[ImAllOriginal]

I have an Asus laptop and I bought an external Creative X-Fi Blaster 5.1 sound card
 
I would like to buy a pair of nice headphones that will be used through this laptop but don't necessarily need an amp
 
price is not a huge deal because I work at best buy but that basically limits me down to Sennheiser and AKG
 
I have ripped cds to my computer in WMA Lossless and now I want to make them sound really good
 
most of my music is rock/metal/post-hardcore and techno
 
(feel free to suggest well-priced alternatives if senn/akg won't do the trick)

 

[minorityzune]

According to your music style, Grado's seem to be the perfect choice, plus they don't really need an amp.

 

[Dalamar]

If the store has AKG K701/K702, go for those imo.

 

[Hybrys]

Or the SRH840s.  Lower impedance than the K701 and should offer similar performance.

 

[ImAllOriginal]

the store carries:
 
AKG: K172HD and K242HD
 
Sennheiser: HD 595, HD 600, and HD 650

 

[Dalamar]

HD650 then, but you might need an amp if you can't get the vol up high enough.
How good is their employee discount? lol

 

[ImAllOriginal]

all I can really say is that we get discounts based off of wholesale value, so some things we get great discounts on and some not so much. On headphones the discount is...generous.

I would think the HD 650's would need amplification so that's a possibilty but do you think the 595's or 600's would be okay without amps?

 

[ImAllOriginal]

and also, we have the HD 428's on display and i'm not a huge fan of the bass response on them. is it greatly improved with the higher end models?

 

[mikeaj]

For reference, that sound card has a TDA1308 headphone driver chip for the output.  The spec sheet says it can nominally output 40 mW power in normal circumstances to a 32 ohm load--it's probably much less for a higher load like the 300 ohms the HD 600 and 650 have.  The spec sheet doesn't really have values for loads other than 16 and 32 ohms, if that's any indication of the "intended" use of the device.  Both those headphones are (about? assuming Sennheiser's data on their website is to be trusted) 97 dB / mW.  Actually, the HD 650 is listed at 103 dB / V, but that converts to maybe 97.8 dB / mW at 1 kHz.
 
Volume might be a concern even with the two AKG models if you like to listen at high volumes.  Your genres typically don't have a huge amount of dynamic range, so it might not be a problem though.
 
Frequency response and 50 Hz square wave response of Sennheiser phones of interest is below.  The HD 428 appears to be bad for bass according to these results, but I have never heard them myself:
 

 

 

[ImAllOriginal]

well the 595 seems to have almost up to par bass response to the 600's and their impedance is only 50 ohms. do you think those could be driven at a decent volume without an amp?

 

[Hybrys]

Quote:

well the 595 seems to have almost up to par bass response to the 600's and their impedance is only 50 ohms. do you think those could be driven at a decent volume without an amp?

Yes, definitely.

 

[ImAllOriginal]

also, I only bought my sound card a week ago, so I could definitely return it. Do you think it's worth keeping or upgrading?
 
Once again, it's the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi 5.1
 
I'm using a laptop so it would have to be external

 

[ImAllOriginal]

or is the SRS "Premium Sound" card already inside my Asus ultralight already good enough to do these headphones any service?

 

[Hybrys]

The X-Fi 5.1 is terrible, actually.  Your onboard (I'm guessing a Realtek with Dolby Headphone) would probably match it in quality.

 

[ImAllOriginal]

I've been doing some research and I think it may be more beneficial just to get a DAC/amp combo.
 
Would it be really necessary to get an external sound card on top of that