Should i pick soundblaster g6 vs g3 for the Sennheiser gsp 500 headphone

[Denooo101]

Hello everybody, i am a pc gamer and generally i play competitive FPS games so i need to hear my enemies before they can hear me. So here we go, i will tell you what i've experienced with my current headset and based on my experience i will need your suggestions. I am currently using steelseries arctics 1 wireless headphone and boy for me this headphone is total garbage i can't hear my enemies in the games, i've been using sennheiser HD400S before using the arctics 1 and i can tell you this HD400S is just way better for hearing enemy's footsteps than the arctics 1. Based on experience of mine with the hd400s i decided to buy a sennheiser gaming headset and i'have ordered GSP 500 model for 70 bucks. And now i am looking for a DAC to use this headphone with, i have two model of DAC in my mind; one is soundblaster g3 and the other one is soundblaster g6. Between two DAC, which one of them is i need to pick? or do i need a DAC to get good audio? i mean currently i can get 24 bit 192000 Hz audio from my motherboard's jack port. My motherboard model is gigabyte h610m h, is buying an external DAC for the GSP 500 will be provide me much better audio?

I'have just wrote everything i wonder, everything on my mind. I am looking forward for your comments to help me.

[Slottr]

You really shouldnt need anything extra to run them. Your motherboard's built in soundcard will produce more than enough power to drive those. 

[jaslion]

Neither

 

They basically won't do anything your headphones are made to run on basic power sound hardware.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Denooo101 said:

i mean currently i can get 24 bit 192000 Hz audio from my motherboard's jack port. My motherboard model is gigabyte h610m h, is buying an external DAC for the GSP 500 will be provide me much better audio?

HD audio is marketing fluff, the games audio files will only be encoded at 16bit 48Khz anyway and the headphones wont reproduce audio higher than that either.  I guess theres a chance the Windows audio mixing might perform better at higher rates though, I've not seen anyone test that.

 

If the audio isn't load enough for you then a headphones amp such as the JDS Labs Atom may be all you need.  External DACs (I only have the cheap HiFimeDIY UAE23 USB DAC but I think it uses the same chip as the Soundblaster) can sound subjectively better in some situations in my own experience, though I only use one for music not gaming.  But the key point is it can make hearing individual elements in the audio easier, so it may very well make footsteps clearer.

 

In my opinion on board audio sounds pretty good these days, but the DAC is notably clearer and the Atom even in passive mode seems to give my audio more punch too.

 

The soundblaster does have its own headphones amp though, so it might be a good fit.  But then again my motherboard also claims to support high resistance headphones and doesn't come close to matching the Atom for power output.

[Denooo101]

8 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

HD audio is marketing fluff, the games audio files will only be encoded at 16bit 44Khz anyway and the headphones wont reproduce audio higher than that either.  I guess theres a chance the Windows audio mixing might perform better at higher rates though, I've not seen anyone test that.

 

If the audio isn't load enough for you then a headphones amp such as the JDS Labs Atom may be all you need.  External DACs can sound subjectively better in some situations in my own experience, though I only use one for music not gaming.  But the key point is it can make hearing individual elements in the audio easier, so it may very well make footsteps clearer.

 

11 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Neither

 

They basically won't do anything your headphones are made to run on basic power sound hardware.

 

20 minutes ago, Slottr said:

You really shouldnt need anything extra to run them. Your motherboard's built in soundcard will produce more than enough power to drive those. 

Thank y'all, i decided not to buy external DAC. One last question, did i made the right decision buying an GSP 500 over the arctics 1 wireless? as i say before arctics 1 wireless just sounds so bad, the eq setting and sonar is just a big mess. So is buying a GSP 500 going to be an upgrade over arctics 1 wireless?

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 minutes ago, Denooo101 said:

Thank y'all, i decided not to buy external DAC. One last question, did i made the right decision buying an GSP 500 over the arctics 1 wireless? as i say before arctics 1 wireless just sounds so bad, the eq setting and sonar is just a big mess. So is buying a GSP 500 going to be an upgrade over arctics 1 wireless?

Yeah trying without first is probably the best bet.  The problem with onboard audio that often leads to using a DAC is sometimes you get noise from the rest of the motherboard over the audio which going USB usually solves.

[Psittac]

6 hours ago, Denooo101 said:

or do i need a DAC to get good audio? i mean currently i can get 24 bit 192000 Hz audio from my motherboard's jack port

bitrate is a meaningless number in this situation.

 

What you have is a gaming headset, built for gaming.  Bitrate to the best of my understanding is the ability to put a wider range of sound into an audio stream, IE:  the highest high's, the lowest lows and everything in-between.  This more has to do with music listening because there is more definition to each sound.  FPS gaming a footstep is a footstep, you don't care if you can tell what brand of shoe they are wearing.

 

What you are looking for is more of a physical build to the headset, not what's powering it or how clean the signal is.  Headphones have two primary attributes for FPS gaming, imaging and soundstage (ok three, stereo separation).  Imaging is the ability to determine where exactly a sound is coming from, and soundstage let's you understand how distant that sound is, both play off each other.  Also stereo separation is the distinctness between left and right channel.  My recent endeavor into IEM's has shown me what stereo separation really is, it's almost like imaging and sound stage but to each side.

 

Onboard audio will do everything you need when gaming is concerned.  For what it's worth I would recommend the schiit fulla over a soundblaster product but you don't need it.