[cadobhuk]

i have a pair of hd600,plugged to Creative Megaworks 550's headphone output,wich are connected to audigy2 ...i know i should get headphone amp,but im not shure if its worth additional ~300 dollars..does anyone know how good the amp in the megaworks is?when comparing hd600's to audigy's out,the speakers' output sounds louder and clearer..also,alot of ppl meantion that m-audio revolution is much better than audigy2,is that really so?cuz i read several reviews saying that the only difference is a2's low quality 44100 to 48000 resampling,and that using software resampling of SSRC plugin eliminates the difference between a2 and revo...i have to have my audigy for gaming,but should i consider adding revo for music?

 

[cary]

i know i'm in the minority here, but i don't actually think the revo always sounds better than the a2, at least when you set the a2 to 24/96 playback and bypass kmixer with kernel streaming. in general the revo is a more musical card, and yes, it will beat the a2 hands down on 16/44 playback for the reason you specified. but imo it actually sounds pretty good, at least with a lot of rock music, in 24/96 mode. a lot of the differences b/w the 2 cards have more to do with the equalizer settings and driver implementation than the quality differences b/w the chips themselves. for a while i had both cards running at the same time on a second computer, using revo for music and audigy for gaming, but what i found was i actually still liked the a2 better on a lot of rock tracks, particularly where the recording quality wasn't so great.

i don't mess with creative's mixer, didn't like it from the beginning.

as always, you've got to use your own ears to judge.

 

[cary]

oh yeah, about the amp, there is simply no way you're going to get the most out of what you can get out of your hd600s, even using your source, without a decent amp driving it. you will find a significant improvement in detail and bass response with an amp driving it with some authority. i'm not surprised that you're already noticing an improvement using your speakers' built in amplifier. if you want even more of that at another level, search some threads and you'll find some great amp recommendations.

of course, once you do that, you might not like your a2 that much longer, but that's always the way it goes with these things. one upgrade leads to another and so on.

happy hunting.