with any other sound card than the zx for gaming. I don't care what anyone says. They do gaming sound better than any sound card current or past.
 
xCWolf, yeah, that's indeed the case. And if you already have a much better home theater system, most everything else (particularly speakers) will just sound terrible in comparison, probably. This kind of purchase depends a lot on how you might about that kind of thing, or if that all even registers for you. Some folks just don't see or feel that kind of connection or don't draw those comparisons naturally.

I'm thinking a new soundcard is generally speaking going to happen one way or another and it's up to you if you want it to be an internal unit or more of a headphone amp DAC. Perhaps the more suitable option is the internal soundcard; it has more features generally, and for usually less than nicer headphone amps. Onboard opamps are of good quality (say with X-Fi Titanium and current higher-end Z series soundblasters).
It's not portable, which is a minus, but well, lugging around headphones with a headphone amp isn't exactly as portable and convenient as people like to pretend anyway!

Also consider though if you might want to entertain friends or visitors with your PC as well, or you might not want to share your headphones with others that use your computer. If it's all hardly of concern, go with the headphones. This could also open the door for you to spend hundreds more on headphone gear later on. :p
 
what are you going to do with this?

music, games , movies?

personally I like have speakers as a option as I don't like wearing headphones all the time but it doesn't seem to bother other people.


are you unhappy with your current Astro headset?

maybe the answer is to not spend anything right now? (tempting option)

or sell the the Astro's and take the money from that (and your $300) and put it towards something like Sennheiser HD 650 and Schiit modi/magni
 
All three Atarione. No I'm not at all unhappy with the headset, I have every intention of keeping the headset. but the Mixamp it comes with I may consider parting with OR getting another headphone amp and using the amp from the astros exclusively with my xbox. Everything you guys are saying has me leaning very heavily towards headphones as if I want to entertain my home theater system is out of this world (or at least i think it is)

The soundblaster series is definitely a good option but what about something like the asus xonar or omega claro? any suggestions on those?
 
My advice is to externalize all of your sound components.
 
Megalith - I assume minus the sound card? Or is a headphone amp going to take care of all that for me? Or shouldn't I have both?
 
You may find the external soundcard options to be rather limited, but they aren't really a total slouch.
As for other brands, I don't have first-hand experience there, though I heard bad things about Asus drivers for their Xonars some time back. That said, drivers get sorted over time usually, so it really is worth checking into again.

You'd naturally gravitate to the Creative stuff some years ago due to EAX and what game developers were implementing, but it's less of a thing now.

What Creative has going for them is the good build quality of current cards, aesthetics, and quality. Price is a bit high, too. Software-wise they have their bumps - late/slow driver development, or even flat-out abandonment of development of devices when they aren't bleeding-edge anymore. They seem to classify products as "legacy" quite a lot quicker than what they lead you to believe, on their website and don't put out updates. On the other hand, maybe there's little to bother fixing anymore.
Either way, they seem to graduate product lines a little too quickly.

Software-wise, I find it pretty superfluous, overall - you'll have to value the audio Crystalizer in Creative, or again, their [very good] surround sound simulation for headphones for it all to be worth a damn. But if neither is your cup of tea, you really don't have to spend much money at all on a Creative card. The rest is just about worthless, IMO.

I find Guru3D to have pretty good, in-depth technical reviews of sound card products, so you can check those out, perhaps!
Soundblaster ZxR: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/soundblaster_zxr_review.html
Here's an external Xonar I randomly found: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_xonar_u7_review,1.html.

Curious to know what you make out of this.



Edit: On your last comment, sometimes headphone amps behave like DACs and effectively replace sound cards. This is sometimes not preferable, such as if you wanted to enjoy spiffy driver level enhancements (Crystalizer, surround simulation).
That said, headphone amp DACs often have regular old analog input that you can use from the soundcard.
And with all that said and done, most current higher-end soundcards have fairly good amplifiers built in just for headphones. Including that ZxR. Either way, sound should come out quite neutral, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about the existing opamps coloring the audio before it's amplified, too much, if you decide to go full-retard and get the higher-end soundcard AND a headphone amp-DAC.
 
I would just get an external amp and DAC combo like the Magni and Modi.

I skimmed the thread and people seem to be suggesting sound cards, but I'm not sure why. To me, that's just an invitation to software bloat and potential EMI issues.

Is $300 still your budget? Just a good pair of headphones is likely to run you that amount.
 
The Magni/Modi combo looks like a great way to do it. The gaming I'm doing won't require 7.1 (LoL ESOL and WoW) and Ill be listening to music most of the time while playing. also music is best in stereo
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top