Advice for new PC audio setup

Hi folks,

I'm currently in the process of completely overhauling the audio setup for my PC. Unfortunately, I'm relatively new to the world of quality audio components so I could do with a bit of advice on the matter.

I'm currently using an old Creative Audigy 2 ZS soundcard in my machine which is hooked up to an equally old Logitech Z-2300 2.1 system. While this was fine back in college, over time I've become increasingly frustrated with the poor sound quality, especially since I alternate between it and a pair of Audio Technica ATH-A900s depending on the time of day.

With regard to requirements for this new setup, it must meet the following criteria.

1) PC is used for primarily music listening (rock/metal/blues) and gaming.

2) Space is quite limited around the PC and the room itself is quite small.

3) I'm trying to keep costs around the £300 mark.

As I said, I'm by no means an audiophile but from my research thus far, I've identified what appear to be some good candidates.

For the soundcard, I've basically settled on the Asus Essense STX. I had considered the Auzentech Forte for the gaming aspects but since the Asus appears to be the best all round card, I can ignore the lack of native hardware acceleration for games.

For the speakers/amp side of things, rather than go in the powered speaker direction with a pair of Audio Engine A5+, I'm leaning toward an amp/passive speaker combination based on reading around various forums. The parts I had found were a pair of Q-Acoustic 2020i powered by a Dayton Audio DTA-100a. The Dayton looks like it should power the Q-Acoustics perfectly and meets the size/cost criteria. The Q-Acoustics seem to be one of the better bookshelf style speakers, at least in terms of what you can get in Europe.

Now, a couple of questions with regard to the above setup.

Could I connect the Asus to the Dayton via the RCA cables on the former and then, when required, use the headphone out on the Asus for my ATs? I know the Dayton has a port too but I've also read some pretty mediocre things about it while the STX has gotten consistently great reviews.

My current Logitech system is a 2.1, would I miss the subwoofer if I moved to a higher quality 2.0 setup?

Outside of the Dayton, which I would have to order from the US, are there any other alternatives which could power the Q-Acoustics and maintain a small footprint on my desk? It doesn't have to be *as* small but the vast majority of amps I've seen seem to be considerably larger.

I'm also completely open to alternatives to any of the components listed so any and all advice is greatly appreciated. :)


 

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

The Essence STX has two headphone connections, the back panel (next to the RCAs) and a headphone connection on the card for the front panel headphone jack.

Speakers used with the STX use the RCA jacks.

 

Well what I meant was, if I were to plug the headphones into the headphone connection on the back of the STX while it was also hooked up to the amp via RCA, would the output to the amp be disabled?

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

The only amp (amplifier) on the STX is the headphone amplifier, the RCAs do not have one.

Also per the control panel, you can only have sound coming out of the RCA jacks or headphone jacks, but not at the same time.

 

 

So both the amp and headphones be simultaneously plugged into their respective ports and output can be switched via the Asus Control Panel?

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

Yes.

 

 

Excellent! Well that solves the headphone side of things, thanks for the advice PurpleAngel. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by cifani090 

Good budget! You could get a nice Marantz 22xx series, one of the smaller ones, and some JBL or Klipsch (vintage). Would be 100x better quality in music, and materials, than what your looking at.

A couple of problems with this solution. Firstly, it seems to be quite difficult to source older Marantz gear in the UK, from a cursory search there's very little on offer online. On top of that I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with older gear like that given my inexperience with such products. Klipsch suffers from a similar problem with regard to general availability in the UK, there's loads of headphone and iPhone dock products alright but little in the way of hi-fi or even PC-based speakers like the ProMedia series.

Looking at the JBL series, the E20 is the one which would be closest to what I'm looking for can be gotten from their online store however the reviews for it don't seem particularly positive, at least to the extremely positive ones I saw found for the Q-Acoustics set.