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What sound cards are use using.

scubes

scubes

scubes

Soldato
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Want a new sound card. tell me what use are using and why you like it ?
 
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What do you intend to use it with? Primarily speakers or headphones, and which in particular?

Is it for gaming, movies, music or just general use?
 
Bought a secondhand ae5 of the market here years ago and still in use, used for my dt990 250 and helped a lot going from the onboard device, it may not be a massive improvement but it was enough that if it failed I would probably get another. Plenty of connections as well well
 
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scubes said:
Headphone ..
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Which? Also, what are you plugging them into right now?

There's some really good dac/amp combos out there but they might be overkill or even entirely unnecessary depending on what you're using.

Especially when you consider budget, how much do you want to spend? It might be better to flat out buy new headphones than buy a soundcard or external equivalent.
 
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Gray2233 said:
Which? Also, what are you plugging them into right now?

There's some really good dac/amp combos out there but they might be overkill or even entirely unnecessary depending on what you're using.

Especially when you consider budget, how much do you want to spend? It might be better to flat out buy new headphones than buy a soundcard or external equivalent.
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I use roccatt software head phones are elo 7.1
 
scubes said:
I use roccatt software head phones are elo 7.1
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Are you running these wirelessly or wired?

Wireless you wont gain any benefit whatsoever by adding a sound card or external dac/amp solution. Frankly, they're not particularly good headphones and even if you are connected wired you'll not see a big improvement. Depending on your onboard audio you might be better off buying new headphones entirely before looking at soundcards/dacs/amps.

mattyfez said:
This. Onboard audio is so good these days I don't need extra crap.
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If you're not too fussed regarding audio there's some truth that, but onboard sound is so-so these days even at the top end as opposed to utterly horrific as it as historically been.

In the OP's situation there's really not much point in spending a lot on either a soundcard or an external solution.
 
Gray2233 said:
Are you running these wirelessly or wired?

Wireless you wont gain any benefit whatsoever by adding a sound card or external dac/amp solution. Frankly, they're not particularly good headphones and even if you are connected wired you'll not see a big improvement. Depending on your onboard audio you might be better off buying new headphones entirely before looking at soundcards/dacs/amps.



If you're not too fussed regarding audio there's some truth that, but onboard sound is so-so these days even at the top end as opposed to utterly horrific as it as historically been.

In the OP's situation there's really not much point in spending a lot on either a soundcard or an external solution.
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Oh I'm fussy alright... I just think it's unessesary, unless you're into retail therapy lol.
 
The best sound card I owned was the Asus Essence STX II, it came with two sets of Opamps but preferred the Muse ones. That card was above all Gigabyte motherboard boards I ever tried, I also owned the original Essence ST legacy PCI version.

For comparison, I compared the STX II to an Arcam irdac and very similar sound, the Arcam was a little cleaner as it's not dealing with the noise / shared PSU of a PC. Both the STX II and Arcam irdac used BurrBrown DAC-chips.

I also compared the STX II to a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium HD that was Creatives top sound card for a short while, and even in music mode the Creative sounded processed compared to the STX II, where as the STX II sounded more like a good external DAC than a sound card. I expect most people would find an STX II still plenty for PC audio.
 
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I use a minidsp 2x4HD with my setup.

Onboard audio is good enough nowadays though so if I wasn't using a sub I'd just run my speakers through the motherboard.
 
Creative AE-5 for gaming (though unfortunately with newer updates on Windows 11, as far too often seems to happen with Creative and Microsoft, there seems to be a few issues creeping in with it) and Fiio QX13. I've a few other DACs but until recently was just using the AE-5 for my main PC.

The Aorus Z790 Master motherboard I'm using has a pretty decent integrated sound solution as well.
 
currently using a Soundblaster Z. which i bought from fleabay

the best card i have ever owned & used was a Sondblaster X-Fi Creative, Extreme Music

the 'Z' does what it's intended for. i don't game on my rig. i mainly watch music videos, and listen to podcasts. and browse, but browsing has no real need for audio

it's old skool now, but in the audio arena, it's good enough for my needs
 
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