Oni07R

How to Allocate a Budget
Under $200: Get the headphone you want. Under $1000: Get the headphone you want and an amp. $1000 and up: Get the headphone you want and split the difference between an amp and DAC. If on a tight budget: only buy a DAC if your onboard has issues; only buy a soundcard if you want the software features.
 
Make Any Headphone Into a Headset
 
Over-Ear Headphones
$50 or less
 
$50 - $100
 
$100 - $300
 
$300 - $500
 
$500 - $1000
 
In-Ear Monitors (thanks to @KaminKevCrew)
$100 or less
 
$100 - $300
 
$300 - $500
 
$500 - $1000

IEM Cables
 
Headphone Amplifiers and DACs
 
 
Suggestions and Stuff Not on the List
This list is not exhaustive. It is intended as a good starting point for someone with limited knowledge of the personal audio space. I highly recommend doing research, including reading this thread for additional ideas. This also means that I may decline to add some headphones that I deem to be too expensive, too niche, or too unfriendly to the inexperienced. If you have additional suggestions, post them below. Unless your suggestion is monumentally off-base, we'll try to work it in. This list is not exhaustive and will change over time. It is not intended as an official endorsement of any product or company and does not reflect the views of official LTT staff.

Let this be in the memory of all LTT fans

Personal attacks against members are not permitted.
I'm not really a member so much as an administrator and I welcome all constructive criticism.
If I didn't I could just delete this whole thread.
Please don't call people stupid for having a different opinion, however baseless it may appear to be to you.

A lot of assumptions being made here.
We don't take money to do reviews. We never have.
We take money to do advertisements, which are never labeled as reviews.
NVIDIA provided the graphics cards (and Cooler Master sent cases and coolers, ASUS sent motherboards, Intel sent CPUs, Kingston sent SSDs and RAM, Swiftech sent water cooling gear) for our editing workstations for product placement in the whole room water cooling series of videos we produced featuring this hardware extensively.
In the grand scheme of things, $6000 of graphics cards (don't imagine that's their BOM cost on them either) is a great deal for 1-2M impressions on a series of videos about using them.. but those videos were NOT a review. They were about a clearly sponsored (we said it was more than once) outrageous project.
As for sending "keeper" vs "loaner" units of hardware, yeah for many products we just don't do loaners anymore, but more than anything else this is to do with me not feeling like it's worth my time to play email tag for shipping labels and spend an hour driving to FedEX and filling out stupid international bill of landing and commercial invoice nonsense over like a $100 item that costs more to send back than to just not bother with anyway.
That and quite frankly even a negative review (for some reason) often generates a lot of sales for the manufacturer.. so as far as I'm concerned they can eat the cost of the item and I'll do whatever I want with it when we're done reviewing it - whether that's continuing to use it personally (Pebble Steel and iPhone 6 come to mind) - or re-visiting it only when we need to re-do our comparative numbers (here's a lesson on why this is necessary and we can't just re-use old numbers)
And on the subject of the Pebble and iPhone 6 - these are both items that were NOT provided by the manufacturer. One was purchased for my own use and the other was provided by a separate sponsor who makes skins for phones (dBrand), but I didn't necessarily mention this at the time because who cares? It doesn't colour my impressions of the device.
Here's an item I wasn't allowed to keep and won one of the two editor's choice awards I've ever given out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1uj6wQTu58
Here's an item was allowed to keep that I ripped apart saying it was worse across the board than the two similar products from other manufacturers that I compared it against: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O1aCNrjV64
Here's an item I was allowed to keep that I basically ripped apart on camera and sent it back anyway because it had so little value to me I didn't even want to give it to a friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3AgcltUM9s
And I could do this all day..
You may notice that most of the items we review we are fairly positive about. There is a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with being paid to review it.
I don't generally bother to review stuff that I already know is stupid junk.
The bottom line is this. You can either trust me or not trust me. Ultimately that's your deal. My job is to do what I do, and the people who recognize it for what it is - my opinion being given to you - will follow, and the others can go find someone who maybe they think "hasn't sold out" but might just "happen to agree with them" to listen to. Enjoy.

I've made a tutorial about this hope it helps some guys out.
 
 
http://www.instructables.com/id/Change-led-color-on-the-Logitech-G502/

Looks like Maxwell specific WU's to be released soon!

You sir, just showed me the solution to my constant bad feeling of "not helping YTers that deserve".
Thank you very much!!

Or just get this adblock 
https://getadblock.com
And whitelist channels you want in the preferences..

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION
 
I've bought a ModMic 4.0 less than a month ago and used it on my onboard (motherboard) soundcard (Realtek ALC898 chip but same issue happening with others Realtek chips too).
I had a huge problem: ModMic volume was very low AND using "microphone boost" slider created a ton of static noise. It was not usable.
Then I found this video from a guy who had the same issue. He resolved it by using a veeeery cheap USB sound card (2 bucks or less).
I did the same by buying a cheap USB sound card (not same as his) and I solved the problem too!!
 
Now ModMic 4.0 sounds perfectly and I really love it.
If you plan buying it, remember that onboard sound is NOT ADEQUATE for this microphone but a cheap (less than 3 dollars) USB sound card will fix it.
 
Video of "the guy who solved the issue":

 
The cheap USB sound card I bought:
http://www.ebay.it/itm/160612635510?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

Yeah that's what oculus is working on, michael abrash talked about it during Oculus connect, I'll try and find the video and send you a link, keep in mind this was a while ago and I might not be able to find it .
 
@qwertywarrior I found it it's more ridiculous than I thought
 
http://youtu.be/knQSRTApNcs?t=27m26s
 
Yeah it sounds like eye tracking isn't happening anytime soon. 

I just WATCHED this video.
Badum-tish~

And all of a sudden I have decided what my next monitor will be.

Not sure if this is the right place to post.
 
This is a little attempt at trying to revise the Linus Tech Tips intro. I'm trying to give myself little projects in order to improve my kinetic typography skills & hopefully linustechtips don't mind me creating this video.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=betoSMPtRYU
 
Description: "A little project that took an hour or two to revise the Linus tech tips intro. Synced the audio up with the logo animations for a sleeker result. If someone at LinusMediaGroup would like to use this for future videos (without the watermark) please get in contact with me."
 
Edit 1: Removed link and embedded video.
Edit 2: Grammar

You didn't say what kind of budget you were looking at, but honestly if this is going to be your first step up to an audiophile grade headphone it is hard to beat the combo of Sennheiser HD558 + ModMic 4.0. You can pick this combo up most places from between $150-175 (USD), and if you watch for sales even cheaper.

While I personally haven't used Razer's audio gear, I have used many of their other peripherals. For me personally every thing I have seen in person and used has been of low build quality and highly over priced compared to its competitors in the market. I doubt their audio gear would be any different.

This thread topic seems strangely familiar.

On the WANshow today linus and luke were dressed for halloween! so this is some fanart for that
 
 
So here is The caped Badass!! and .. luke!  ;D
 
http://imgur.com/lCiZmP8
 
(This is how they looked on the WANshow)  http://imgur.com/013rix4
 
First time posting on the forum. but i think this is the right sub forum
 

"Below we bring you some news from AU Optronics about some of their forthcoming panels. Surely of most interest is a new 27" panel (M270DAN02.3) currently in development which will be based on AUO's AHVA panel technology, equivalent to LG.Display's IPS and with very similar performance characteristics. This is a 27" panel with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 350 cd/m2 brightness, sRGB gamut and 178/178 viewing angles. Nothing special you might think - wrong! This will be the first IPS-type panel to natively support 144Hz refresh rate, something buyers have been crying out for for a long time! 144Hz AHVA and 2560 x 1440 resolution, we can't wait!
 
In other areas and in the 27" space AU Optronics are also set to start production on their AHVA (IPS-type) 3840 x 2160 resolution 4k panels. The M270QAN01.1 panel with an sRGB colour gamut will go into production in October while the Adobe RGB version, the M270QAN01.2 will go into production in Q4 of 2014.
Also in 27" size there are some new 2560 x 1440 AHVA (IPS-type) panels coming soon. The M270DAN02.0 with sRGB gamut and the M270DAN02.1 with Adobe RGB gamut go into production in October and December respectively. There is also the M270DAN02.2, M270DAN02.3 and M270DAN02.5 going into production in September with sRGB gamuts. The M270DAN02.3 is perhaps the most interesting as this is the 144Hz capable AHVA panel we already discussed.
Still sticking with 27" sized panels for a moment, we already know about the M270Q002 V0 which was used with great success in the Asus ROG Swift PG278Q. This was the first 2560 x 1440 TN Film panel seen on the market and is manufactured by AU Optronics. AUO also have the new M270DTN01.1 in production now which offers a 2560 x 1440 TN Film panel although it doesn't list 144Hz refresh rate as a feature so perhaps this is a standard 60Hz only equivalent.
Not forgetting their trusty old AMVA (VA type) panels they also have the new M270HVN02.3 planned for October production. This is a 27" panel with 1920 x 1080 resolution and 3000:1 contrast ratio. Still no sign of any 27" AMVA panels with 2560 x 1440 resolution we're afraid. There's also the 21.5" sized T215HVN01.1 AMVA panel which goes into production in October to look out for."
 
 
 
Source http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/news_archive/31.htm#144hz_ips

The cheap USB sound card arrived today and... wow
Now ModMic 4.0 sounds perfectly and I really love it.
 
The cheap USB sound card I bought:
http://www.ebay.it/itm/160612635510?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649
 
 
A big thanks again to the "guy in the video who solved the issue"

Well, guys, I was an idiot
There is no issue at all with TeamSpeak.
The audio I recorded was from the playback test you can do in settings and I though it was the same as the trasmitted one. But it's not.
I haven't tried Skype yet, but I guess that the bad audio I heard from Echo call is only in the Echo call.
So yeah, I did not test real scenarios and just jumped to conclusions.
 
I added another track, called "realAudioTS" that is recorded during a real TS conversation and it is very similar to the one recorded with Audacity.
 
Sorry guys for all the unnecessary mess.
 
 
Oh, one question: will an external sound card improve the mic quality? I read that ModMic can benefit a lot from a good sound card.

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION
 
I've bought a ModMic 4.0 less than a month ago and used it on my onboard (motherboard) soundcard (Realtek ALC898 chip but same issue happening with others Realtek chips too).
I had a huge problem: ModMic volume was very low AND using "microphone boost" slider created a ton of static noise. It was not usable.
Then I found this video from a guy who had the same issue. He resolved it by using a veeeery cheap USB sound card (2 bucks or less).
I did the same by buying a cheap USB sound card (not same as his) and I solved the problem too!!
 
Now ModMic 4.0 sounds perfectly and I really love it.
If you plan buying it, remember that onboard sound is NOT ADEQUATE for this microphone but a cheap (less than 3 dollars) USB sound card will fix it.
 
Video of "the guy who solved the issue":

 
The cheap USB sound card I bought:
http://www.ebay.it/itm/160612635510?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

Well, the idea to go for a cheapo USB card came from this video:

 
I ordered a 3,50 euro cheapo card from eBay. It should arrive next week and I will tell you if it was good enough to fix the issue.
 
PS: I will use the USB card ONLY for the microphone, I know it sucks for headphones but fortunately I don't need "help" for them

Yeah cause a desktop amp/DAC takes up sooo much precious desk space. Just use Velcro to stick it to the side of your face if it bothers you that much.

A good stereo headphones with wide soundstage (mostly open headphones) is the way to go. You can always just download Razer's virtual audio if the game itself doesn't have surround built-in. 7.1 Headsets are a waste of money.

Like a girl who thinks her bf's dick is big because it's the only one she's had.