vertix

also comes with deafening treble and garbage fr response compared to 553 and sine! get it now

AKG K550/553 or Audeze Sine Closed

HD 6X0 wins in comfort for sure. HD 600 is a bit bright and the 650 are a little dark, both really good and have pretty much the same chassis, comfort, etc. IMO the 650 or 600 would be great for you. Anyhow, Drop has the 6XX (pretty much just a 650) for $220 brand new.

Sound cards in general are pretty bad. It's all software and crap. The DAC's and Amp's in there are almost no better than today's onboard.

Definitely.

this is heresy

I wouldn't recommend as you might get some EMI or noise, but you can just use optical and feed it power through the power supply.

It has a built-in preamp, you're good.

Yeah, you can do that or use USB. You'll have to give it external power though.

Definitely! Though, I'd suggest getting the JDS Atom and pair that with Modi 3 instead as it offers cleaner amplification, but with slightly less power.

Not sure about that one, but it should be alright.

Objective 2 is pretty outdated now. SDAC is pretty good and I'd say better than most DAC's out there, so get the Atom with the Schiit Modi 3 or SDAC, as either of those two will do much better than the OL DAC. As for powering, any of those will work.

It's made to work with 120v, get a voltage transformer.

Extremely. M40x's are much better and cheaper. Anyway, Creative Aurvana Live are pretty great for the price, and are much better than the entire M00x series in terms of sound quality. Build quality, though, is meh

The E10K is not much better than an old laptop's onboard audio. That's why I'm telling you not to get it. it's simply not worth the money.