Sound Blaster X-Fi HD or Fiios E10

I would be interested in knowing this as well. Any input would be wonderful.

Astro Mix-Amp.

X-Fi HD is more PC only, it can't be used as a standalone unit and I personally have not tested the TOSLINK in yet. 

Sorry, unable to test the Toslink IN with the X-fi as a standalone unit, the loop test worked though. 

Yes been looking for threads on this Sound-Blaster X-FI as well. Curious here.
And a little off-topic, is that amp any good for headphones by itself? Connecting to my pc and is considering getting this...

Quote:

Originally Posted by potatoos 

Loop test meaning?

Toslink out to Toslink in worked ( RMAA on pc) 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soul363 

Yes been looking for threads on this Sound-Blaster X-FI as well. Curious here.
And a little off-topic, is that amp any good for headphones by itself? Connecting to my pc and is considering getting this...

Amp section is good for most of the lower impedance headphones, I don't think it has the power to drive the HD600 or 650 though but certainly works pretty well for my old M50s and my friend's Beyerdynamic DT770 80ohm, I do not have any high impedance phones to drive it with. The DAC section has respectable specs but you will have to do upsampling to 24/96 to get the best results out of it. For low impedance headphones it does not do well with most of the BA and I personally run my X-fi HD through the Objective 2 amp. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by firev1 

Amp section is good for most of the lower impedance headphones, I don't think it has the power to drive the HD600 or 650 though but certainly works pretty well for my old M50s and my friend's Beyerdynamic DT770 80ohm, I do not have any high impedance phones to drive it with. The DAC section has respectable specs but you will have to do upsampling to 24/96 to get the best results out of it. For low impedance headphones it does not do well with most of the BA and I personally run my X-fi HD through the Objective 2 amp. 

 

Thanks! So 55 ohms should be no problem for the sound-blaster right? I'm sorry but i'm a newbie in this hobby, been lurking for ages but never understood some terms. What does the BA mean? And the upsampling part, i can do it through the one of foobar's component, the resampler right? Correct me if i'm wrong

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soul363 

 

Thanks! So 55 ohms should be no problem for the sound-blaster right? I'm sorry but i'm a newbie in this hobby, been lurking for ages but never understood some terms. What does the BA mean? And the upsampling part, i can do it through the one of foobar's component, the resampler right? Correct me if i'm wrong

BA =Balanced Armature. Foobar has a resampler thats correct. 55 ohms should be no problem for the Sound-blaster.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by potatoos 

Do you have any other DAC's to which you can compare this DAC's abilities?

Mainly the E10 and Emu labs 0204. The 0204 has less connectivity(I need the optical out) but has better measurements. The E10 has a very nice headphone amp, which would be my recommendation if you are not connecting anything else to it. Otherwise its the X-fi HD which best the E10 in almost everyway especially if you use it with a competent amp. 
 

That's because the E10 is heavily advertised here and recommended around, the X-fi HD is usually recommended around at Japanese forums. I do think the upcoming E17 will outperform the X-fi HD by a large margin though it will be a while before release. On top of that, the E10 is integrated with a pretty darn good amp component which IMO is good for the price.