Apollo

I'm looking into buying a new set of speakers for my setup, and the Dali Zensor 1s are at the top of my list at the moment. However, I'm not sure if I'll need an external amp for them or not. Right now I’m using my motherboard’s onboard audio (Asus P7P55D), but I’m not sure if that alone is enough to drive them. If not, what are some recommended amps for this kind of setup? I’m hoping for something relatively inexpensive that can be bought in Europe. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Nujabes is all you'll ever need.

Well, when you're busy juggling a spaceflight company that's launching spacecraft to the International Space Station, a position as chairman of SolarCity, and a growing electric car manufacturer in a rapidly expanding industry, I think the last thing you'd want is to be in charge of is building a hyperloop across the state of California.

A few games off the top of my head that are centered around a story and haven't been listed already: LA Noire Deus Ex & Deus Ex: Human Revolution Fallout 3 & New Vegas STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl & Call of Pripyat (I recommend modding these two up) Alice: Madness Returns Dark Messiah Might & Magic Divinity II Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (fantastic game) I also highly recommend Mount & Blade: Warband, although it's more of a "write your own story" kind of game. You should also give a Total War game a try if you're into strategy games at all. I know Empire and Napoleon Total War both have demos on Steam, but a lot of people don't consider those to be the greatest in the series. If you're looking for something different, give Legend of Grimrock, Trine, FTL, Hotline Miami, and Expeditions: Conquistador a try.

As someone running two 660 Ti's in SLI, I suggest going for the single GPU. It's not worth noise, power consumption, heat, and occasional trouble with games, in my opinion. I find that a surprising number of games barely support SLI or don't support it at all anyways. I don't regret my 660 Ti's since they were the best option at the time and still run very well, but now that a card like the 780 is out, a single-card setup the best option in my opinion.

Turns out my sound card doesn't have RCA jacks, so would I be able to use a 3.5mm to RCA cable instead for something like the Magni without any noticeable drop in quality? I would jump on the FiiO E10 if it wasn't for the fact that I'd be losing CMSS-3D for gaming. Or do you think the E10 + DT 990s on their own would provide equal or better positional audio compared to the Titanium w/ CMSS-3D?

Also, thanks a ton for all the replies so far.

After digging around a bit, I'm leaning more towards the 250ohm 990 Pros + an amp at the moment. How do the O2 and Schitt Magni compare to something like the FiiO E10? I came across this thread which I really should have found before making mine: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/11570-review-dt990-pro-fiio-e10/ Would you recommend this combo as well, or would I get a lot more out of the amps you recommended?

I'll go ahead and start out by admitting that I'm fairly new to headphones. Right now I have a pair of Shure SRH440s and a Creative X-Fi Titanium (not HD) as the sound card. I've been wanting to upgrade to a less entry-level pair of headphones and came across Beyerdynamic. They fit my price range quite well ($150-250), seem quite comfortable (very important since I'd be wearing them a lot), have good reviews, and don't look goofy as hell like some other headphones. The problem now is that I haven't a clue which pair to get (model and ohm). To make it as easy as possible, I'll try to list everything I think would help. - Preferably balanced but with strong (but not excessive) bass for games (e.g. PlanetSide 2, Red Orchestra 2, Total War games, and The Witcher 2 to give you a good idea of what types of games I play) - Good soundstage and positional accuracy - I prefer to have as little sound leakage as possible, but I'm still open to, well, open headphones for the sake of the above. Note that I also live with two dogs that enjoy barking. A lot. But I'll be keeping my current pair of closed headphones, so I could always switch to them when needed. - As comfortable as possible (apparently some of the Pro versions can clamp down quite tightly) - They would be paired with an X-Fi Titanium; no external amp or anything at the moment (feel free to recommend one ~$100 or less if it'll give that much of an improvement) The biggest thing I'm puzzled by is which ohm I should go for in my position. For the DT 990s, they'd have the be either the Pro 250 ohm version or the Premium 32 ohm version for the sake of my bank account. I'm not entirely sure if my sound card can handle the former alone, though. Pretty much everything is on the table for the 770s in terms of pricing, it seems. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

After all this time, I still can't help but choose this one: Thanks for the giveaway, by the way. Good luck to everyone who has posted.

"the list contains links to Prince of Persia 5, various free Java applets, Naruto and even a Ben Harper album ... copyright holders have been sending increasingly dubious DMCA lists, which once even included HBO’s own site." Horribly misleading title. I highly doubt HBO intended for VLC to be on that list, especially considering all the other ridiculous things that made its way on there. It's more than likely a mistake by whatever system is being used to compile 14,855,269 URLs in a month. Nothing to see here, just copyright holders being reckless as usual. VLC is garbage anyways.

Don't mind me, just tossing my name in. Twitter Name: @ApolloPS2 Twitter Post: https://twitter.com/ApolloPS2/status/342122765891031040 Now if only I had a Facebook.