kinrouxx

Wow, the Amp extreme looks sexy! I wish Nvidia will promptly fix the driver issues causing some above 1080p monitors to erratically loose signal while on displayport, this is really the one thing that bothers me with this 900 series.

Thanks for the heads up! Just ordered my E17 this morning on amazon, I will post my first impressions here next weekend

Yeah you're totally right, as I can have free shipping either there's not really a reason to buy both right now, I'll go for the E17 and test it with my several headphones, and then buy the qogir if I see that I need it. Thanks for your great and very useful input throughout this thread

Ok after looking everything up I think that the best "upgrade" for me would be an FiiO E17 + FiiO E09K combo for 229€ (around 317$ US) which would allow me to have a probably better sound quality (way less impedance) on my main setup, but also a better sound quality both with my phone (works with a Z1 even without an on the go USB from what I've read), at the office and even on my second setup. Does anyone agree on this ?

Thanks, that looks like a promising alternative then.

Wow Linus on my first thread ! Could I get your personal recommendation on this matter as well ?

That seems good advice to me, - The cables shouldn't be an issue, they are unpluggable on the HD 8 but both supplied cables seems to be of great quality (Kevlar). - The E07k or similar could be a sweetspot at it is not that expensive and could also be used at my office (and maybe even my phone ?), do you have any idea of a linux compatibility ? After googling a bit I did not find any relevant info other than it doesn't seem to be officially supported.

Well if the major consensus is that I don't anything to upgrade anything to suit my HD8 DJ I'll gladly keep what I've got for now, and look for an external sound card or amp+dac combo when one of my soundcards will fail. Thanks everyone .

Oh I'm totally happy with these headphones it was my sound card that I was putting in question as "is it sufficient to supply a good enough sound to my headphones ?". I fiddle with the EQ a lot, I even tend to change between my custom presets depending on the genre I'm listening to

Especially in France, thanks for the info, I'll have to look for something else. If you're going for the motto "If it ain't broke don't fix it" I totally agree, but it seems reasonable to me to look to get the best out of your current gear even if sometimes it means replacing some of the components. I suppose that you upgrade your graphics card when you want to have a better balance between framerate and visual fidelity as any gaming enthusiast does, but if you buy a new display with two times the resolution than before I think that you will look for a GPU upgrade in order to get the best framerate when outputting at this resolution, the same applies here at least in my opinion it does.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from. Usually I'm a bit picky with sound quality, so I guess that I would hear a noticeable difference / improvement the "problem" is that I don't know anywhere where I could try one out to make sure that's it's worth it for my taste . That could be interesting for a multipurpose solution, by any chance do you know if the FiiO E10 are compatible (or easily made compatible) with Linux distributions ? (in this case Ubuntu 13.10 at the office) Wow really ? I thought that a too high impedance (more than the eight of the headphone's) caused distortion but I couldn't hear any with my RS 180 which as a crazy low impedance (just a little "static"/"white" noise) and didn't experiment enough with the HD8 on this setup for now. Am I missing your point ?

Thanks for the quick replies, I think that I wasn't clear enough in my post. I'm quite satisfied with what I've got right now with the SoundBlaster Zx and the HD8 DJ, but as I'm not quite savvy on the matter so I wanted to know if there was anything that I could change to get an even better sound quality with this headset, as an example does my soundcard is capable enough to provide a sound quality matching the quality of my headphones ? That's the kind of thing that I'm looking for, as an example does using an HD8 DJ with this kind of soundcard is the same kind of waste as someone that would use a 4K TV to play XBox 360 games at 720p native resolution (just mildly exagerating ^^)? In this case I would advise this inconsiderate user to build a good PC which would allow him to play native 4K games instead of horribly upscaled ones. I don't really know the difference that a DAC would do in comparison to my current soundcard, because I've never tried any, but I completely understand that sound quality and what someone would judge as good quality is also a matter of taste and perspective. So the question really relies on, is this a waste to use this headset with that soundcard and will I get a noticeable upgrade in sound quality when switching to something else or adding something in the "pipeline" ? Also the sound level is not a problem, I can go to levels that become unbearable to me after several minutes, so this is not an issue.

Hi everyone! I'm a long time subscriber of Linus' and NCIX's Youtube channels and after his glowing review of the HD8 DJ, and considering my love for music and the fact that one of my main headphones was showing some age signs, I decided to take the leap and so I come here to ask you if I can make any upgrade to my setup to get the best out of this piece of equipment. PSA : There is a big (I hope intelligible) wall of text below to expose my situation, my objective and my current hardware. I. The context and budget (and a bit of personal exposure) First of all, I find that the HD8 sound fantastic, I quite love heavy bass and they procure the best heavy bass I've ever heard. I'm still debating on which earpads to use because as much undeniable as it is that the pleather ones are the best for any electronic music or other bass heavy genre, I find that the velour ones have a better sound signature (? not sure if I'm using this term in the correct way), in my taste a better balance between bass, mids and highs for other music genres. I listen to about every music genre, going from classical/orchestral/jazz to electronic/dubstep and passing by hip-hop/trip-hop but also rock/alternative and even some pop songs. I mainly use Spotify for my music listening (because it's easier to have a streaming and cloud based playlist solution as I'm constantly switching between my computer at work, two home computers and my phone) and I also tend to occasionally listen to some FLAC files but I'have to admit that when faced to similar quality recordings I can't really hear the difference between high quality streaming from Spotify (I'm guessing 320Kbps) and FLAC files. Even though I'm quite a music lover I'm not really savvy on audiophile equipment and terms and so I come to you to ask if I can do anything to get the best of my current equipment by any upgrade costing a maximum amount approximating 300€ (about 420$ US but keep in mind that brands usually makes the magic conversion of 1€ = 1$ to milk us at the maximum), I was thinking of maybe a DAC+Amp combo but doesn't know if it will Improve the sound quality considering what I already have. I'm also a big PC Gamer, so these headphones will also be used for gaming (I don't care very much for surround sound and prefer a well spatialized stereo) and of course watching some TV Shows. II. The hardware As I've said I'm constantly switching between three computers, I intend to use my HD8 DJ mainly on the setup I will now refer to as my "main setup" and this is the one that I want to upgrade to its full potential (in a reasonable budget as mentioned). Nonetheless I'll list the different setups for you as you would maybe advise me to switch ups parts between them or judge that something portable could be useful (such as a portable DAC or else) but this should not undermine the fact that my main objective is to upgrade the main setup at its best. II.a Main Setup (Gaming, Music and TV Shows) - Custom Gaming PC with a Creative Soud Blaster Zx PCIE Soundcard - Sennheiser RS 180 - Sennheiser HD8 DJ - A crappy set of speakers that I never use (this setup is in an apartment so I only use headphones). II.b Second Setup (Same usage as above) - Custom Gaming PC with a Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium - PS3 and XBox360 connected to the Creative soundcard by an optical cable - Logitech G51 Speakers Set to which the soundcard outputs - TV connected by RCA to an old secondhand Onkyo CR-70R which then outputs to the G51 kit (also RCA) - An aging Sennheiser PC 350 plugged to my G51 - A Razer BlackShark (highly disappointing product IMO so I rarely use it) II.c Office Setup (Music) - Crappy Laptop onboard soundcard - Bose QuietComfort 20i (with NC usually disabled to save battery and because it would always need to be on aware mode as I work in an open-space an need to hear my collegues if they're asking me something, this leads to a pretty bad listening quality but it doesn't really matter since I can't push them really high anyway ) II.d On the go (Music) - Sony Xperia Z1 - Bose QC 20i (with NC on) So here it is, this is all the hardware that I have to my disposition and I would want to know if I could do anything to improve the main setup with my budget, I'm quite satisfied with what I've got right know and I'm not complaining at all, I just want to know if I'm missing something that would allow me to get the best out of my HD8 DJ for a reasonable price point. I looked a bit around and saw that both the Schiit Modi+Magni combo or the O2+ODAC combo where highly praised and could be a good fit in my case but I don't really know how does they compare to my current soundcard, would I hear a real difference ? I hope that this wall of text was exhaustive enough (and understandable), as I've stated I'm quite new to this so if I missed any important information I'll be glad to provide them. I apologize if my english isn't quite perfect yet, this is my first post here, be gentle please . Thanks to anyone who had the courage to read this !