cakedotavi
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2014
- Posts
- 8
- Likes
- 10
For those interested in knowing how things went for me, here’s a quick update. The short version is that I am very, very happy, and I’m glad I bought both the soundcard and the 598s themselves. (I don’t believe that just one or the other wouldn’t have given me the improvement I’d wanted)
The 598s arrived first, and they blew my old Audiotechnicas (AHT-700s I believe) out of the water in a quick A/B test with some .flac music. The 598s have very crisp and clear vocals, and just very distinct sound in general when compared to the Audiotechnicas. (Which, by comparison, sounded like an AM radio station) However, they performed quite poorly with respect to both bass in music, and gaming in general.
It seemed that music pushed almost no bass at all, and when I increased it via my EQ the bass became distorted and muddy. Weirdly, games seemed to have the opposite problem; the lows were overpowering in games like Counter-Strike: GO and the mids and highs were very, very quiet. Even after playing with my EQ a bit I was never able to get games to sound quite right; the bass was always overpowering and very muddy, and it made it really hard to use positional sound effectively.
However, the SoundBlaster Z helped with both problems. Music now has far more bass than it did on my onboard sound, with none of the distortion I’d get when I tried to “force” higher bass levels. It sounds, to my uninitiated ears, really amazing. To use a bit of a cliché, lossless music sounds like I’m right there while it’s being recorded; it’s some of the best audio quality I’ve ever personally heard. (Again, I am an uneducated plebe here!
)
Also, gaming weirdly now has way less bass, and has better balance in general. I’m actually finding myself messing up some positional guesses because people sound way closer than they used to; I expect them to be right around the corner but I’m actually just hearing them run around on the other side of the map.
Overall, I am very, very happy. I really appreciate everyone’s advice; you’ve all helped me begin to appreciate good audio and music, which really is something I’d previously totally ignored!
The 598s arrived first, and they blew my old Audiotechnicas (AHT-700s I believe) out of the water in a quick A/B test with some .flac music. The 598s have very crisp and clear vocals, and just very distinct sound in general when compared to the Audiotechnicas. (Which, by comparison, sounded like an AM radio station) However, they performed quite poorly with respect to both bass in music, and gaming in general.
It seemed that music pushed almost no bass at all, and when I increased it via my EQ the bass became distorted and muddy. Weirdly, games seemed to have the opposite problem; the lows were overpowering in games like Counter-Strike: GO and the mids and highs were very, very quiet. Even after playing with my EQ a bit I was never able to get games to sound quite right; the bass was always overpowering and very muddy, and it made it really hard to use positional sound effectively.
However, the SoundBlaster Z helped with both problems. Music now has far more bass than it did on my onboard sound, with none of the distortion I’d get when I tried to “force” higher bass levels. It sounds, to my uninitiated ears, really amazing. To use a bit of a cliché, lossless music sounds like I’m right there while it’s being recorded; it’s some of the best audio quality I’ve ever personally heard. (Again, I am an uneducated plebe here!
)Also, gaming weirdly now has way less bass, and has better balance in general. I’m actually finding myself messing up some positional guesses because people sound way closer than they used to; I expect them to be right around the corner but I’m actually just hearing them run around on the other side of the map.
Overall, I am very, very happy. I really appreciate everyone’s advice; you’ve all helped me begin to appreciate good audio and music, which really is something I’d previously totally ignored!
