Okay I'm looking for a DAC to use for my desktop as I have a soundcard I thought was okay, and I'm just not happy with it!
Sound card I have: Creative Titanium Fatality Championship series (yeah, silly)
Headphones (replacing soon, recomend some new ones too if you like): Ultrasone H-Fi 780
Music genre (primary use): Trance, electronic, dubstep, hiphop/rap, alternative
I like my music with hard hitting, clean, deep bass. I picked up the Ultrasone 780's due to the fact that every reviewer said they had heavy bass and were much more tuned to those who liked that style.....and well I freaking LOVE these headphones because of that! They also have a very nice sound stage, clean highs/mids/lows and the best part: really well tuned bass to my liking
I also love the closed style, blocking ambient noise, further helping the lower frequency I love :P
Another large use of this audio setup is for gaming. Mainly FPS (CS:S, BF2/BF3, TF2, etc) and RTS (Sc2, CnC, etc)... I do game a LOT so this is important to have decent positional ability, but honestly games these days do a great job emulating the sound so I'm not terribly concerned about that.
One small detail is I'd kind of want a DAC that supports 24bit audio as I can really hear the difference when I play back 24bit tracks on my computer. very small difference, so if it means saving $300, then fine I wont miss it, but it would be nice cus I do have some music ripped from vinyl @24/96k
I'm looking to grealy improve my audio setup, I am willing to spend up to about a grand on this so from what I've recently gathered, 50/50 cost into headphones and DAC.
That being said, I wanna get a DAC, While I do have up to $500 to throw at the DAC, Ideally right now I'd like to make the goal $200-$300 as I feel a $1k setup would not be warranted.. and Im gonna use my ultrasone's for a while longer (just bought a house, cash is short!)... I'm looking at also $300 range for cans... I'm willing to go more, but being 21 years old, I dont exactly have heaps of cash around. $600 total is what I'd happily spend for a setup
Should I ditch my sound card when I get the DAC?
All that being said, if there's any other info I should include, please ask... otherwise, lmk what you folks think :)
