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If I were to pickup a Prelude for my PC replacing my X-Fi XtremeGamer/OnBoard Audio, along with say a Headroom Micro Amp to drive a pair of HD650 or DT880s, would it still be worth while to upgrade the OPAMP on board the Prelude with either the OPA627AU or 637s?? Does that still affect the quality of sound? Even though the amp has it's own OPAMPs too right? Thanks for any information. Treated every other part of my PC well with upgrades, it's about time I start paying attention to the audio side of things as well.
well there's xtrememusic/gamer/audio. music's supposedly the best bang for the buck but it's been discontinued. but if u're looking a couple of hundred dollars budget i'm sure u'll be able to find something better.
And the X-Fi Premium. Its like the XtremeMusic and Gamer but without the extra gaming ram or whatever the gamer has.
Comes with all the connectors such as optical in/out, SPDIF IN/OUT, Phono In, dedicated big headphone jack and mic in. Plus MIDI IN/OUT.
thats just on the front :P
Sounds rather good to me also, very nice bass and treble control plus loads of other crap.
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TEAM Sony - Probably the only person in it.. :P
If I were to pickup a Prelude for my PC replacing my X-Fi XtremeGamer/OnBoard Audio, along with say a Headroom Micro Amp to drive a pair of HD650 or DT880s, would it still be worth while to upgrade the OPAMP on board the Prelude with either the OPA627AU or 637s?? Does that still affect the quality of sound? Even though the amp has it's own OPAMPs too right? Thanks for any information. Treated every other part of my PC well with upgrades, it's about time I start paying attention to the audio side of things as well.
Yes, since the sound card and amp both have op-amps, changing either one of them can affect the sound.
Well i'm out of PCI slots on my board (EN8600GTS and Hauppage HVR 1600 ty tuner) so i guess my best bet is for a PCIe card. Would that be a big deal since i'm not using a PCI card?
The only choice for the PCIe card is the ASUS Xonar D2X. I do have a free slot for it (Idont know and have never used it before.)
lol dude are you kidding?
8600GTS is PCI Express
HVR 1600 is PCI Express
D2X is PCIe
Xonar D2 is PCI (and very distorted vs D2X)
and theres no difference either way, PCIe is far too much bandwidth for anything audio (consider its over 2x what un-used PCI is (PCI is aggregate, i could get more technical if you want/need) and AV200 is still a PCI processor on an island)
also, what about Auzen's X-Plosion with an op-amp switch? its fairly affordable and great for music/movies (abysmal performance for gaming though)
what do you guys thing of the AuzenTech X-PLOSION Cinema that recently came out?
i put a dent in my MB trying to get some pushpins out to change the northbridge heatsink and now my right audio is gone. it was a nf7-s board btw.
so now i'm looking for a new soundcard, i can get the cinema for around 90-100 dollars. so that'll be my price range.
You could give it a try and tell us what you think. It uses a new DAC/ADC/decoder combo chip from C-Media instead of having separate chips handle those processes (as in most sound cards). My guess is that it won't touch the Prelude in terms of SQ, but it's probably a good margin above onboard audio. All of the op-amps are swappable and it appears to come with National LM4562 for the front channels and JRC 5532 for the rest.
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