A Bit lost....

BeeP

BeeP

BeeP

Soldato
Joined
9 Feb 2009
Posts
3,730
Location
Sunny Fife
Hi,

Looking for some help & thought this would be a good place to start, no laughing please I really am as dim as the questions probably are.

I just bought some AKG K702 phones, after one night just listening on my phone with a creative e1 amp I have fallen for them, now I would like to use them with my PC which is mainly for gaming & music.

Currently I have a cheap set of Logitech x540 5.1 speakers, these are great for the odd movie when me & the mrs feel like hiding from the kids at night. So far I had been plugging my DR50's into the headphone socket on those when I feel like a bit of gaming/music. The soundcard is one of those Fatality X-FI things.

Would I be ok continuing to use the same method or would I just be wasting my new phones by not using a dac/amp combo? would a dac/amp setup be a big difference is really what I'm asking.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
first up

try it

see how it sounds :)

You can always just buy a headphone amp and go from your soundcard to the headphone amp if you don't have enough volume.

Or you can look at a FiiO DAC/headphone amp or the EPH-O2 one we have or even a better soundcard like the STX.

but first things first plug the things in and play some games.
 
Thanks for the reply, I have now had a bit time gaming with them and listening to music.......simply awesome, I guess I'm new to this to be blown away by these but WOW.

The headphone jack from the x540's works well & I get way more volume on here than on my phone with the Creative E1, might leave the PC as is but buy a Fiio or something for my phone.
 
The headphone jack on anything other than a headphone amp wont be up to much.

Best to plug headphones or headphone amp directly in to the soundcard you're losing a lot of quality even from the DR50.

This is why I have my case in a position where swapping soundcard cables isn't a muscle sprainer.

I cant be doing with the diluted quality of soundcard to speakers to speaker headphone jack.
 
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Cheers, like I say I didnt really know if I was losing out but I guess I am.

I think ill start looking at a headphone amp, I have a raven case which means plugging in and out is a pain, you have to pop the top off to access the sound card jacks.

Would it be possible, if using a dac or amp, to leave the speakers plugged in?
 
Headphone sockets on PC speakers don't really do any favours to connected headphones. Sure they work, but it's convenience more than anything. Fair enough when using cheap headphones, but if you've spent money on some really nice headphones, you're not doing them justice.

Last headphones I tried from PC speaker headphone out were Goldring DR150. I can't remember exactly what they sounded like, but I do remember thinking the sound was poor in comparison to connecting them directly to the X-Fi I was using at the time. No surprise there really.

You've got a good sound card, so you could just get an amp, but you'd need one with line out pass through in order to have both speaker and headphone connected simultaneously.

Which X-Fi Fatality do you have, older PCI one, or newer PCIe one?
 
Pci-e one, I think it's a fatality pro but not being near my pc right now I can't remember.
 
If you're happy with your sound card as a source then with something like the Schiit Magni 2 Uber (£125) headphone amp you would run cables to the RCA inputs and would connect your speakers to the amps RCA outputs. The volume knob would then control both the headphones and speakers, depending if the headphones were plugged in.
 
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