Sound card?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jontaz23 

Hey guys

So basically as a Christmas present to myself I am buying a pair of Q 701's. I posted here before about what amp to match with these. So I've decided to go for an Fiio E7 + E9 combo. But I'm wondering if simply buying a sound card would produce the same effect and be able to power them? I was looking at this sound card

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=10940

Thank you for your time

I would get the E7+E9 over any soundcard.

But I would suggest perhaps considering this instead (NFB-12).

Very best,

The Xonar Essence STX has a pretty powerful dedicated headphone amp. Going by Head-Fi talk, not only is it enough to power the K701/K702/Q701, but a lot of people even prefer it to the FiiO E7/E9 combo in terms of performance.

Anecdotal experiences are funny things, though I don't even have that to go by when it comes to the Xonar Essence STX, just mentioning a fairly popular opinion on Head-Fi. (My sound cards are all X-Fi based for the next point I'm about to mention.)

Also note that if you're into gaming at all (something the Q701 should excel at), sound cards have DSP features not found on audiophile DACs. The ideal solution there would be to get a cheap sound card and use it to feed an audiophile DAC over S/PDIF, but it'll be on the expensive side, at least $260 if you were to use the aforementioned NFB-12. Otherwise, you could just use USB or your motherboard's integrated S/PDIF output, if present. A Xonar Essence STX, on the other hand, is closer to $150-160 if you shop around.

Jontaz23

If you want to watch movies or do surround sound gaming then get a sound card.

You all your into is music (stereo 2.0 channel) the an external DAC/headphone amplifier would work.

a Fiio E10 (external USB/DAC/Amp) would do the job.

The AKG Q701s are only 62-Ohms.

Even a Asus Xonar DG sound card would do a halfway decent job.

The amplifier on the Xonar Essence STX has similar basic specs to the FiiO E9 (~7 Volts RMS maximum output voltage, ~10 Ohm impedance), and in fact both of these use TI 6120 chips as the headphone amplifier, probably with +/- 12V supply voltage. However, the DAC on the Xonar STX is arguably better than that of the FiiO E7, and also has more features (e.g. sample rate up to 192 kHz, and resolution up to 24 bits; you might not have source material that takes advantage of these, but the extra resolution can be useful when using equalization). Also, I am not sure if the E7 can capture audio, or only play (you may not care about that, though). Overall, in my opinion the STX is better value than the E7+E9 combination, at least as far as audio performance and features are concerned; obviously, the external devices have their own advantages like being able to use a headphone amplifier without a desktop PC.

By the way, the AKG headphones may have low impedance, but they are in fact not that easy to drive, because the efficiency is low.

It is a very solid value. The only real downside that I see is that you don't have the isolation to the potential grounding issues within the computer case itself and you don't have the E7 to power low impedance headphones and don't have the E7 for a portable option. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by stv014 

The amplifier on the Xonar Essence STX has similar basic specs to the FiiO E9 (~7 Volts RMS maximum output voltage, ~10 Ohm impedance), and in fact both of these use TI 6120 chips as the headphone amplifier, probably with +/- 12V supply voltage. However, the DAC on the Xonar STX is arguably better than that of the FiiO E7, and also has more features (e.g. sample rate up to 192 kHz, and resolution up to 24 bits; you might not have source material that takes advantage of these, but the extra resolution can be useful when using equalization). Also, I am not sure if the E7 can capture audio, or only play (you may not care about that, though). Overall, in my opinion the STX is better value than the E7+E9 combination, at least as far as audio performance and features are concerned; obviously, the external devices have their own advantages like being able to use a headphone amplifier without a desktop PC.

 

By the way, the AKG headphones may have low impedance, but they are in fact not that easy to drive, because the efficiency is low.

 

Really? Does the E7+E9 go together to make a super-dac? Over any sound card at all?
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MalVeauX 

I would get the E7+E9 over any soundcard.

 

But I would suggest perhaps considering this instead (NFB-12).

 

Very best,

 

The STX should be fine. My Xonar DG does my D2k justice.
 

For gaming definitely go the STX route. Dolby headphone is pretty cool. Also look into X-Fi titanium HD. It has CMSS-3D which is like dolby headphone but performs better in games. The X-Fi also has an amp.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Omark12 

For gaming definitely go the STX route. Dolby headphone is pretty cool. Also look into X-Fi titanium HD. It has CMSS-3D which is like dolby headphone but performs better in games. The X-Fi also has an amp.

The Creative X-Fi Go! also has CMSS3D. If you wanted another option other than the E7+E9 and the Essence STX, consider a Creative X-Fi Go! USB DAC along side an amp like the O2 amp from JDSLabs (shiped Jan 6th, $144). The amp portion would have a lower output impedance and overall be better than the Essence STX, but we could quibble on the DAC of the Essence STX vs. the X-Fi Go! DAC. 

The X-Fi go looks like a piece of ****.

Measured well in terms of distortion, noise floor was a bit high but manageable if you keep your volume on the digital level kept at a high level and handle the volume at the amp level, jitter was relatively quality.

It wouldn't surprise me if the DAC portion of the X-Fi Go! compared very well against the Xonar Essense STX's DAC. From a pure hardware perspective, the Xonar Essense STX's PCM1792A DAC is most likely superior, but I would call this a wash because of the high output impedance of the amp, which shoehorns you into higher impedance headphones unless you want coloration of the frequency response (and the crossovers in multiple driver IEMs to be messed up by this impedance) and the location inside the computer, making it susceptible to potential distortion from grounding issues (this is why desktop front audio ports tend to be hissy -- they're not well separated from this electrical interference from inside the computer). 

Edit: Having a good external amp like the O2 will also allow for further source upgrades to happen at a later date, if the OP so pleased. You can't internally upgrade the STX's other source components without scrapping the entire card.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Omark12 

The X-Fi go looks like a piece of ****.

I have both the STX and Q701s. They work excellent together. Well enough to cause blissful hearing damage.

Edit for proof:

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/6474/img20111224185233.jpg