Sound card needed

DW.

DW.

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Joined
10 Sep 2016
Posts
66
I wont to use my Sennheiser HD 600 for the PC. Dut not sure which sound card to get. will one of the £100 sounds cards do as my headphones are 600 ohms
 
Do you need to use a sound card?

I was running my 600's from an Asus STX but it stopped working.

You would be better with an external Dac/Amp combo for the HD600.

Im in the same boat and have decided on a Schiit Modi 2 DAC & Schiit Vali 2 amp
 
Does your motherboard on board audio have an optical/SPDIF out?

If so get the very reasonable and excellent quality SMSL SD793-II DAC amp. A few of us have these on this forum and can attest to how good they are.
 
The thing is you really need something with a powerful amp to get the most out of the HD600. They are amazing so some of the cheaper stuff just inst going to do them justice
 
The STX can drive them fine but they are eol and there are only STX II available now and those aren't even close to £100.

The Powercolor HDX does a good job with them and is the right price but they have, or at least had, quality control issues and it's a lottery as to whether the card will work or die a horrible death (the one I had lasted a week).

If you want it for music and not gaming you won't need any virtual surround features, so you'd be better off getting an external DAC & amp.

The SMSL SD793 II combined DAC & amp does a decent job for around £40 but you need to be able to feed it with an optical signal as it doesn't have USB.

Next up would be the FiiO E10K (£60) which can drive them quite well despite it's diminutive size.

Above that and you're into Schiit Modi 2 & Vali 2 territory but that combo will set you back £265
 
If you have an X5II, then you could get a FiiO K5, to which you can dock the X5II and use that as a DAC. That would give you a good set up and an amp with plenty of power for just under £100. If you've got the first gen though, then sadly that's not an option.

If you want to make use of these headphone surround effects, then you'll need a sound card of some sort.
 
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