ASUS Xonar D1 or external sound card? (PC)

[CaptainDonut]

Yo Head-fi. My old ASUS Vulcan headset is falling apart and it's time for a new one. I have snooped around and found out that much of the sound quality comes from what kind of headphones you have. According to these dudes an internal sound card (PCI, PCIe) is barely any different from your motherboards audio output with good headphones... Good headphones + an external sound card with DA-converters, headphone ampliers and whatnot should be a much better option. Hm.
 
Enough about that, I'm pondering on the ATH-M50x (with a clip-on mic) or a PC360. It will mainly be used for gaming, Skype, movies etc.
 
Thing is, I already have an internal sound card, an ASUS Xonar D1 bought a couple of years ago. To my understanding, this card does not have a headphone amplifier. With the above headphones, will I notice a huge difference if I had an external sound card like E10K or ASUS Xonar U7 instead of the D1 alone?
Can I plug in a standalone headphone-amp like the FiiO Kilimanjaro 2 (E11K) to my D1 instead of getting a brand-new DAC headphone amp card?
 
Not my area of expertise as you may have noticed. What would you recommend me to do?

 

[appsmarsterx]

I d recommend something like Fidelio X1 over m50x,pc360, if you need a mic get a V-MODA BoomPro mic,
 
the only advantage of a soundcard is to get virtual surround, since you have D1, I suggest you first try X1 with the D1 since it doesn't require much amping...

 

[CaptainDonut]

Ah, feels good to not having to buy another soundcard for now. I'll look into the X1 then, a headphone with more oomph than the ones I listed.

 

[mindbomb]

I actually use a d1 and an e11k. They should be excellent for most modern popular headphone choices that are sensitive (fidelio x2, senn 598, audio technica m50, akg 550), but some of the harder ones to drive are out of reach (hd 650, dt 880 pro) I imagine since you can't use high gain without clipping.

 

[CaptainDonut]

Nice to hear that a headphone-amp can be connected to a D1 as I was not sure. I ordered the Philips X1 and maybe I'll get a headphone-amp in the future.