Computer Setup Suggestions

Get an ASUS Xonar Essence ST or STX, depending on which card kind of PCI slot you have open. Perfect for high impedance headphones, and the best component in its price range (and the price range above) that I know of. It's all you would need.

The Sennheiser HD-600s are 300-Ohm headphones, the headphone amplifier on the Asus Xonar Essence ST (PCI) or Essence STX (PCI-Expess) should power the HD-600 just fine.

 Or you coould get an external DAC, and completely bypass internal sound. Maybe Fiio E9 & E7, I hear that the little dot Mk3 also pairs up nicely with the 600s.

There's no reason to get the E7+E9 if he has room for the Essence STX and doesn't need any portability. The Essence STX outperforms the combo.

A DAC is a Digital-to-Analog Converter. It takes the 0s and 1s in a digital signal (like your music files, or CDs) and draws little sine waves between them to make an analog electrical signal that an amp can use to drive headphones.

Everything with a headphone jack has an amplifier. They aren't all made equal, though. The Essence STX has a dedicated headphone amp that's more powerful than many desktop amps in the same price range, and more than powerful enough for most headphones. It's also pretty darn good for distortion, noise, channel separation, and all the other important stuff. Unfortunately it has a 10 ohm output impedance, same as the E9. That won't matter much at all for your headphones.

I think its amp actually uses the same chip as the E9. Its circuit may be better though. Its DAC is better than the E7 (better being a cleaner signal, not necessarily sounds better).

Plus you get some fancy Dolby Headphone stuff for games and movies, if you choose to use it.

Wouldn't the E7 E9 have a comparable DAC and a much higher headphone output than the Xonar Essence?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coupe 
Wouldn't the E7 E9 have a comparable DAC and a much higher headphone output than the Xonar Essence?

The Xonar Essence STX (and ST) are rated to 600-Ohm, which would power 99.9% of the headphones out there.

No reason for the E7 E9 to go any higher.

You can upgrade the op-amps on STX, to whatever is the greatest or latest.

I'm guessing E7 E9 does not have upgradable op-amps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

The Xonar Essence STX (and ST) are rated to 600-Ohm, which would power 99.9% of the headphones out there.

No reason for the E7 E9 to go any higher.

You can upgrade the op-amps on STX, to whatever is the greatest or latest.

I'm guessing E7 E9 does not have upgradable op-amps.

 

 

 

 

 I think it actually does :S

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

The Xonar Essence STX (and ST) are rated to 600-Ohm, which would power 99.9% of the headphones out there.

No reason for the E7 E9 to go any higher.

You can upgrade the op-amps on STX, to whatever is the greatest or latest.

I'm guessing E7 E9 does not have upgradable op-amps.

 

 

 

 

Just because a card is rated @ 600 ohm, doesn't mean it can power them affectively. Does anyone have specs with output?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coupe 

Just because a card is rated @ 600 ohm, doesn't mean it can power them affectively. Does anyone have specs with output?

I think the Essence STX uses the same opamp as the E9 for driving headphones, like I said. Output on Highest gain setting is 7.03 Vrms as measured by Stereophile. No mention of what impedance that was driving, probably 300 ohms because they do a lot of their tests with 300 ohms. The E9 outputs 6.9 Vrms at 150 ohms and 7.1 Vrms at 600 ohms, so presumably it would be right at 7 Vrms like the Essence STX at 300 ohms.

There's not a single normal headphone that won't drive, exceptions for electrostatics and K1000 of course. That'll drive the HE-6, though voltage will be lower because of the output impedance. Should still be above 5 Vrms just like the E9, and that will drive it.

Seems like everyone underestimates the Essence STX just because it's a sound card. This is around the same power output as the Schiit Asgard.

I wonder how the essence is able to achieve this output.  Is it because the power from the PSU/PCI is mostly what the output uses?  How do you believe from an engineering standpoint it is able to acheive this?  I am not doubting you at all.  Mostly this is an area where it is difficult to understand how output translates to decibals.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Head Injury 

I think the Essence STX uses the same opamp as the E9 for driving headphones, like I said. Output on Highest gain setting is 7.03 Vrms as measured by Stereophile. No mention of what impedance that was driving, probably 300 ohms because they do a lot of their tests with 300 ohms. The E9 outputs 6.9 Vrms at 150 ohms and 7.1 Vrms at 600 ohms, so presumably it would be right at 7 Vrms like the Essence STX at 300 ohms.

 

There's not a single normal headphone that won't drive, exceptions for electrostatics and K1000 of course. That'll drive the HE-6, though voltage will be lower because of the output impedance. Should still be above 5 Vrms just like the E9, and that will drive it.

 

Seems like everyone underestimates the Essence STX just because it's a sound card. This is around the same power output as the Schiit Asgard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coupe 

I wonder how the essence is able to achieve this output.  Is it because the power from the PSU/PCI is mostly what the output uses?  How do you believe from an engineering standpoint it is able to acheive this?  I am not doubting you at all.  Mostly this is an area where it is difficult to understand how output translates to decibals.

This sort of power isn't anything special. There are speaker amps that can do tens of watts (even hundreds). Headphone amps don't have to be powerful. Headphones don't need a lot of power.

There are USB-powered amps (like the DACport) that can do 3 Vrms. Yes, I think the Essence STX can only manage what it does because it's connected directly to the PSU. I don't know how much power goes through PCI or PCI-e, or if the Essence STX even uses that connection for anything but data.

Do you want a run-down of the math for decibels from output? Output translates to decibels through power, in milliwatts for headphone amps. Sensitivity is usually in dB/mW. Impedance determines how many milliwatts you get from a volt. W = V^2 / R, R being impedance. So a 300 ohm headphone gets 163 mW from 7 Vrms, and a 32 ohm headphone gets 1,500 mW (approximately). So for the same sensitivity a high impedance headphone needs a lot more voltage, but low sensitivity low impedance headphones can be harder to drive than high sensitivity high impedance headphones.

For every 10 dB increase (double volume) you need 10 times the power, and sqrt(10) times the voltage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hifianddrumming 
I think it actually does :S

Can not find any web pages that talk about the Fiio E9 having upgradable op-amps.