Sound upgrade from my current 18 year old set up

[DeanT77]

Yep, you all heard correct

I currently have the below set up, using it 2.1.

https://uk.ign.com/articles/2001/12/06/creative-inspire-5-1-5300-review



After 18 years it is starting to show some signs of age and turns on/off randomly, which makes the sub pop quite loud.

So, I have ordered a Creative Sound Blaster X7 White 127dB, 24-bit 192kHz High-Res External USB DAC and Amplifier as my first purchase.

I would also like some headphones to go along with it, as well as speakers.


The headphones I have shortlisted are;

Sennheiser HD 599 Special Edition, Open Back Headphone, Black at £90

or should I just go straight for the good set up and go for

Sennheiser HD 660 S Open, which are a bit more expensive at £320

Will I realistically notice the £230 price difference between the above two units or is it the case of "buy cheap, buy twice"?


This will be my first pair of open back headphones as well

Speakers, recommend me some about £50 to £100 if you can as well please

Let me know if you need more details as this is new ground to me

 

[DeanT77]

Thanks for all the good input

HD599 is a good headphone and at £90, that is a really good price. Whether it's worth going for the HD660S instead, depends on what you'll use the headphones for...

660S is a great headphone for music and would be a worthy choice over the 599; but to spend that on a headphone, music really needs to be what you're buying them for, not gaming. After all, music is what they are designed for. They are great headphones for music, but there are better and cheaper headphones for gaming. You can actually paid around a 3rd of what the 660S costs and get a better headphone for gaming. To pay £300+ for the 660S, and use them mainly for gaming with occasional music use, wouldn't make much sense in my opinion.

This nailed it for me thanks, I'll be using in a combination of games/music so I'm going to go for the HD599, it will be my first set of open back headphones too, so if I don't gel with them then at least it's not too much money invested.

For the speakers; are you looking at getting 5.1 speakers again, or looking to get stereo speakers?

The great thing about the X7 is not only is it a sound card and a headphone amp, but also a stereo speaker amp as well. You could get both, in time. 5.1 speakers for gaming and stereo bookshelf speakers for music. For music use; 5.1 speakers or stereo speakers, there is no contest from a sound quality point of view. £50-£100 bookshelf speakers will be vastly superior to any 2.1/5.1 PC speakers.

Wharfedale Diamond 9.0's are a great choice from Richer Sounds. In store only purchase at the moment, but a bargain for £40; or you could maybe go for the larger Diamond 220's for £100. There's a few other good brand to consider as well, such as; Mordaunt Short, Mission and Q Acoustics.

Definitely staying 2 speakers and 1 sub max.

That's one of the reasons why I wanted the X7, as I saw it an easy way to do a complete upgrade with the X7 driving the headphones and speakers

I'll contact my local Richer Sounds to see if they have any of those in stock, cheers again

Failing the above, are there any decent bookshelf speakers I could get from the rainforest?

 

[DeanT77]

Mordaunt Short M10 are available for £60 on the jungle site, sold by MS themselves; same price as they on Richer Sounds. They are good speakers and same size the Wharfedale 9.0's.

There is also JBL Control One, which again are good and popular speakers. Perhaps a bit more neutral than the other two I've mentioned, because they are intended to be more a studio monitor speaker. They've never really appealed to me, being plastic n all.

For £100; Wharfedale 9.1's were a popular choice for many years. I've got some myself and they are great, but they have gone up in price a tad. SuperFi were the only retailer to have them for £100 and since they closed down, they are £120 at the few other places that still have them. At that time though, the 9.0's were £60 and the larger 9.1's were only £40 more. Now it's £80 difference, which is somewhat different.

Thanks again, appreciated

The mordaunt may be the ones I'm going for, size looks ok and reviews seem decent!