Well, as some of you know, I am a well paid up member of team Beyer with my DT770 Pro's and DT880's, and yesterday, I got a new source, a Terratec EWX24/96 to replace my DAC3. Main observations I noticed was more general clairty, refinement, detail, better bass and more treble extension.

When I say better bass, I do seem to get *more* bass out of my speakers.

So, I fully expected that my DT880 would see the greater benefit from this detail. Over the last 12 hours, I've done 1/2 listening to the DT880 and half to the DT770 Pro's.

I can scarcely believe what I am hearing,,,

The DT880's are improved, but by far the most benefit seems to have been gained by the DT770's. OK, they are still bassy headphones, but all of its debateable points seem to have been well and truly cured. Its added much refinement to the sound, giving it a midrange of sorts, and the bass, whilst still prominent, does not have the hooligan qualities that it did before. The bass is definetly still there, but is so controlled and agile, the DT770's actually seem to sound fast now like the 880's. The DT770's are now, dare I say it, much more balanced sounding and smoother now....

How utterly odd

Hmm.. so this soundcard sounds better than this DAC? Interesting. How old is this DAC?

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haha. sounds like weekly world news

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The DAC is five years old. The DAC in my experience performs on par with a new £200-£300 player ($300-$400), but this soundcard to my ears is in a different league, it sounds as good as a very good CD deck, which I find very surprising with it being a soundcard. My PC is now my systems main source, as it just sounds so good

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Your Terratec card is very highly reviewed, besting the Revo for many reviewers. The current lineup of soundcards is much underrated - but there's a ceiling to any soundcard's performance (at least those which use the computers clock and are unsheilded).

-dd3mon

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And there isn't a limit to the performance of a separate DAC?

BTW, what do you mean those which use the computer's clock? Sound cards include their own clock chips (same kind of stuff any digital player equipment uses), and aren't clocked to the motherboard. Given proper EMI shielding and power filtering on the card... well, the future will take care of itself... it certainly doesn't need me to speak for it.

P.S. It's worth noting that there are also external "sound cards" which aren't located inside the PC and thus are away from the EMI inside a computer -- also, they're usually powered separately and so a cleaner power source can be provided.

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Can you give any examples (no USB cards please)?

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I meant USB cards, but there may be Firewire cards as well, or optical or wireless (never really looked). There's no reason why USB should be the only interface to a PC... if data can travel back and forth from the PC to the soundcard fast enough then it should work. Some interfaces will be more appropriate for audio than others (I'm not a big fan of the USB interface myself... tends to be buggy and unstable, particularly motherboard implementations).