Musiland Monitor 02 US for gamers?

Before my responses, I would like to qualify that I use the Musiland for gaming, too. I have played many versions of Counterstrike, Left4Dead, Call of Duty, Team Fortress, Battlefield, etc.

1. Yes, in fact, the soundstage actually will improve a bit, depending on the headphones used. (The amp on the Musiland is not the best, but the DAC section's amazing for the price.)

2. No lag whatsoever in my experience. (At least no audio lag. I can't guarantee your reaction times lag, lol )

3. No lag so there's no need to switch between the x-fi and Musiland but you can easily switch if you want, too, through the volume control panel. I can definitely say the Musiland is a step up in clarity and fidelity. The only thing that might suffer is impact of explosions, etc. because of the post-processing that x-fi uses. (Even that, I doubt, though.) The drivers are easy to install and work in Windows (32/64bit). There is no need to constantly update drivers. (unlike graphics drivers, huh? )

Why not use a X-fi attached to the Musiland by S/Pdif -If you can as I am unsure if the 02 allows S/Pdif input.

This way you get all the gaming routines of the X-fi but the sound quality of the external device.

Musiland i/o:

USB In Only

Digital Out (Coax and SPDIF) for digital transport purposes

RCA out (L and R channels)

1/8" headphone outs (Low-impedance and High-impedance)

Not sure about the Tube Magic and how it compares.

The Monitor is more than enough for gaming.  I just finish some gaming rounds with it. 

I think there's a reason this forum's slogan is "Welcome to Head-fi - sorry about your wallet."

If you spend all your time reading here you'll always want to get new gear, it's just how it is.

In the end though, as some wise forumers have said, what matters is the music and your enjoyment.

Don't get so bogged down about spending money that you forget about the music.

I'd say do a bit of research, think about what you want your rig to look like in the end, and get it piece by piece.

I'm relatively new to the audio world as well (coming from gaming as well) but I'm happy enough with the gear I have that I don't care I'm "missing out" on $2000 amps and headphones.

As far as hearing a difference, it really depends on your hearing. From people here who do this all the time, they will talk about "night and day" differences, but that term is open to interpretation.

Someone's "night and day" could be another person's "minor difference" if you get what I mean. I personally struggled to hear many of the differences in higher end gear, but I also put that down to me being inexperienced and not knowing what to listen for.

Don't forget, with certain amps you can also do op-amp rolling, which I'd imagine is similar to tube swapping.

That said, I believe these USB DACs do not have all the nifty X-fi audio processing stuff like EAX and CMSS 3D, so if those are important to your gaming, you may want to take that into consideration.

The Asus Essence STX, as far as I know (it was on my radar too, the STX and ST) have their own emulation of EAX. Auzen's offerings have an actual X-fi chip licensed from Creative for full EAX (only on some models though, and I believe only up to EAX 4 - someone correct me if I'm wrong.) These external DACs will sound better (how much better is subjective, but there will probably be an improvement) but they don't normally have any kind of "gaming" or 3d/surround emulation like EAX.

That said, Valve's source games don't even support EAX, as far as I know. But again, if that stuff is important to you, you should take it into consideration. The Asus/Auzen cards are no slouches from what I can tell, but they seem to be a compromise if you want something better than an X-fi while still retaining some measure of EAX. There may be other things that matter, but honestly as a gamer, the only thing I ever bothered with and felt made a difference back in the HL1 mod days was EAX.