[Kreyson]

Thankyou for all of the great threads and articles posted here at Head-Fi.  I have spent countless hours searching for the perfect audio set up and today, I finally took the plunge today and ordered a set of HD650s and the HT OMEGA Claro Halo soundcard for the PC from Newegg.  If all goes well, it will arrive monday or tuesday.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829271004&cm_re=ht_omega_claro_halo-_-29-271-004-_-Product
 
For the past 4 years i have used a cheap headpone amp to go with my HD595 and i was very pleased with the performance (my office set).  Now, i am upgrading my home PC/music experience.
 
A question to you guys, does anyone have experience with the HT Omega Claro Halo on set up and setting recommendations?  Also, has anyone here used it with the HD650s.  Anxious to hear other opinions/reviews on this set up, for i found very little in regards to this.
 
Thanks.

 

[cheesetogo]

Generally I read reviews on products before I buy them.

 

[taisho]

I have the HD600's with my omega claro halo soundcard with upgraded op-amps and it sounds pretty bomb. my previous setup was an audigy 2 soundcard with the hd555's. so far, it's really good and i have no regrets.

 

[Mr Joboto]

Quote:

Generally I read reviews on products before I buy them.

LOL yeah, this. 
 
I don't know much about that soundcard, but I do know that 650s are power hungry headphones that need a dedicated amp.

 

[Kreyson]

I have read reviews online, but, talking about personal experience coupled with the HD650.  Found little info on this, only a couple vague references.
 
Thanks.

 

[haloxt]

Make sure you are using ASIO output in your media player with the claro halo, it has native support so don't need asio4all. Here's an explanation for why bit-perfect is good.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/221237/asio4all-explanation
 
Give everything 100 hours of use, then If the claro halo doesn't sound good enough for you, I would return it to newegg, even if it costs you $20-30 for shipping+restocking fee. I heard someone long ago say the amp on the halo wasn't that good but I couldn't really test it since my highest impedance headphones were 75 ohm, and people say the 300 ohm hd650 need a good amp. I would recommend "Basic USB" version sparrow if you are unsatisfied by the claro halo, but right now they are not available due to out of stock pcm2704 chips. May take a few weeks for them to sell USB sparrow again. OR if your motherboard has spdif optical or coax, you can save $25 with "Basic BNC" version. http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/Headphoneamp/Sparrow/SparrowEN.htm

 

[cheesetogo]

+1 for the Sparrow. The basic version is a great deal at $125. Of course, if you like the sound of your setup when it arrives, I would suggest that you stop reading this forum all together and just be happy.

 

[pzm9pzm9]

omega claro halo with HD650 makes decent sound. you can change the ohm settings by jumper on the board. I guess it was either less than 300ohm and above up to 600ohm.... my memory is vague now. the downside was that you can change this setting only by jumper, so you need to open the PC case and phisically do it. anyway, it sounded decent to me but you won't get the full potential of HD650, as I have compared it with my DAC and Amp combo. But the card provides good sound considering its price. I now use its SPDIF out to my DAC and analogue connection to desktop speakers. Once you set up the bit perfect (like WASAPI), you can have two seperate sounds from those two ouputs. So I can play bit perfect music while playing some game with speakers only making gaming sound.

 

[Kreyson]

Thanks for the great feed back.  Haloxt, i am using winamp, how do i make sure it is using asio as output?
 
I am a newb here.
 
Thanks again.

 

[haloxt]

Download a asio plugin for winamp, there's multiple ones to choose from, and I have no idea which is best. This otachan one is pretty darn old, but heck, why not. But if you don't want to play with this dinosaur even though many people have said it is good I suggest you get the asio driver on winamp's official website. Put it in C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\
 
http://otachan.com/out_asio(dll)_067.7z
 
Go to winamp options, then probably plugin section, and enable otachan. Or maybe it's in playback>output, select otachan asio. Can't remember which, did it like two years ago and it was pretty simple.

 

[earerror]

Quote:

A question to you guys, does anyone have experience with the HT Omega Claro Halo on set up and setting recommendations?  Also, has anyone here used it with the HD650s.  Anxious to hear other opinions/reviews on this set up, for i found very little in regards to this.
 
Thanks.

HT omega make good soundcards, i think they are good after the asus xonar ds. You are on a good way. 

 

[Kreyson]

Well.... it arrived!  My HD650 and my Omega Claro Halo sound card.  I do have to say, this is quite an awakening into the audio world.  I am extremely impressed with this combination.  The sound card has plenty of power to power the HD650s and the base is deep and clear.
 
If anyone is looking at this combination, i highly recommend it.
 
Going to be burning these cans every night for the next week.

 

[taisho]

GYEEEA! Honestly, you probably will not need an amp. If anything, you can just upgrade the op-amps on the sound card for different sound qualities. I have the LM4562 op-amps and they're pretty good, but there are tons of other op-amps.

 

[tom1l21]

I have HD595 with the Claro Halo. How does the amp on the halo compare to an external dedicated one? Are they vastly superior or does the Claro Halo do a good job?

 

[haloxt]

Does it sound congested? HD595 has medium impedance and pretty high sensitivity so it may sound just fine with your claro halo with built-in IC amp. If you don't feel like spending money you could also order free samples of DUAL CHANNEL opamps (don't get single channel it will fry your soundcard) from companies like texas instruments to put into your claro halo for changing the sound.
 
External dedicated amps can cost a lot more than the claro halo, and imo there is a big difference, assuming the rest of your gear is revealing and/or unforgiving enough, and also assuming you are listening to good quality music files. If I were you I'd ask myself just how much more sound quality I want, and if you aren't picky you may be fine with just claro halo+forgiving and efficient headphones. I'm a little worried that because most computers are usually pretty emf/rfi noisy environments, the DAC line-out of the claro halo to a transparent external amp may not be too good. If you want an external amp you may want to consider an external dac as well.