Headphones and Soundcard Advice Sought...

Tiny Clanger

Tiny Clanger

Tiny Clanger

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19 Oct 2002
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766
Hello there - once again a long, rambling thread (from me) looking for advice and guidance from the experts (that's you).

At the moment I have a pair of Creative T20 speakers connected to Realtek on-board sound....which is okay as far as it goes. However, as my daughters room is now next to my office I understandably don't really want her to wake up to the sound of blood-curdling screams, heavy gunfire and the occasional explosion. And so, as 'tis the season etc, I'm dropping some hints to Mrs Clanger (who STILL hasn't bought my pressie!).

With a budget of £100 I'd thought of getting some Sennheiser RS130's. Wireless seemed a good ideal following an iPod earphone-head turning-partial garotting-coffee spilling-speaker dropping incident last month.

However, looking in the "Sound City" forum there seems to be other things to consider which present more questions than answers. So, should I get a sound card (sensible perhaps - but which one???)? Can speakers really be "surround sound" (2 ears, 2 speakers - how's that work then?)? Is wired safe (perhaps if the wire's long enough)? What headphones would go with what sound card (if I get one)??? As you can see - the list of questions is seemingly endless.

So (lucky reader) your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to ponder the above problem and, with a limit of £100, propose the best solution...

Apologies if I sound like a complete duffer here but I've always used either the cheapest sound card available or the onboard sound. It just occured to me that if I'm spending some money on some decent headphones, then I might want to improve the source as well. I'll only be using the headphones for gaming - no online stuff though so no need for a microphone.

All replies, guidance and suggestions will be gratefully received!

Thanks in advance,

TC
 
I think it's worth grabbing a Xonar DX or D1, depending on if you have PCI or PCIE spare, and some Goldring headphones. You will gain more than if you just paired some headphones with onboard sound.

Unless you need wireless phones, I don't think I would bother with them. I see where you are coming from as far as wired goes, but Goldring phones come with a decent 3m cable, so plenty of slack for it to be totally out of the way of any drinks etc. Unless of course your setup means any wired phones will mean the cable is in the way. With wireless phones though you cannot get a sound card aswell, not unless you get cheap ones, which won't be much good anyway. For gaming, a Xonar DX or D1 will be far better than onboard.

A Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer is another choice of sound card, but as many people know, I think it is expensive at £75, when the Xonar DX/D1 cost about £20 less.

What motherboard do you have?
 
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Aha! You have the same board and CPU as I do. :)

Reason I ask is because, the more modern i7 boards some have onboard audio that has extra features like Dolby Digital, Dolby Headphone etc. Older boards, just have pretty basic 7.1. If you had a board with Dolby technologies, then already having those sound features would negate a sound card that comes with Dolby somewhat, if you see what I mean.

As I have the same board, I can say a sound card will improve the sound quality quite significantly, using both your T20 speakers and a pair of headphones. I have an X-Fi Xtreme Music, which when I compared to the onboard was much better quality. Not only would you get improve quality of sound from a sound card, if you went for a Asus Xonar DX/D1, then you would benefit from having Dolby Headphone.

As for surround sound from 2.0 speakers, well it's pretty meaningless. No amount of trickery can make one believe the sound is come from behind them, unless it was some sound deflecting system that cost more money than it would cost to just buy a 5.1 speaker system. Headphones is a different matter though, as a surround effect can be achieved with just a stereo pair of phones. Creative use something similar to Dolby Headphone called CMSS 3D. Both work well in creating positional audio, some people prefer Dolby, some prefer CMSS 3D. The headphones are as important too. I tried using CMSS 3D with a pair of on ear phones, and they failed miserably. Headphones that surround the ears deflect the sound, with on ear phones it just escapes, so any positioning is lost.

Goldring DR50 are a good example of phones that work well with positional audio.
 
Wow - thanks for all this :) I've spotted a mistake in my original post - I should have asked about surroud sound with Headphones and not speakers - does that give a different answer?

For the DX/D cards - is there much to choose between (apart from whether you have a PCI Express slot free (can't remember if I have - must have a look!). If going for a PCI card - does the Xonar DS (on offer this week I see) have Dolby Headphone or am I better spending the extra on the next card up? Presumably all of these cards manage the sound processing in their own hardware (and can do the positional audio malarky) and there's just variances in the processing power?

So (and sorry for another question) - you mention that a surround-sound effect can be achieved with stereo headphones. So - getting a Xonar D1 and Sennheiser RS120s (cheaper than the 130s) would give me wireless headphones with good sound - or are the Goldring better from a gaming perspective do you think?

Thanks again

TC
 
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Right first of all, I did wonder why you asked about so called surround sound with 2.0 speakers. :p No it doesn't change anything.

The Xonar DX is PCIE, and the D1 is PCI. Apart from that they are the same card. The DS does not have Dolby at all, hence why it is £20 cheaper, roughly. It's a good card for people with a digital receiver that uses DTS, say for a media PC. I have the DS in my HTPC, but it is not really recommended for gaming, despite the fact Asus has it under gaming on their website. The DX or D1 are far better choices for gaming.

Tbh, I have no idea how wireless phones would work in conjunction with Dolby Headphone. It must work to some degree, but I think it would be severely hampered. Wireless phones while they have their uses, will always be outdone by wired phones. Interference, loss of signal etc, are common issues. Sennheiser make some of the best RF headphones, but even they cannot escape the fact that RF is flawed, as far as audio goes.

Unless you absolutely have to have wireless phones, I would not fancy buying some to use for gaming. Taking in account price to performance factor, the Goldring phones will win every time. One of the good things about Goldring phones, they all come with a detachable cable, so if 3m is not long enough, you can buy a longer one if need be.

Of course there are other phones you could look at besides Goldring, but they do offer the best bang for buck. In the UK so many foreign brands are marked up so much, quite a few phones from different manufacturers can be bought in the US for half what we pay here. It's nice to see Goldring, who are a British manufacturer making good quality products that are good value for money.

Sennheiser's HD555 are very good phones, which again are great for gaming, but at £70 leaves almost nothing to get a sound card with. With a pair of Goldring DR50's for about £20, you can get a sound card and have money to spare. :)
 
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If I were you I would get the following:

Soundcard - Asus Xonar DX / D1 - according what free slot you have
Headphones - Goldring DR150/NS1000 - personal preference really

this would be a max of £110 with the DX and DR150.

The NS1000 can be picked up from p**y for £50
The DR 150 the cheapest I found them where £54.90 - there was a man named hifi and his surname was cables lol
 
+1 xonar D1 / DX

I don't know when why or how the xfi xtreme gamer became that price it's not even as good as an xfi xtreme music and that used to go for around £50 new.As for headphones you are going to find it hard to get a better sound for around £50-£60 than the goldring dr150/ns1000.

Might be best to get the headphones first and see if you are happy with the sound from onboard though.
 
Thanks again everyone for your help;)

So - looks like everyone recommends the Xonar DX/D1 (I'm sure there's PCI Express slots spare - must be as the only card in there is the graphics card!). Is PCI express any faster than PCI - or does that not matter (sorry - another duffer question there). Edit - might not have much choice here - the X1950 graphics card obscures the 2 PCIe slots below it and the one above looks a bit tight - does anyone else have the same set up and could tell me if there's room for a PCIe card up top?

I'm not sure I understand how Dolby Headphone works (there's only a left and right headphone speaker - how can it be surround-sound???) but I've come to the conclusion that there are things that man is not destined to understand (at least, not this man anyway!). Does it really give the illusion of surround sound....?


Headphone-wise, still undecided :confused:. The NS1000 are a fantastic price (£50) - don't know if I really need active noise reduction and the 1 metre cable seems a bit short (although I assume you can buy extensions). I will have to ponder/trawl the forum to see if there are any direct DR150/NS1000 comparisons.

Thanks again!!!

TC
 
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I think the reason for a PCI and PCIE version of the card is mainly because some newer boards have no PCI at all, and some boards that do, end up losing it due to dual slot GFX cards. Also it would appear PCI will be phased out eventually, although I don't see that happening for a good while yet, as an IDE connector is still common on a lot of boards. I see no reason that an ATX board cannot accommodate at least 1 PCI at the very bottom.

PCIE is faster, but that will have no bearing on the DX compared to the D1.

It does work, Dolby Headphone that is. With CMSS 3D on my X-Fi, even with on ear phones I could hear using the test demo, as the sound appeared to be coming from the rear of the phones. As I said in a previous post, the phones were lame for positional sound, but I could make it out to a degree where it was coming from. Circum-aural (over ear) phones, that encompass the ear would do a much better job. If you have phones on and both sides are equal in sound and volume, the sound seems as though it is in the centre of your head. It is possible with Dolby Headphone processing, to alter the timing and the volume of the sounds to trick the brain into thinking it is coming from a certain location and not directly from one place. It's quite complicated, someone might be able to explain it better.

I didn't know the NS1000 only had 1m cable, but I suppose it does make some sense.being noise cancelling, they are designed to use on planes for eg, or on the move, when a shorter cable is needed. But as it is detachable, one can easily obtain a longer one. The difference between DR150 and the NS1000 isn't a lot, some prefer the NS1000 slightly. They do use a AAA battery I think, when the noise cancellation is on, but they do require an amplifier with the NC off.
 
Marsman said:
The difference between DR150 and the NS1000 isn't a lot, some prefer the NS1000 slightly. They do use a AAA battery I think, when the noise cancellation is on, but they do require an amplifier with the NC off.
Click to expand...

Ah - so, does this make my choice of headphones simpler in that I don't have an amplifier? Or does it simply mean that I'd have to have noise cancellation running at all times? If so - looks like the DR150s might be a better bet...

Thanks again,

TC
 
This is all my personal opinion.

Get Sennheiser 595's and buy a soundcard at a later date! :)

I bought some about 6 months ago and was going to buy a soundcard was expecting onboard to be terrible turns out it aint bad at all. I have a proper headphone amp/hifi setup i use them with aswell and yes it improves things but they by no means sound bad on the inbuilt soundcard. Ill probably get around to a seperate soundcard at some point but i love these headphones as they are anyway.

Listening to Dire Straits - Money for nothing album - class.
 
Tbh, I do not see the appeal of HD595 at £120. When they were £90 yes, but not £120. The HD595 are no way 2x as good as the Goldring DR150. Many people have said the DR150's are almost as good as the HD595, so how that makes the HD595 worth £120 I do not know.
 
Thanks to everyone (especially Marsman) for all the input! I've got one final question before I leave you in peace (promise!).

Does the sound processing for Dolby Headphone etc place any additional load on the main CPU or is it managed within the cards hardware (for the D1/DX)? The reason I ask is that the CPU I have is not the fastest in the world and I wondered to what extent it would affect performance elsewhere.

Apart from that - I think I've got everything I need :) I think that a D1 and a pair of DR150's

Thanks again folks - brilliant help as ever from here :D
 
£50 on soundcard. A Xonar
£50 on Goldring NS1000. If you dont get on with them you can always sell them on for £50 or more
A 5m belkin headphone extension is £4.06 delivered
 
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Tiny Clanger said:
Edit - might not have much choice here - the X1950 graphics card obscures the 2 PCIe slots below it and the one above looks a bit tight - does anyone else have the same set up and could tell me if there's room for a PCIe card up top?
TC
Click to expand...

I have the same setup as you and decided to go for the D1 as after reading around it looks like the ram would get in the way if you put a card in the top PCIe slot. It's a shame as the PCIe slots are wasted really on this board if you have a big graphics card.
 
That is a very good question Tiny, something that I don't know. At a guess, I would say it is done on the sound card. If you take onboard sound say on a new i7 board, then chances are it will come with Dolby Headphone. With onboard sound, the processing would be done by the CPU. To offload processing to the CPU does negate the need for a sound card a little.

Maybe some with a Xonar that has Dolby Headphone could share if the CPU is doing any of the processing.
 
adambrookes said:
I have the same setup as you and decided to go for the D1 as after reading around it looks like the ram would get in the way if you put a card in the top PCIe slot. It's a shame as the PCIe slots are wasted really on this board if you have a big graphics card.
Click to expand...


That is correct, the RAM will interfere with the card. Gigabyte has done this with both boards I have, not the most clever of ideas.

It obscures both below it? Blimey, how big is the cooler on your x1950? I used to have a x1950 on my DS3 board, it was a dual slot one, but it still allowed access to the bottom most PCIE.
 
The graphics card is a Sapphire x1950XT - the fan points downwards (as it were) and covers both of the slots below. Well, I take that back - it might be just possible to fit a card on the bottom-most PCIe slot but it would then butt up against the fan for the x1950 - so all in all it's a no go.:(

So - PCI D1 it is then - am I right in assuming that the D1 doesn't need a separate power connection?
 
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