Help with Sound Card!

[TheYoungEnthusiast]

Hey all,

 

I am ordering myself a pair of Beyerdynamic MMX300 headphones tonight or tmrw and I need some advice on a sound card to drive these puppies

 

I am thinking that I could get a USB sound card with it's own power brick (aka not powered via the USB bus, only digital data going across USB) so that it can have a nice high current beefy amplifier inside.

 

And obviously I am considering an internal PCI-e sound card, but not really sure what ones I would want to look at.

 

My question is; Should I go with a mid/high end USB sound card or a mid/high end PCI-e sound card?

 

Thank you very much

 

p.s. I know nothing about sound cards so forgive me if anything I said was completely wrong

 

 

[Turkatron]

You don't need to go "high" end when you already have great headphones. Just pick up a Fiio E10 from Amazon to save dosh and time. The only USB dac I had that actually had a stand alone power unit I think was the Audio-GD and that took a month to receive. It was great but if you want something ASAP it really isn't worth the wait.

[pummetje]

get a nice pcie soundcard like a asus xonar stx or something

[TheYoungEnthusiast]

You don't need to go "high" end when you already have great headphones. Just pick up a Fiio E10 from Amazon to save dosh and time. The only USB dac I had that actually had a stand alone power unit I think was the Audio-GD and that took a month to receive. It was great but if you want something ASAP it really isn't worth the wait.

Thanks for the response, and that's good info to know. I'll check out the Fiio for sure

[Turkatron]

Thanks for the response, and that's good info to know. I'll check out the Fiio for sure

No problem. You have to remember with audio there seems to be not much of a benefit when you spend $1000+ compared to just around the $200 mark. I could be wrong but this is just an example. You usually don't hear much more of an improvement from what I hear. Then again the most expensive headphones I've had was at the $300 mark and an amp/dac was $200~.

 

edit: the MMX300? It has a microphone. Just know if you set the E10 on your desk then you are going to have bad cable management with that microphone. I have a E10, DT 770 pro, and a modmic. I have to wrap the modmic cable underneath my desk to the back of my case to fit it in while the e10 sits on my desk and the headphones connect through that. The mic still needs to connect to a mic port on your onboard audio / internal audio card. It is hella awkward yo.

[ShearMe]

If you wanted something "expensive" the O2 amp + ODAC measures similarly to $1000+ solutions.

[GM_Peka]

The fiio e10 olympus seems to be serving me well, but 24bit music playback isn't very good on it and doesn't sound much better than 16bit, but 98% of music is 16bit anyway.

 

I hear good things about the o2+odac combo which costs somewhere around 250USD, I believe you can get it from here http://www.mayflowerelectronics.com/objective2-amplifer-with-odac.html and here http://www.jdslabs.com/item.php?fetchitem=48

[ShearMe]

The fiio e10 olympus seems to be serving me well, but 24bit music playback isn't very good on it and doesn't sound much better than 16bit, but 98% of music is 16bit anyway.

 

>Implying there's a substantial leap in playback quality between 16 bit and 24 bit

>2013

[GM_Peka]

>Implying there's a substantial leap in playback quality between 16 bit and 24 bit

>2013

 

I never said there is a substantial leap, just 24bit music doesn't sound as good on my e10 compared to my soundcard where as 16bit sounded pretty similar, it's just what I noticed, although I did only test one song .