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Help me get started

P

palindrome

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 24, 2004
Messages
217
Right, so i currently have a newer laptop with onboard sound. I want to get into high quality music listening, and have decided to start with a nice set of headphones. I will probably start with a nice entry level headphone such as an SR60. These headphones will not be used for gaming at all. My only concern is the lack of soundcard in my laptop. Will this hinder the performance of the sr60's? Should i look into buying a soundcard? Is so, how about an Audigy 2 notebook card? Will i need an amp?

All help appreciated. Thanks.
 
Onboard audio is a mixed bag.
Some are decent, others not so decent.
If you find out your laptop has bad onboard audio, then of course an add in audio card will work.
I have an Audigy 2 ZS notebook PCMCIA card, and it brings the sound quality up to the audigy 2 zs. With the grados, an amp shouldn't be necessary.
 
Yeah, its kinda mixed with onboard audio. I believe there are some USB sound cards. I don't know enough about them or other laptop sound cards to really recommend anything. The Audigy will probably sound better, but it won't be clear as I'd like it. Music quality was a one reason that people weren't fans of the Audigy series cards. They resampled the music internally, and you could hear a difference between them and other cards. I guess what I'm trying to get at, is I don't know if it would be a worthy investment for you. I don't know if it featured a digital output port where you could get an adapter and bypass the card's processing.

Not a bad place to start, headphone wise.

An amp shouldn't be necessary, but it would help, as most laptops just can't push sound too well. Keep in mind, if you have bad sound quality coming out of your laptop that an amp will only exacerbate it (you know, cause it amplifies the signal, including the bad parts ;) ).

I would recommend checking out head-fi.org, as there is certainly a wealth of information to be found there. Look up the altoids tin amp that one of the guys over there makes. Its not too expensive but does a nice job and would be small and compace enough to keep with your laptop.
 
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