I got a sennheiser HD 560s headphones and i need help figuring out what is the best place to plug them into if you guys understand in this stuff

[Dimatkach26]

so i got 3 options to plug the HD 560s headphones:

 

1) Razer audio base station V2

2) Rear motherboard port (motherboard is gigabyte aorus b650 v2 ax)

3) Case port (case is Antec c5 ARGB)

 

Any suggestion? I am trying them out one by one but IDK i never had a high end pair of headphones so its hard for me to tell what is best overall

[strange13930]

1 minute ago, Dimatkach26 said:

so i got 3 options to plug the HD 560s headphones:

 

1) Razer audio base station V2

2) Rear motherboard port (motherboard is gigabyte aorus b650 v2 ax)

3) Case port (case is Antec c5 ARGB)

 

Any suggestion? I am trying them out one by one but IDK i never had a high end pair of headphones so its hard for me to tell what is best overall

I would have it plugged into you port on your motherboard.

[UNIXNETWORK]

Honestly it doesn't matter if source of audio is crap. (Sorry but those aren't high-end headphones.) And it will be good if you plug in back of motherboard. We not living in 90's where for good audio people buy seperate sound card. And non of music, track has 7.1. If you want to improve sound then look for USB DAC. depends of your budget.

[Dimatkach26]

3 minutes ago, strange13930 said:

I would have it plugged into you port on your motherboard.

 

Do you know which port to use? i dont know the difference between the green and blue one

[UNIXNETWORK]

Green. It says top of all ports what for they are.

[Needfuldoer]

6 minutes ago, Dimatkach26 said:

i dont know the difference between the green and blue one

The blue port is a line-level sound input.

 

The green port is sound output.

 

The red port is a microphone input.

[Blue4130]

13 minutes ago, Dimatkach26 said:

 

Do you know which port to use? i dont know the difference between the green and blue one

 

 

6 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

The blue port is a line-level sound input.

 

The green port is sound output.

 

The red port is a microphone input.

 

12 minutes ago, UNIXNETWORK said:

Green. It says top of all ports what for they are.

It doesn't matter. The ports can all be dynamically assigned in software.

[Needfuldoer]

5 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

It doesn't matter. The ports can all be dynamically assigned in software.

True. However, if you don't know which does which, it's unlikely they've been changed from their defaults. Changing them now will only make things more confusing.

[podkall]

15 minutes ago, Dimatkach26 said:

Do you know which port to use? i dont know the difference between the green and blue one

Line out because, sound goes out of the PC into the headphones.

 

25 minutes ago, Dimatkach26 said:

1) Razer audio base station V2

2) Rear motherboard port (motherboard is gigabyte aorus b650 v2 ax)

3) Case port (case is Antec c5 ARGB)

Rear or case,

 

the less audio travels through stuff like the Razer station, the less static or other interference it has chance to pick up. Only exception would be if you had DAC/AMP or something.

 

The station apparently does work like DAC, but you could just try to trust the motherboard with clean sound, you can try both ports, but if the MB might be enough.

 

Can you hear static when nothing is playing through the headphones?

[Dimatkach26]

1 minute ago, podkall said:

Line out because, sound goes out of the PC into the headphones.

 

Rear or case,

 

the less audio travels through stuff like the Razer station, the less static or other interference it has chance to pick up. Only exception would be if you had DAC/AMP or something.

 

The station apparently does work like DAC, but you could just try to trust the motherboard with clean sound, you can try both ports, but if the MB might be enough.

 

Can you hear static when nothing is playing through the headphones?

nope no static, im playing seven nation army and it sounds pretty good on all 3

[OddOod]

40 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

It doesn't matter. The ports can all be dynamically assigned in software.

Shhhhhh, we're going HARD basic here.

[podkall]

37 minutes ago, Dimatkach26 said:

nope no static, im playing seven nation army and it sounds pretty good on all 3

what about no music at all? that's the easiest time to notice any static

[saintlouisbagels]

4 hours ago, Dimatkach26 said:

so its hard for me to tell what is best overall

That means it doesn't matter, IMO. Just pick the most convenient one, or have someone else try your setup.

That's the problem with going deeper into audio - you can buy a $9 DAC and a $300 DAC and it could either be "they sound the same" or "THIS SOUNDS SO MUCH BETTER" and both answers can be subjectively correct, because objectively one IS better, but it's practically a meaningless difference for the consumer and the difference is all in the mind.

 

You really should not use the rear motherboard port, because it's typically meant for connecting to external speakers since it's a "Line Out" port.

[Psittac]

Try them all and see if one sounds different than the rest.  It also depends on the source file for the audio, something low bitrate won't show much if any difference unless it's a bad quality output.  If you never listen to high resolution audio then it doesn't matter, again unless one of them is poor  quality.

 

Basically dac/amp's, which anything turning digital files into sound you can hear has, are either crap or good enough on low bitrate.  There can be improvements made with higher end equipment but that's not always the case.  It depends on several factors.  But for the most part I've only heard one or two combinations that didn't sound good enough on something like YT video.

[E-waste]

On 3/18/2025 at 8:17 AM, Dimatkach26 said:

HD 560s headphones

Plug in motherboard audio out if it sounds fine.  Case port uses a mitherboard cable from a different audio source.  For my board, it gets a decent bit louder directly from the board cs the front header cable.

 

What is the base station, and how is it connected.

 

Here's the sound output of your headphones, down to each sound frequency, and great suggestions on how to EQ them to be more nuetral.

 

I don't understand the fascination of lowered midrange, and picked up treble.  Why?  So I hope you look at this graph at the bottom and try to eq it using what looks right to make each frequency slider you have availabe, such as in VLC or Audacious--which has the missing 31hz slider vlc misses, and make the ranges match 0.

 

It may be confusing at first so here is an example:

 

I would use your own judgement based on the graph, nit always going exactly by the numbers in the fixed-frequency list.

 

Here's the graph

 

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/oratory1990/over-ear/Sennheiser HD 560S

 

Look at the pick up of treble at 2 kHz.  The fixed-freqynecy list says to increase this by about 1, but when I see the line on the chart, it goes UP, so in my mind, wouldn"t it make more sense to bring it down to equalize it with the midrange?

 

So the blue line is what the numbers are trying to match--I don't agree with it at all.  The whole reason to equalize is to equalize, as in, all different sounds being equal, vs out of balance.

 

So I would look closely at what frequency sliders your program has.

 

To know what to equalize, I would consider the LOWEST volume in the chart the place to match everything else to, as this is the sound that is out of sync.  Particularly, the middle range is usually (and I don't understand why) much lower than the left side (bass) and right (treble, horn, cymbals).

 

For your headphones 4 kHz (decently high treble sound range) it is +7 or +8 above the midrange.  So the fixed-frequency says bring it down to -1 which is only -6 below the bass setting of +5.

 

So those numbers want you to match the blue line.

 

Here's my penny:

 

Try balancing everything compared to midrange as the starting point.  It's even.

 

So mainly you want to reduce the bass to match, and reduce the hill of treble between 2 and 4 kHz, it's almost back down to midrange at 8 kHz.

 

Most EQ are limited, usually only allowing changes to 8, or 16 kHz and nothing in between.

 

16 kHz is important for cymbal clashes, horn and screaming guitar notes.

 

Here's my list

 

Bass is mostly even, with midrange slightly lower.  You could pick up midrange, or reduce bass.  For my list, midrange will be nuetral, 0.

 

Set 31 Hz, if available (rare, Audacious and vlc android has it)

 

31 Hz -4 or -3, but set higher than 63)

63 Hz -4 or -3

125  -2 or -3 (not as low as 63)

250 0, this is the reference level everything else is being compared to.  Everything else should be swt to try to match this sounds volume level.

 

500 Hz 0 or -1 (I like this range for strong snare, it's a smidge higher than 250 but very close)

 

1khz -4 is my best guess, -3 may work well

 

2 kHz large spike up, looks like it is near +2 or +3 depending on exactly where you look at the line, and how you think about the spike in that range going up to 3 kHz too.

 

I'd say set 2 kHz to -4 maybe -5, since 250 Hz looks like it is -2 below 0 and 2 kHz looks like it is +2 or could be +3 on the graph.

 

4 kHz -4 as well, or -5 since there is a spike at5 kHz right after.

 

Treble drops off heavily, very common with small speakers and may be intentionally designed that way since it takes less power to make high pitch--it could be that it would be too intense it if were even but let's try to equalize it anyway.

 

250 hz on the graph, not including the treble, since it is more inconsistent, is one of the lowest points.  Trying to match that (looks like -2 or -3 on the chart) would mean you need to bring up 16 kHz a HUGE amount.

 

I'd say +8 to get that small spike at 15 / 16 kHz to match the line of 250 hz volume.

 

So maybe you can add horizontal grid lines and make more accurate measurements, I can't tell exactly how far from 0 each band is with only +/- 10 being the only line, that's why there is so much guessing.

 

You can also use a parametric EQ which is far more advanced and detailed to do a much better job.  Neutron allows a 60-band parametric EQ if you want to get it dialed in, but it's a time consuming style of interface, all the options are there, but you'll spend multiple hours setting up those settings.  Might be worth it though.

 

Music and audio is all subjective, maybe you want quiet midrange and amplified bass and treble, but starting from a literal equalized setting the best you can set up, I think, is a better starting place thqn intentionally introducing a particular sound style in initial EQ.

 

You'll notice 16 kHz is recommended to be set to -8 where by default without adjustment, it is already below the midrange and bass, so this drops it even further which I think is a poor recommendation.