New AKG K712pro headphones, need soundcard, AMP/DAC help!

swiss1987

swiss1987

swiss1987

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Hey guys, I recently got myself a higher end set of AKG K712PRO headphones which are currently plugged into my mobo which is an Asus Z270E with the supremeFX sound chip I believe.

Ive read further into the matter and realised that the headphones might benefit greatly from using a dedicated soundcard or amp/dac setup. At this point I have become confused as to what direction I should take in order to fulfil the headphones potential.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance
 
hey, honestly its a bit of both, I listen to a lot of music and game quite a bit, also watch movies etc so all round i want my setup to sound the way it should or can?
 
Well I'm blown away by the Ae-5, but external...

E10k
Audio engine D1 (allows usb and optical in)
And then woo wa7 if you have a tonne of cash.

I'm no expert, but those are the ones I looked at before I went for the ae-5 because I wanted something more gamer focused.
 
Are they 60 odd ohms? I guess that mobo could drive them happily, but having just left onboard audio to dedicated I'm blown away. And mine was some realtek chip branded as supremefx too.
 
I would get the sound Blaster G5. It's external so you have volume control at your fingertips, will avoid potential EMI issues, will run them well and is portable so you can use it with laptops and consoles And it's available direct with a nice little discount.

External all the way.
 
I'm quite impressed by the AE-5 though it does sound a touch cold especially as the treble is quite aggressive - but you get a really detailed, punchy sound and the output stage (amp) is about as good as I've seen on a soundcard at this level - even does a passable job of driving my Sennheiser HD600 series which most consumer audio devices really don't - though it isn't quite 100% on that but should drive stuff like the AKGs flawlessly.

So far it takes a dump on any integrated solution that I've heard.
 
I did look at the g5, but when I looked at external ones, people I asked, they seemed to talk more about the ones I mentioned that the creative one. I think in hifi circles creative doesn't perhaps have much of a following?

That's clearly not a negative for the G5, just nothing drew me to it.
 
If you want gaming features you kind of need a gaming focused solution. I ended up with two, one for music which is a Marantz HD DAC1 and my gaming setup is an all in one Sennheiser headset.

Essentially the AE5 and G5 will sound very similar, but one is internal and the other is external.
 
swiss1987 said:
hey, honestly its a bit of both, I listen to a lot of music and game quite a bit, also watch movies etc so all round i want my setup to sound the way it should or can?
Click to expand...
Disable any special effects/processing of Realtek and Windows sound settings and listen first minute of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_20T8x_OI
Or lots of gameplay in this:
https://youtu.be/B8xZp0WPwxs?t=18m51s

With bad headhones like especially typical closed design gaming trinkets those don't sound anything...
But with open design AKGs, Beyers and such there's good sense of space with sounds also having clear feel of distance besides direction.
That's why quality headphones are so important for proper gaming immersion.

And why sound "in one ear/in center of head" stereo speaker mix gaming sucks with headphones...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ROujJ8Ae8
https://youtu.be/d1_20T8x_OI?t=12m57s
That can sound good only if never having heard better!
Or having used garbage headphones unable to reproducing spatial cues of binaural sound accurately enough...

Binaural sound simulation also helps with immersion in movies.
That sound in one ear/in center of head doesn't sound good in them either.


And if you want to listen music in stereo SBX AE-5 control software has single button stereo mode to disable processing to give top level DAC sound.
Though I would prefer more music to be recorded in binaural format:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpNtNCqP94g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecOrBqQAuXg



PapaLazaru said:
I would get the sound Blaster G5. It's external so you have volume control at your fingertips
Click to expand...
That volume control just isn't analog, but digital using volume control of Windows:
https://techgage.com/article/creative-sound-blasterx-g5-external-soundcard-headphone-amp-review/
Which is faster/more convenient to access with volume control knob in keyboard, instead of reaching somewhere farther.
(something which should be in all above cheap price keyboards)

Also G5 uses TPA6120 as headphone amplifier.
Because of totally excessive slew rate for audio (more fit for radio transmitter) TI recommends minimum of 10 ohm output impedance to keep it stable.
Don't know how Creative has tweaked it down to fair 2 ohms, so might not be entirely stable with all possible headphones.
AE-5's custom design headphone amplifier doesn't suffer from TPA6120's quirks.
It also is capable to higher output current/power than at least SB E5's likely identical to G5 2 ohm output impedance TPA6120 implementation.
 
EsaT said:
Because of totally excessive slew rate for audio (more fit for radio transmitter) TI recommends minimum of 10 ohm output impedance to keep it stable.
Don't know how Creative has tweaked it down to fair 2 ohms, so might not be entirely stable with all possible headphones.
Click to expand...

Could parallel them up, using current sharing resistors, to reduce the output impedance - but from the fuzzy images I could find it doesn't look like the case and I doubt Creative went to the expense of more than one of them on the board.
 
Rroff said:
Could parallel them up, using current sharing resistors, to reduce the output impedance - but from the fuzzy images I could find it doesn't look like the case and I doubt Creative went to the expense of more than one of them on the board.
Click to expand...
Unity gain (output voltage=input voltage for "non-electric engineer" readers) configured opamps are simple to parallel, but with TPA6120 including lots of stuff amount of components needing doubling would be likely big.
So likely expensive solution, with propably needed accurate matching of many of accessory components.
NwAvGuy tried using some inductors in parallel with 10 ohm output resistor, but those had issues with sacrificing some distortion or ringing/impulse response performance:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.fi/2011/06/qrv09-diy-headphone-amp.html
Maybe something like that, or Creative simply assumed it's not used with more reactive load type headphones and accepted lower stability margin.

So good thing Creative went for own custom design output with proper audio opamps in AE-5.
Shouldn't have taken this long from sound card makers to make good headphone output for low impedance cans.


Though even that 10 ohms would be good compared to 100 ohm output impedance of Asus Strix Soar/Raid Pro card...
Can't understand what Asus was thinking in them...
With fashionable 32 ohm headphones only 1/4th of output power is driving actual headphone, with rest just heating output resistor!
Trying to short circuit protect them from someone sticking iron nail into output?:confused:
(or some issue with that particular TPA6120 implementation?)
 
EsaT said:
Unity gain (output voltage=input voltage for "non-electric engineer" readers) configured opamps are simple to parallel, but with TPA6120 including lots of stuff amount of components needing doubling would be likely big.
So likely expensive solution, with propably needed accurate matching of many of accessory components.
NwAvGuy tried using some inductors in parallel with 10 ohm output resistor, but those had issues with sacrificing some distortion or ringing/impulse response performance:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.fi/2011/06/qrv09-diy-headphone-amp.html
Maybe something like that, or Creative simply assumed it's not used with more reactive load type headphones and accepted lower stability margin.
Click to expand...

Yeah I pretty much assumed they hadn't but the images I could find of the PCB are too low quality and with around 1/3rd of the PCB hidden by the lighting stuff so couldn't be sure.

I've never seen good results personally from inductors/ferrites anywhere near the output stage - from an engineering perspective there might be some cases where the output is in the realm of acceptable but subjectively I've never liked the results.

EsaT said:
So good thing Creative went for own custom design output with proper audio opamps in AE-5.
Shouldn't have taken this long from sound card makers to make good headphone output for low impedance cans.


Though even that 10 ohms would be good compared to 100 ohm output impedance of Asus Strix Soar/Raid Pro card...
Can't understand what Asus was thinking in them...
With fashionable 32 ohm headphones only 1/4th of output power is driving actual headphone, with rest just heating output resistor!
Trying to short circuit protect them from someone sticking iron nail into output?:confused:
(or some issue with that particular TPA6120 implementation?)
Click to expand...

Bugs me a bit that this is almost always the way with consumer audio - even when they do go and put some nice capacitors and top of the line opamps on there is always some downside somewhere.
 
hey guys so i got my AE-5 card installed and drivers and software sorted, can anyone help me with the software or setup to get most out of the card?

I currently have my headphones plugged into the headphone amp socket on the card...

When i use the software to set the card up, I have chosen the DIRECT HP setting. It appears when its on this setting none of the equalizers or blasterx acoustic engine settings work. is this correct ? it sounds pretty good but making sure.

also for gaming i read that stereo is best, so would i keep it on DIRECT HP or some people say for games to set it too 7.1 virtual? and then you can mess with the Equalizers etc.

Any info would be appreciated !

PS: 95% of time will be using my new AKG K712PRO Headphones
 
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