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I'm thinking about getting these to use with my computer. The question is, should i get a soundcard with it or receivers? and which one?
ok i think i want the AKG k701 instead
All you guys keep saying that they sound fine without an amp, until the day that you do add an amp, you'll never take them off the amp again. You'll fight for that amp like it's the last piece of food and you are a gorilla on a deserted sand dune.
More suited to HeadFi more than [H]?
Well bring it back here and let some people give their honest, informed opinions. Choice of sound playback is a VERY personal thing and the more feedback we get will help us in our choice of items to review: whether it be sound cards, speakers, headphones, or DACs and headphones.
All you guys keep saying that they sound fine without an amp, until the day that you do add an amp, you'll never take them off the amp again. You'll fight for that amp like it's the last piece of food and you are a gorilla on a deserted sand dune.
No, not really. I have a PPA, with high end components that I built (cerafine caps, 637 opamps, 4 buffers per channel) and with the 700s, there really isn't any difference between that and the Audigy 2's output.
I bet you think there really isn't much of a difference between Netburst and Nehalem too.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
There's a real difference between a technical difference and a practical one. I am fully aware of the technical difference between my PPA and a normal headphone out, that's why I built it. It it linear from DC-1.5MHz, can supply an amazing amount of current, can go up to 24 volts of output, enough to destroy any headphone I'm aware of, and has an ultra-low output impedance (meaning lots of feedback and hence driver control).
However, that doesn't mean that all that is useful for many headphones. It was useful for HD580s, because the things were low efficiency, high impedance. They needed high voltage (in a relative sense) to drive them, the PPA could provide that. However the ATH-A700s are fine. They sound good on normal HP outputs.
How it sounds is really all that matters. Frothing at the mouth about technical specs isn't useful, especially when you are talking far, far exceeding the useful audio range as my PPA does. The question is always "How does it sound?" In the case of the 700s, the answer is "They sound fine on the soundcard's output."
In terms of your processor analogy I would say it would more be like the difference between a quad core and a multi-processor 16-core system for a gamer. Technically, the multi-core system has way more power. However it is power in such a way that is not useful to games. So the gamer sees no speedup, and certainly not a 4x speedup.
Some headphones need high quality amps, some don't. Also depends on the sound card, some have a pretty good headphone stage.
The ATH-A700 seems to be find right on the output of most soundcards.