Hello all :)

http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-Microphone-Zm-Mic1-Sensitivity-Headphone/dp/B00029MTMQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1292245893&sr=8-1

For gaming only, I would probably recommend an ATH-AD700. Is there any particular reason you're stuck on Senns? They're more difficult to drive and generally less spacious, (though neither is a bad choice for gaming).

By the way, for future reference this belongs in the Full Size Forums. Welcome to Head-Fi, sorry about your wallet.

The HD555 and HD595 are both relatively easy to drive headphones, so they should sound fine out of your sound card. Would they sound better if you ran them out of a dedicated DAC and headphone amp? Probably. But the amount of improvement would not be as significant as you would see with a harder to drive headphone like the HD650. Get the HD595 and enjoy them.

For that purpose, yes, you could buy something like the Fiio E7 or Headroom Bithead. You would see some improvement in sound quality over a computer's headphone jack, but probably not a night-and-day difference. I don't know anything about the Steelseries product.

The difference between getting a dac/amp vs the steeleseries soundcard is that steelseries has its own software which you can use to add virtual effects and change channel configuration. If you are looking for better sound quality I would suggest getting something Fiio E7 or Headroom BitHead too.

I personally find the software with the steelseries soundcard pretty useless and dac/amps like Fiio and BitHead perform much better.

I used to use the Sennheiser PC350 with Ibasso D10 instead of the steelseries headset with its soundcard when I played cs 1.6, you could hear the footsteps accurately and from literally half way across the map.

The only problem with the external DAC idea is plugging in the microphone. 

A USB mic maybe? Also, plugging-in an external DAC may not disable the mic input on the built-in sound card. (Though I don't remember exactly how that works under Windows.)

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Originally Posted by wilyodysseus 

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This is true, on Windows Vista or 7, you may select independent output and input devices. But I'm not so sure about using two USB audio devices, perhaps someone with experience can enlighten me.

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Originally Posted by ey3baLL 

Wow guys, thanks for the feedback and especially for the usb soundcard recommendation. Gladly appreciate it. Just one more question though, the FiiO E7 does not support microphone jack right? Only the headphone's jack..

Thanks guys!

No the Fiio E7 does not support a microphone jack.

You can use a the DAC and the micrphone directly through the pc at the same time, it will work just fine. The settings for mic and your sound are separate, it doesnt matter if your mic has mini jack or works through usb either ways it will not give you a probem.