[Patrick82]

I hear no difference between EMU 0404 and Audigy2, they sound exactly the same, is there something wrong with my headphones?
What should the differences be between both sound cards?

I listen to Trance music with FLAC and 320kbps MP3 with Foobar. I connected the Audigy2 to the Line in on EMU on another computer. I alternated playing the same song on both computers and didn't know which sound card was playing it!

I don't have an amp, would I hear a difference with an amp?

 

[Asmo]

Well, I'm not trying to put down trance music, cuz I love a lot of trance music too, but I have never found it to be very high fidelity in nature.

You should try some different types of music just to be sure.

I'm not quite clear exactly how you have this setup, are you plugging the headphones directly into the 0404? With the audigy 2 into the line in?

Are you using foobar etc? Player setup is important.

The 590s do benefit from a amp somewhat, I had the 590s for over a year and I used an amp, they did not go loud enough out of the audigy 2 for me. If you were happy with the audigy 2 and 590s stick with it til you can afford to replace the cans, new amp, good quality interconencts, etc.

 

[Patrick82]

I plug my headphones directly to EMU with two "6.35mm mono male - Phono female" adapters and one "2xPhono male - 3.5mm stereo female".
I connect the Audigy2 with "3.5mm stereo male - 2xPhono female" and "2xRCA male - 2xRCA male" to both mono adapters on EMU line in.
The EMU is inside my fanless computer.

I use Foobar with Crossfeed. I tried 96KHz but I didn't hear a difference. I haven't changed other settings.

I got too much volume with Audigy2, I never went above 16% volume when listening to music, I have sensitive ears, I hear small sounds. I thought I would get a very big difference with EMU over my Audigy2.

Should I get HD600 with Oehlbach cable and CORDA HA-1 MkII ?

 

[Mr.Radar]

The EMU is incapable of properly driving headphones. If you have a spare receiver or stereo with a headphone jack and line-in you might want to try that with the EMU and the Audigy.

 

[Patrick82]

I tried with my old Sony Dolby Pro Logic stereo and couldn't hear a difference with both sound cards, but the headphone jack on the stereo has noise. I also couldn't hear a difference with EMU + amp vs Audigy2 + no amp, and the other way around.

I tried classical and rock music and still no difference, I have tried 50+ songs, it sounds like both are exactly the same sound card.

Maybe my stock headphone cable is bad? My chair had rolled over the cable a few times right after I bought the headphones.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Hmm... sounds like you either need an amp, or you've hit your brick wall in audio quality (where you can't tell the difference between two components, even though one is a level or two above the other).

 

[bumf]

How long have you had it? I thought the same at first, no different to my audigy, a touch more bass perhaps, but a couple of days of just putting music through it really 'opened it up'. I'm noticing all sorts of details the audigy just couldn't find.

 

[Patrick82]

I have had it 2 days. 5-10 hours listening.

 

[Mr.Radar]

In that case try playing music through it for a few days straight to let the caps and other chips burn in.

 

[Distroyed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.Radar The EMU is incapable of properly driving headphones. If you have a spare receiver or stereo with a headphone jack and line-in you might want to try that with the EMU and the Audigy.

That's incorrect. They drive my hd650's with no problem.

ANyways, the reason you don't hear a difference is because you're sending the audigy2 source through the Emu; the Emu is doing all the analog decoding. The audigy2 should theoretically sound slightly worse since it resamples everything, but I've never been able to tell with kernel streaming myself either. If you tried the headphone out of the breakout box of the audigy2, you'd hear the difference right away since you'd be working from the audigy's dac instead of the emu's.

 

[juni0r]

I used a Toshiba SD-3960 -> archaic JVC receiver -> HD 590 and I must say that it sounded noticably better than Audigy 2 -> HD 590 (bass was driven much more, the hits could be physically felt more if you put your palms on the grills of the cans). Given the fact that I'm assuming the SD-3960 is worse than even the Chaintech AV-710 (according to Iron_Dreamer), I don't see why you wouldn't notice a difference, so personally I'm curious about your comments

. Oh and for your reference I listened to trance, rap, r&b, and orchestral (Pirates of the Caribbean Soundtrack) in this test.

Btw, I'm assuming you had given your headphones some burn-in right? My friend looked down upon my 590's out of the box (given the fact that he was using $100 cheaper Sony DJ cans) but after several months he was impressed.

 

[Patrick82]

Music has been running through my EMU for about 50 hours now.

I plugged the headphones directly to Audigy2 and I can hear a little less bass from it compared to EMU.
When plugging Audigy2 to EMU I get same bass from both.

I think I get more bass from EMU after the burn-in, the bass is starting to give me a headache.

What other differences than bass are in both soundcards?

 

[kyrie]

Quote:

That's incorrect. They drive my hd650's with no problem.

You don't know that as a fact. By "drive" people here don't just mean "get to ear-splitting volumes without distortion," but also mean "get it to sound somewhere near its potential." And seeing as how you don't own an amp...the HD650 might sound good to you right now, but do you know how good it would sound with an amp? Maybe then you'd have second thoughts about whether the card can "drive" the HD650.

But anyway.

Patrick82, are you sure you have the connection set up right? The passes and sends for the E-MU aren't really intuitive or obvious...
But supposing you do, you still have a few problems:
1) You're listening to the HD590, which aren't really that good IMO.
2) You aren't using an amp.
3) You're listening to trance music, a lot of which isn't the best type of music to do critical listening on.

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by juni0r Btw, I'm assuming you had given your headphones some burn-in right? My friend looked down upon my 590's out of the box (given the fact that he was using $100 cheaper Sony DJ cans) but after several months he was impressed.

I have had my HD590 for 18 months, there was a huge difference in bass in the first 50 hours of the burn-in period.

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kyrie Patrick82, are you sure you have the connection set up right? The passes and sends for the E-MU aren't really intuitive or obvious...

I plug my headphones directly to EMU with two "6.35mm mono male - Phono female" adapters and one "2xPhono male - 3.5mm stereo female" cable.