Stick or Twist?: Senn HD595 + SB Z + SpeedLink SPES (for Gaming)

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I've owned the 595 and they are a lot better than stock 558's which I upgraded to (will mod them one day).

In terms of gaming I'd rate them as a 9/10 for competitive fps with the q701 at 9.5/10.

AKG will benefit from a better sound card. So if you are looking to upgrade you are looking at upgrading all three or none tbh.

No point in getting the akg and a new sound card and not getting a mod mic as well.

Tbh though the setup you have atm is very good. Preferably I would just upgrade the sound card depending on how old it is and stick with the 595 and clip on
 
FYI the K702 = Q701 when it comes to gaming but the K702 is cheaper and doesn't have the discomfort bumps :D

For music and possibly movies, the HD595 / Sound Blaster Z pairing is a match made in hell but for gaming you should be less affected because low frequencies will mostly be explosions so you won't notice the distortion too badly.

The problem is that the HD595 is ridiculously sensitive to a low damping factor. At around 100Hz the impedance of the HD595 spikes from 50ohms all the way to 300ohms, a 500% increase, which indicates severe sensitivity.

The way you counteract this is to have a high damping factor, which is the headphone impedance divided by the output impedance of the amplifier and it should ideally be greater than 8.

Trouble is, the Sound Blaster Z has an output impedance of 22ohms, which means the damping factor is 50/22 or 2.27.

Even with the STX the damping factor would still only be 5, so not ideal. Really speaking the 595 should be paired with an amp that has an output impedance of less than 6ohms - which excludes all sound cards.

As I said though, sound quality in the bass frequencies isn't as important for gaming, so you may not notice it.

The AKG on the other hand could care less about damping factor and barely raises an eyebrow as the frequency moves through the audible spectrum before heading for the sky in the ultra high frequencies (over 20kHz) which most people can't hear anyway - just don't put them on babies because they can. :D

The main reason I upgraded from the Z to the STX was that the Z couldn't drive my Beyerdynamic DT990 pros to acceptable levels, even though they were only 250ohms. The difference was instantly apparent as soon as I fired up the STX, everything seemed clearer and and I was obviously able to drive them much louder - I rarely go above 50% on the middle gain setting (64~300ohm).

The HD595 won't have the same problem though as they are very easy to drive, too easy in some cases because the Z doesn't have gain settings and the volume has to be kept extremely low to avoid hearing damage.

Again, the K702 doesn't have this problem due to them being about as sensitive as cheese. Their impedance is only slightly higher than the HD595 but they need the same amount of drive as my 250ohm Beyers and 300ohm HD650s.

This does make me wonder whether the Z would be up to driving them, possibly not for music but maybe enough for gaming.
 
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Forget it, either upgrade everything or nothing at all.

Your current setup is very very good, better than 95% of gamers I imagine.

HD595 suit gaming to a T, you can get better but your going to end up spending £350 (K702 + new sound card + mod mic) for a setup which is noticeably better.

In your shoes I would upgrade the sound card only if it's old (older than 5 years) otherwise just keep everything until something dies and then upgrade. I don't know much about sound cards tbh, how old is your current card?
 
david__001 said:
Thanks for your comments rids.

A few things for me to think about there.

On the "driving" issue, I was hoping I could avoid buying a headphone amp in all honesty! If I do pick one up eventually, it would have to be something affordable, with a bit of weight to it and rubber feet, such that it could sit on top of my Corsair 650D case without sliding about all over the place and making my overall solution inelegant. A Schiit Magni might be a decent solution there perhaps (http://schiit.com/products/magni).
Click to expand...

When I was talking about amps, I meant the headphone amps built into the two sound cards. The only part where I meant an external amp is when I said that the HD595 doesn't impedance match with any sound card.

Would the STX or STX II be better than the Sound Blaster Z? Yes it would BUT whether you would notice much difference for your intended use (pure gaming) is anybodies guess.
 
david__001 said:
I see and thanks again for your comments.

If there is going to be some kind of impedence matching issue, would a dedicated headphone amp not solve that problem?

In that case, do you know how the connections would work? Would it work like this?:

soundcard --> cable to headphone amp --> cable to headphones

Thanks again for any feedback -- I appreciate the time you have taken to set out your thoughts.
Click to expand...

a headphone amp requires a RCA input

basically you would require a DAC like the modi as well.

the modi and magni together are a DAC/AMP

your soundcard is currently your DAC/AMP (all in one)



the above I imagine is all above your knowledge so go to head fi and read up on DAC's and headphone AMP's.


personally though I would stick with what you have until something dies, then upgrade the full lot.
 
You'd just run a 3.5mm to dual RCA cable to the amp and plug the headphones into that. I think that would work with the Soundblaster Z but you'd best check as I can't remember whether SBZ can send virtual surround to speakers.

It wouldn't work with the STX because it can't use Dolby Headphone over the line out outputs, only the headphone amp.

If you want to keep surround sound with an STX or if simply adding an amp to the SBZ won't work, it's slightly more complicated:

You need to run optical from the sound card to optical input of a DAC and from there to an amp....

Sound Card optical out --optical cable--> DAC --RCA cables--> Amp ----> Headphones

The optical version of the Schiit Modi and the Schiit Magni would be a good pairing and are currently £80 each. Add another few quid for RCA interconnects and an optical cable and you're sorted and the Magni has an output impedance of less than 0.1ohms.
 
I'm still not sure that you will hear any great improvement while gaming, you just don't need as high a sound quality, because for the most part it's only noise you're hearing anyway. Whether that noise is footsteps, voices, gun fire or explosions it doesn't matter, it will still sound good with a decent pair of headphones whether they are impedance matched or not.

Where it becomes a real nuisance is with music because the mismatch will make the bass boomy, loose and imprecise. That makes a big difference to music but not so much with gaming.
 
Headphones can make a huge difference, not even in terms of money, just buying the right ones for you, e.g. the right £100 headphone can be better than the wrong £300 one.

For gaming like I say HD595 are very very good, you don't really need any better for gaming. I've had them and they are a lot better than stock HD558's, it's very clear the difference between them. I'm talking about competitive FPS here, I used them on BF4 and I could hear everything around me very clearly and pinpoint directions clearly too.

I am planning on modding my HD558's which theoretically should make them better than HD595's but until that happens I cannot say for sure they are better or not.

The only thing I would look at upgrading is the sound card possibly but you say it's not even that old, so I would look at doing that in 2+ years time and get one with a powerful amp (enough for AKG's).

Then instead of refurbing the sennheisers in future I would just get some Q701's or K702's with the money instead.

The difference between them is noticeable but it's probably not worth you spending £350 as the setup you have atm is very very good.

If you have £350 cash spare then go ahead but imo your setup doesn't need improving at all. I own HD600, HD558, Q701, HE400 (were delivered yesterday to postbox in USA), HD25-1 II and Momentums, I have owned HD595, HTF600 and Fidelio X1's in the past.

The HD595 in terms of competitive gaming is the second best headphone I've owned out of all of them, that is how good they are. The best being the Q701's but the difference isn't worth £350 imo.
 
The Z cant send virtual surround via the speaker output - I have a modified headphone amp running off the headphone out (modded to a gain of 1, run the Z at 80% and the headphone amp is about 11 oclock)

If you dont want to mess about with a soldering iron then something like the epiphany o2 (without the dac, you only need the amp), which I think comes with the low gain option set at one
Otherwise you can get an Smsl Sap iv, snip 2 resistors to set the gain to 1 and bypass the output resistor to set the output impedance to about 0.5ohm, it uses the same opamp as the o2 (NJM4556), it also doesnt use rca's
 
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david__001 said:
Cheers Sonny.

It looks like I'm going to stick with what I have for the time being and then upgrade in a similar manner to your suggestion in the future.




Thanks for the comments Andy.

I could just about follow what Sonny and rids were saying, but I'm afraid a lot of what you said there is over my head! Still, on the soldering point: I'd definately want to avoid any soldering iron work.

I think if I was going to add a stand-alone DAC + Headphone amp to the solution at a later date, I'd go with something simple and cost-effective (comparatively speaking) like a Schiit Modi (DAC) + Magni (amp). Apparently, I could retain "virtual surround sound" effects from the SB Z soundcard by connecting to the DAC via the SB Z's optical out, like this:

Sound Card (SB Z) optical out --> [Optical Cable] --> DAC --> [RCA cables] --> Headphone Amp --> Headphones

That said, it looks like I'm sticking with what I have for now.
Click to expand...

Basically, you can keep the Z, you just need a low gain/low impedance headphone amp, i paid £30 for mine
 
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