dougoftheabaci

So... Your first computer is the one you still have, right? Never been upgraded? Never plan to?
 
Building PC's is all about planning your upgrade path. Sometimes it's for longevity, sometimes your plan is to test stability before you make further more expensive upgrades. 

Yeah but that's the thing, for the price I'd just get a Magni 2. You can pair it with the Modi if you ever decide to upgrade to having a DAC and you end up with a very respectable little Schiit stack. Not as flexible as an O2+ODAC but most people don't need a stack that can drive a huge variety of headphones.

Paying for a DAC can be useful if the motherboard DAC is having issues.  Bear in mind, the O2/ODAC may be a bit expensive for people who just want a bit more volume.  The portable O2 is very affordable actually.

Yeah, the O2 is an incredibly flexible piece of kit. It can drive pretty much everything shy of electrostatic gear, but at that point you're generally looking at a couple thousand for the headphones alone... The O2/ODAC would actually probably be a really good option, because it will drive everything you have, and it will do it well. Barnacules has a pretty good review of the thing up on youtube. (Just look for Barnacules+Mayflower electronics, or something like that.) He has a wide range of headphones too, so it's a pretty well rounded look at the amp/DAC.

I'm having a hard time with the whole... "Some can some can't" Seems a bit far-fetched IMO.
 
I think it's more along the lines of "some can hear their $500 cable whispering "hey I cost $500 so I must sound better!", and some are smart and don't buy a $500 cable in the first place"
 

Certain metals have different resistances. It can effect the volume you need to use but I don't think it actually effects sound quality. Once you control for the differences in volume people can't tell the difference.
 
The only real difference you get with after-market cables is different ergonomics and microphonics. Some cables, if you flick them, transmit that noise directly to your ears in a painful way. Some do not. Some you can hear as they scrape along any surface, others you don't. The cable that comes with the Hifiman HE-500 is a nightmare. It's crazy stiff and if it hits ANYTHING you'll hear it in your headphones. I had to replace it with a custom one that was individually braided and wrapped in cloth. Way more flexible, no sound travels up the cable.
 
But yeah, aside from stuff like that you don't get much of a benefit from custom cables.

Certain metals have different resistances. It can effect the volume you need to use but I don't think it actually effects sound quality. Once you control for the differences in volume people can't tell the difference.
 
The only real difference you get with after-market cables is different ergonomics and microphonics. Some cables, if you flick them, transmit that noise directly to your ears in a painful way. Some do not. Some you can hear as they scrape along any surface, others you don't. The cable that comes with the Hifiman HE-500 is a nightmare. It's crazy stiff and if it hits ANYTHING you'll hear it in your headphones. I had to replace it with a custom one that was individually braided and wrapped in cloth. Way more flexible, no sound travels up the cable.
 
But yeah, aside from stuff like that you don't get much of a benefit from custom cables.

Not driver size but the cup size. It'll change the sound but they're Turtle beaches so can't hurt.

Good luck.  I've searched, too.  It's not easy to find inexpensive bluetooth headphones.  I'm about to return a pair of Photive BTX6 that sound decent enough for the price, but I don't think they're all that comfortable.  They do have a built-in mic, though.  
 
If you don't mind using RF (radio frequency) headphones, it opens up more options.  The drawback is having a transmitter.  
Sennheiser has some.  http://en-us.sennheiser.com/wireless-headphones 

Certain metals have different resistances. It can effect the volume you need to use but I don't think it actually effects sound quality. Once you control for the differences in volume people can't tell the difference.
 
The only real difference you get with after-market cables is different ergonomics and microphonics. Some cables, if you flick them, transmit that noise directly to your ears in a painful way. Some do not. Some you can hear as they scrape along any surface, others you don't. The cable that comes with the Hifiman HE-500 is a nightmare. It's crazy stiff and if it hits ANYTHING you'll hear it in your headphones. I had to replace it with a custom one that was individually braided and wrapped in cloth. Way more flexible, no sound travels up the cable.
 
But yeah, aside from stuff like that you don't get much of a benefit from custom cables.

Be careful with how much you listen to validators, they only care about how closely you follow the spec. We used to be more more concerned about full validation, then CSS3 and a bunch of stuff in HTML 5 came along, stuff that was perfectly safe to use if you had fallbacks. The validators threw errors for that stuff like crazy...
 
It can be good to use them, especially when you're starting out, but every time you get an error look it up and decide whether or not it's important.

That's what I'm hoping to do eventually, but there are a few more parts I want to put into my build before I water cool the whole thing. Plus, the GPU's I'm putting in don't have waterblocks yet.